Seeing Brokeback Mountain has left me in a mood to talk about it, and... with no one I can really talk to who'll understand. So time to dust off the blog.

It's a story about two men who fall in love, while working together in the wilderness for a few months in 1963. In those pre-gay-lib days - especially in the flyover regions of the West - the idea of actually following their hearts is almost unthinkable, so they go their separate ways, with only their "fishing trips" together as a way to satisfy their mutual longing. Starring the lovely and talented Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger, and directed by the talented (and not bad looking either) Ang Lee, it is (rather obviously) worth seeing.

Of course I can't help drawing parallels to the one great relationship of my own life. In this analysis, I am Ennis (Ledger's character) and Andy is Jack (Gyllenhaal). Although neither character is ready to declare "I'm here, I'm queer, get used to it", Jack is the one who entertains the idea of the two of them finding a place somewhere to settle down together. Andy and I were both plenty openly-gay, but it was he who was more eager for us to set up housekeeping together. And while not quite as laconic as Ennis, I was definitely the less talkative one.

This parallel breaks down a bit in some ways, of course. Jack seems to be the gayer of the two, with "needs" that can't be sublimated or simply channeled into heterosexual love-making. Ennis seems to be attracted to women... it's just that the one person he carries a torch for is a guy. But Andy was definitely the fence-straddler of the two of us, a card-carrying bisexual, while I never had any interest in the fairer sex.

But ultimately it was I who played the spoiler, balking when Andy finally made the move to... move in. I wasn't ready for that, and I pushed him away. And for that I'll always bear that burden of being the one who broke us up.

And what makes the story in the movie all the harder to watch is the analogy between what happened to them, and what happened to us. SPOILER ALERT! As the years go on, Jack and Ennis aren't together, except in their hearts. Until tragedy strikes, and Ennis finds out that Jack has died. Although Andy didn't die, he suffered a brain trauma that took him from me just the same.

For years I've feared hearing the news that Ennis actually received: the news that the love of his life has died. Although his family know about our relationship, they don't seem to respect it or understand it. They think it's over. But of course it isn't. Not in my heart. And knowing that Andy's health is more precarious than mine, I expect to someday learn - with the same casual indifference, well after the fact - that he has died. And even just thinking about that brings me sobbing to a stop. Because I know - like Ennis - that the reason we never truly got together, the reason we never found happiness as a couple... is me. My reluctance. My fear. My emotional distance.

My fault.

And it's too late to do anything about it.

P.S. If nobody comes out with a cowboy-themed gay porn movie called Bareback Mountain or Brokeback Mountin' before 2006 is out, then shame on the adult video industry.

I work at a college, which is at once both entertaining and a little frustrating, because a fairly high percentage of the people around me on a day-to-day basis are about 20 years old, give or take. Naturally they don't pay me much attention, unless they need my help with something. So there's a lot of looking-but-not-touching in my life. Better than not-looking-at-all, though. I don't mind the distraction. I'm certainly not complaining.

It gets a little different in this part of the summer, when the school offers a bunch of not-for-credit classes. This attracts a lot of noisy and annoying little kids, and sometimes-noisy and sometimes-annoying teenagers. Not exactly what I signed up for. I don't complain, but that's just because it'd be pointless.

The thing is, one of those teenagers seems to have taking a liking to me. My office door is usually opened, so he asked me for directions and I helped him find his classroom the first day, and I was my usually-pleasant self* in the process. Nothing special. But since then, he keeps wandering into my office for no apparent reason, during breaks or on his way in/out. He mostly just asks me goofy questions and tells me stories, and I don't think there's anything more to it than being friendly.

But I'd be lying if I said I didn't find him cute... and I don't mean in the puppy-dog sense of the word. If only I weren't old enough to be his father... and he weren't young enough that he still needs his father's signature to consent to anything. Not that even his father would be allowed to consent to what I'm thinking.

