I am not a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, but I have seen Brokeback Mountain, and I did like it tremendously—as did millions of others. Our bewilderment over its defeat at the Oscars has been misinterpreted. Would you humor us by considering the following analogy that better explains our position?

Let's simply recast Brokeback Mountain as the story about the intolerance faced by a white woman and her black husband in rural Wyoming in the 1960s. At the end of the film, her husband is murdered in a brutal hate crime because of others disgust over miscegenation.

Now imagine that, before this film even premieres, it is the butt of racist jokes. Conservative news commentators decry its very existence as a mistake, calling it a profane plea for acceptance of the sin that is a mixed marriage. They repeatedly predict--and hope for--its failure at the box office.

The movies opens and critics rave that it is an exquisite, poignant, and supremely-well crafted film. The actors are ideally cast in their parts and play their roles with pitch-perfect honesty and involvement. The screenplay is sublimely spare and genuinely evocative of the American west of the recent past. The cinematography, the musical score, the landscapes, the set-pieces: together, they achieve perfection, or something close to it.

Nonetheless, all during its cinematic run, talk show hosts, humorists and live comedy-ensemble network programs can't seem to let a day go by without satirical reference to that "jungle fever cowboy movie." Black and white celebrities play out creepy parodies of "BrokeBlack Mounting." Often these skits are done in whiteface and blackface.

Award season commences and Brokeback Mountain wins almost every precursor "Best" award bestowed by the most prestigious film institutions. It also has the greatest box-office take of all the likely Best Picture nominees, and, by most accounts, is the best reviewed film of the year. And when the Oscar nominations are announced, Brokeback Mountain receives the highest number of nominations for all of the Best Picture nominees.

Shortly thereafter, an Academy member proudly proclaims he has no intention of watching the film because he and his contemporaries don't care for mixed marriages. Their reasoning is,"D.W. Griffith (or insert the name of a famously racist Hollywood Golden Age actor here) would be rolling over in his grave." Consider, too, it is also likely that a significant proportion of Academy members are silently acting out this same bigotry by failing to see Brokeback Mountain before marking their own ballots.

No one objects to these glaring violations of the Academy's own rules, or the institution's ethics. Nonetheless, it is widely predicted Brokeback Mountain will win Best Picture. Even Las Vegas odds-makers make it the overwhelming favorite.