"In Brokeback Mountain, Ennis and Jack are just-met strangers guarding sheep in Wyoming. Sheer boredom!…The sheep do nothing special as they bleat around the bush. But Jack and Ennis do do something special - they meet, they have sex. Summer ends, the sheep take it on the lam, Jack and Ennis part ways…Years pass, each is in a bleak marriage. Jack, who strikes me as a sexual predator, tracks Ennis down and coaxes him into sporadic trysts…" -- Gene Shalit, Today Show's entertainment critic, in his review of Brokeback Mountain

Regardless of the depth of our love, how monogamous we prove to be, or how decent, charitable and hard working we are, gays and lesbians are often pinned as people who have sex all the time.

Night and day, in cities and on prairies, in penthouses and in tents, we have sex with one another, with people we coax, with various objects or vegetables, and, if there are sheep nearby, we find them impossible to ignore.

Love? It's not part of the gay sex equation, silly. Love is something we reserve for Cher and Jodie Foster.

And nowhere is all of that more obvious than on the big screen.

You might think that with the battle for gay marriage and equality the 'gay as predator/sex-coaxer/sheep-fucker notion would be on its way to being squashed. And maybe it is, but it's taking a helluva long time. And Gene Shalit - a man who with a gay son should know better, whose position in the entertainment industry affords him the power to help put an end to the silliness - isn't helping. In fact, his review (I struggle to call it that) of Brokeback Mountain is, I think, unfair and more than a little discomforting.

Why would Gene Shalit, a man who has not only made a career out of dissecting
films but who is also a witness to at least one loving gay relationship, reduce Brokeback Mountain's obvious and tragic love story to a series of "sporadic trysts" between a "sexual predator" and the man he "coaxes"? And why would he ick-up his review with an absurd amount of references to the film's most minor characters - sheep? Why go there?

For the record, I agree with Shalit's final observation that the movie is getting more praise than it deserves. I think it's a good movie, not a great movie. I think the first fifteen minutes is ten minutes too long. I think director Ang Lee was too careful. I have many opinions about the film. In fact, I can talk about it for hours. But what I think of least with respect to it are the sex scenes and the four-legged creatures. I'm focused on the whole picture, not the, um, the holes. Why wasn't Shalit?

Well, we all say stupid things from time to time. We hear ridiculous comments as they come out of our mouths or we re-read something we've written, and we often say, "Where did that come from?"

It's always a good question - one I'm hoping Gene Shalit is asking himself right now.

That said, after watching Shalit's review and reading GLAAD's response, and then reading the letter Peter Shalit (Gene Shalit's gay son) sent to GLAAD, you might be surprised to learn that I've come to the conclusion that Shalit the elder misspoke and meant no harm.

Peter Shalit insists that his father "is not homophobic," that he "does not have a molecule of hate in his being," and that he's a friend of the gay community. And I believe him. I have no reason not to. Gene Shalit said something stupid, but he never said that all gay people are predators or that we're hot for sheep. Shalit certainly hasn't proven himself to be a serial queer-basher over his long career.

Still, I feel a need to write about Shalit's review - to review the review, if you will, because it troubled me and interested me all at once. While I truly believe Gene Shalit didn't consciously mean what he said, I'm still curious about why he said it. I have to ask, How is possible that the love story of Ennis and Jack was lost on him? What's with his fascination with the film's wooly creatures? Why was he obviously more concerned with being clever than accurate?

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