I know many people would freak out over such feelings, fearing that they've committed some mortal sin or that they have some pathological perversion. I've learned not to fret over what happens to push my buttons. But I'm also sane and ethical enough that I'd never actually do anything immoral or illegal in response to this particular kind of button-pushing, so there's no danger of anything like that. I haven't even flirted with him. He's just less annoying and more distracting than I'm used to. Which really isn't anything to complain about, either.

*Yes, at work I'm usually pleasant. Imagine that. And I'm not even faking it, because I like being able to help people like I do at work. It's dealing with insufferable idiots and malicious ghouls online that makes me unpleasant.

I'm not looking for a job... really, I'm not. But a friend of mine who is just called me to tell me about one that... sure sounds tempting. The following image is an actual unretouched advert from the June 12, 2005 edition of The Grand Rapids Press.

Now, I know that the Christian Reformed Church is more open-minded about sex than, say, the Roman Catholic Church, and they don't have any theological problem with oral sex, per se. But I'm rather surprised that they would offer it like this as an employment benefit, outside of the bounds of holy matrimony. And in the Sunday paper, no less.

Plus, I had no idea that job recruitment had become so competitive that employers were finally offering this. This is definitely going to come up in my next conversation with my boss.

I'm not a breast man.

OK, I like chicken breasts (preferably boneless), and I have a certain fondness for a muscular male chest (which is technically a "breast"). But I haven't been interested in seeing a plump female mammary in decades. In fact, I'm tired of seeing them paraded about for advertising, and opening a porn-video mailing and unfolding a flyer full of boobies is a huge disappointment. I am not comfortable seeing them in the flesh.

But I was even more disappointed by the anti-breast actions of County Clerk Mary Hollinrake (Kent County, Michigan), as described in The Grand Rapids Press this afternoon. A woman - there at the Clerk's office for official business - was very discreetly feeding her baby, and Hollinrake had the audacity to come out and ask the woman to either stop, or leave!

Hollinrake ducks responsibility for it, of course, claiming she was responding to complaints from other visitors. OK, so she has to respond to them. But the appropriate response would be to tell those visitors to stop whining and... deal with it.

There is nothing more natural, healthy, and for-the-love-of-god wholesome than a mother nursing her child. To say nothing of the fact that it's something a mother's just gotta do when the baby needs it. She shouldn't have to go hide in the bathroom and sit on a toilet, like someone with an intestinal disorder. The fact that some people are uncomfortable seeing it - and I'm one of them, remember - is their problem, not hers.

There seems to be a growing misconception in our society that people have some God-given right not to be offended or upset or uncomfortable. Demonstrators are shoved off the to side where the people they're protesting won't have to see them. Gay and lesbian couples are asked not to kiss or hold hands or hug in front of homophobes. And breastfeeding mothers are asked to please go away.

I'm sorry, but that's not the way a free society is supposed to operate. I'm offended by the very presidency of George W. Bush, but I don't expect to be shielded from its existence. I don't demand that his smug, contemptuous addresses to the nation be put on Pay Per View where I won't stumble across them whilst channel surfing. I don't expect rich SUV owners to keep their conspicuously expensive environmental hazards off the road where I won't have to see them. I don't ask that Christians make their crosses less visible and take any self-righteous and insulting messages off the signs on church lawns. That would be selfish, and most certainly rude. So I don't whine, and I... deal with it.

The right-wingers have been bitching for a while now about "political correctness" and how you can't say anything without offending people, and how horrible that is. But it seems pretty clear to me that the right-wingers are at least as guilty of that as anyone. Hollinrake is no bleeding-heart liberal, after all; she's part of the local Republican Party, and a regarded as a "good conservative". Unfortunately, she's just demontrated again that this makes here a bad public servant, one far too quick to enforce her constituents' Victorian disapproval of breastfeeding (!) against a responsible mother.

What next, a crackdown on "offensive" apple pies?

The Dove Foundation, a non-profit group that was founded to promote family-friendly (and consistent with mainstream Christian values) movies, has released a study "proving" that G-rated films are more 11 times as profitable as R-rated films, and PG and PG-13 films fall in between. They say their stats show that "what the people want" are the more openly-rated films.

Except that's not true.

I'm not questioning their statistics. Just the way they're trying to misinterpret them. The thing is, Hollywood makes way more R and PG-13 files than either PG or G. Compared to 1,533 R-rated films put out from 1989-2003 that were included in Dove's study, there were only 123 G-rated films. And those dozens of G-rated films included some megablockbusters, including the entire output of Pixar, a bunch of heavily-promoted Disney animations, and so on. All this tells us is that the percentage of G-rated movies that get huge promotion and attract a big audience is bigger than for R-rated movies. If the number of R-rated movies released was restricted to just the best (or most commercial) 123 of them, their average profit would be a lot better, because fans of sex, violence, and "adult language" would all have to go to the same 1 or 2 films playing at any given time. On the other hand, there are a lot of "experimental" and "artsy" movies - stuff no one expects to make any money on - in the R-rated bucket, which the public just doesn't go to see in any number.

Plus, there's the fact that once upon at time... such as the Dark Age before 1989... G-rated films had a tendency to bomb at the box office. Star Trek fans cringed when they saw that ST: The Motion Picture had gotten slapped with a "G" because they were afraid no one would go see it, and the franchise would be doomed. Fortunately (yes, I mean that), the trekkies turned out by the thousands, and the film got good enough reviews to overcome the stigma - yes, stigma - of a G rating. When Disney returned to feature animation in the late 1980s, there were similar fears. And they, too, beat them with quality.

That's what it really comes down to. Quality (which I have to admit probably means "quality of the special effects, marketing, and star power") makes money. The Dove Foundation is trying to dispel the myth that G-Rated films don't make money. But in doing so - by convincing the movie studios to take more chances and green-light more of these kid-friendly films that are being shopped around Tinseltown - they're helping to reduce the average quality of G-Rated films that get made. That in turn will reduce their average profitability... maybe even to the levels that nearly killed off the "G" in the late 1970s.

The Powers That Be on the internet have decided - to my surprise - to approve the creation of a .XXX top-level domain. The arguments for it are so weak, and the arguments against it are - once you think about them - so compelling, that I figured that ICANN (the PTB in question) would continue saying "um no" to the proposals. Instead, they've said "yes", and are currently working out the fine print before it goes live.

There are some arguments for doing it, but they don't hold up to scrutiny. The standard argument for creating new top-level domains is overcrowding of .COM. "All the good names are taken," they say, and they're right. But when they opened .NET and .ORG to let anyone use them for any purpose, .COM didn't get any less crowded. When they created .BIZ and .INFO, .COM was still saturated. Because no one with a .COM domain is going to just give it up for a new one in a less well-known namespace. When .XXX registration opens, you can be sure that every porn purveyor with a .COM domain will rush to register the corresponding .XXX domain. And keep them both. It'll just be a land rush to grab real estate in the New World... with no improvement in the Old World.

Another argument for creating .XXX is that it'd be easy for parents, schools, and businesses to just block the whole domain from the computers used by their children, students, and employees. They certainly have every right to do that. But that won't do a damn thing to block the petabytes of porn already in the .COM domain. So it'll be ineffectual. The horse has fled the barn; there's no point in fixing the door now.

Unless, of course, it were possible to move all that porn from .COM to .XXX. But it's not. ICM Registry - the people who'll be handling registration of this domain - stress the fact that the use of .XXX will be voluntary. And short of the UN imposing legislative authority over its members (as if that could happen without nuclear missles flying), there's no way to require all porn sites to relocate. If someone in Ukraine registers PORNBBQ.COM and puts photos of people fucking on a web server, there's nothing the Attorney General of the U.S. can do about it (short of nukes like those I just mentioned).

I just wish I could be so sure that the A.G. wouldn't try. So far, the U.S. government has been comparatively restrained (mostly by the courts, not self-restraint) in trying to legislate content restrictions on the internet. There's been that whole "free expression" thing getting in the way. But what if there were a segment of the internet specially made for sexually-explicit material? Gee, forcing Americans to "label" that material with a .XXX domain wouldn't deprive them of their free expression rights, would it?

That's the argument they'll make, but it's a bit like those "free speech zones" the government creates to keep protestors out of the way. It takes speech off the corner of Main Street and Common Avenue, and shoves it into an alley in a part of town most people avoid. This web site contains sexually-explicit material, which means it'd probably be carted off to the .XXX ghetto. But it also contains material that has every moral (and Constitutional) right to be heard. Putting it in .XXX would mean it'd be blocked from lots of colleges, libraries, and even ISPs catering to the non-porn-buying market. The bottom line: the ideas of people like me get less distribution. The keepers of the public morals would love that.

I've read the fine print of what's been announced, and find some of the details troubling. For one thing, ICM Registry proudly states that they have no prior connection to the porn industry. So... why are they getting involved in it? One obvious answer is money. They see a lot of people making a lot of money from this internet porn stuff, and they want a piece of the action. And quite a piece it'll be, with $60/year for each domain registered. All for running a web site with a medium-sized database behind it. And of course ICANN itself gets a cut of that, which is no doubt the "argument" that finally swayed them to approve it.

Another bit from the fine print is that the organisation that will be setting policy for .XXX has an agenda. They're honest about it, and it's not as bad as "take over the world", but they're definitely not neutral administrators, like the original domain registrars were. They policy setting agency is called the International Foundation For Online Responsibility, and their agenda includes: setting business-practise standards for anyone who runs a .XXX site, promoting the free-expression parts of the UN Declaration of Human Rights, maintaining the privacy of porn customers, protecting children online, and wiping out child pornography. Like I said: not malevolent. I support a lot of it. But it's an agenda nonetheless, and that's bad for anybody who happens not to share it.

And it means that if you register a .XXX domain, they claim a right to tell you how to run your business. You have to take the steps they deem appropriate for keeping children from accessing your site. And regardless of your views on child pornography (and reasonable people can disagree over whether CGI images or imaginary fiction are "OK"), you have to agree to abide by their standards. For example, you can't have a domain name intended to entice pedophiles into visiting your site. But what if you're trying to wean the kid fanciers from their vice, by offering them barely-legal teenagers? Isn't that a legitimate choice someone ought to be allowed to make? Not under IFFOR's rules. It's not even clear whether someone who wants to run a site that isn't pornographic is allowed to use .XXX.

Their policies might arguably make for a better .XXX domain. But there are the unintended consequences to consider as well: They'll push the most irresponsible site operators and the sites most likely to exploit children out of .XXX and back to... (where else?) .COM. Um, isn't that the place we wanted to remove them from?

I can see this as a kind of circle-the-wagons, Comics-Code-Authority way for the mainstream, business-oriented porn industry to set up a club for those who want to play by their rules, setting everyone else up to be devoured by wolves. Got kicked out of .XXX for using an unapproved method of restricting access to minors? Too bad. Wrote an article calling for the decriminalization of virtual kiddie porn or advocating that the age of consent be lowered? Get out. Someone falsely accused you of doing something IFFOR considers ethical, but convinced them it was true? Tough. There's even the potential for the management of IFFOR to become something of a mafia/cartel, controlling who's allowed to sell porn from the safety of .XXX and who isn't. It's bad enough when the government steps in and regulates an industry that strongly; it'd be even worse for an agency that's accountable to no one but their board of directors.

I just read in the newspaper about a new book by an old acquaintance of mine. David Myers is a Psychology prof at religiously conservative Hope College, and the author of a long-running millions-selling college textbook on the subject, of which the college is very, very proud. They're not as proud of his latest book, however. It's a more mainstream bookstore-friendly - but still academically sound - analysis of gay marriage, from a Christian perspective. The surprise (at least to those who don't know him or his co-author Letha Scanzoni, or their previous scholarly work) is that the book comes down firmly in support of it. The book is entitled What God Has Joined Together? A Christian Case for Gay Marriage.

This is certain to lead to some controversy at Hope College. Especially given the timing. News recently broke about how James Bultman, the president, pounced hard on Miguel De La Torre, a Religion prof who dared to poke fun of fundie demigod James Dobson in an essay published in the local paper. (He ridiculed Dobson's recent rant about Spongebob Square Pants.) Bultman bit into him so hard that he quit. Even with tenure. Read this article in The Muskegon Chronicle for more background. The following quote from a letter Bultman wrote to De La Torre is significant:

"Hope is dependent on enrollment and gifts to drive the college financially," the president wrote. "When people are displeased with what we do, their only recourse is to exercise their options with regard to enrollment and gifting. Several have indicated their intention to do so."

Bultman is talking about people such as Rich DeVos, co-founder of Amway, and a political ally of Dobson. Bultman has since issued a statement that he wasn't talking about DeVos, who hadn't made any such threats (at least not yet), but it's obvious that DeVos was prominently on Bultman's mind when he wrote that. DeVos is, after all, the billionaire who extorted then-President Lubbers of Grand Valley State University - a decent man trying to do the right thing - into backing down from a promise to offer equal benefits to same-sex domestic partners of employees, by threatening to withdraw his millions of dollars in financial support for a major construction project in downtown Grand Rapids. DeVos is now bankrolling Hope's new basketball fieldhouse. Connect the dots.

Fortunately David Myers has something better than tenure to protect him. For one thing, he's famous. He's been on national TV (most recently for his book about... happiness.) People at lots of other colleges know him, and being able to boast about him is a big feather in Hope's cap. Also, he's not latino. The administration see him as "one of us", a longtime member of the family, contrasted with De La Torre, who's fairly new to the college, an "immigrant" if you will. David's also just a very nice person, the kind that's hard to hate. Not that this would protect him from the administration by itself, but it gives him some immunity because stomping on him would produce just the kind of money-threatening controversy that De La Torre's comments did. You see, there are also people in the Hope-funding community who like David personally. So the administration has tolerated Myers' open tolerance of gay students for a very long time already. They'll tolerate this.

But this whole intertwined combination of events is a great example of how - at its core - Hope College is a sham. They go on and on (and on and on) about their commitment to Christian values, but year after year, decade after decade, administration after administration, they betray that. It isn't even about homosexuality. Sure, the administration is packed with hysterical, bed-wetting homophobes. But what really sets their sheets to soaking is their devotion to money. Granted, they have to be concerned about finances. We all get that. But whenever it comes down to a question of money, or the basic Christian priniciple of compassion, money always wins. I've seen them go out of their way to willfully harm people, all in service to their true god, Mammon. Not just by stomping on innocent people who bring "bad publicity" to the college, but also by covering up the misdeeds of the guilty, brushing genuine scandals under the rug. They're amoral. This isn't coming from Myers, or even from De La Torre; I've heard this from a bunch of people I know who've worked there. Mostly past-tense. After some soul-searching, a straight, Dutch friend of mine - also a Hope alumn - declined a job there that he'd be perfect for... but he said he didn't want to work at such a racist institution.

So, anyway... kudos to David Myers, for having the insight and the courage to write this new book. Condolences to Miguel De La Torre for learning the hard way the wages of speaking your mind with only tenure and an expectation of compassion to defend him. And a pox on the administration of Hope College, who deserve every shred of bad publicity that leaks out despite their best efforts, and who deserve precious little of the sweet nectar of money that their god rains down upon them.

For earlier articles on this topic, see God's ex-Boyfriend, volume one.