The last gay word : The brokeback challenge | Brent Hartinger

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Like most movies that capture the country's zeitgeist, there is a stick of lit dynamite burning at the center of Brokeback Mountain. It's a direct challenge to straight America, especially those who want to move the world back to the "tradicional values" of the 1950s. The movie demands that these Americans take a good hard look at the very human cost of their "values".

But there's a direct challenge to gay movie-goers as well, one that's even more explosive, because it's even more central to our lives.And I think it's the real reason why this film is resonating so strongly in gay America.

Gay men in the United States now live in a post-Brokeback world, one where it's possible to share a same-sex love in some place other than a remote wilderness. We can move out of the darkness and the woods, and live more-or-less open lives. At least in the cities and the "blue" state, we don't have to hide our love away, and we usually don't have to fear the movie's terrible consequences.

So what we have done with our new freedom? Have we let ourselves love fully? Or, like Ennis have we found ways to avoid love, excuses as to why it isn't practical, or why the time sitll isn't right?

This is what Brokeback Mountain implicity asks for gay movie-goers: to love now, passionately, regardless of the cost. Seize the day, because one day, possibly before you know it, it will be too late.

Despite the much ballyhooed sex scenes, and the protestation of the right-wingers, Brokeback Mountain is not a movie about sex, but one about love. That, of course, is what being gay is ultimately about too.

Gay men, being men, have never had a hard time finding sex. Sex, after all, is easy, maybe the most natura thing in the world. Just like it was easy and natural in the woods underneath Brokeback Mountain. The love part, on the other hand, is a lot tougher, especially for us, emotionally stunded men.

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In the movie, Brokeback Mountain represents a place of the purest love, of total passion. To climb such a mountain is difficult for anyone, but for a gay men in 1963 Wyomming, it was virtually impossible. To dare the mountain meant paying a terrible price. Maybe breaking on's self. But as Ennis learns to his dismay, once you set foot on Brokeback Mountain, you can't turn back. In the end, you pay the full price of love whether or no you choose to dare the summit. The only question is whether or not you get to enjoy the view, even for a little while.

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Like Ennis, most of us pull back. And some of us, dreading the pain of unmet expectations or hearing the ovices of self-hatred in our heads, try to avoid the mountain completely. But one way or another, we all still pay the price of love denied. I think this explains some of our community's unhealthiest addictions, especially to crystal meth and unsafe sex.

Hopefully, however, that's changing. In my other life, I write books for and about gay teenagers. In meeting with them, I'm continually struck by how different they are from when I was a teenager myself. Most of them reject the hateful anti-gay lies out-of-hand. What do they want most out of life? Not sex particulary, something that surprises a lot of people. The young gay I know all want a boyfriend. The want love. Desperately, achingly, completely.

Will these young people reach the summit? And what of the rest of us, those men still broken and in pain from earlier attempts? Can we finally let ourselves truly love one another? These are explosive, important questions that this movie ask for us, but it's about time somone did. We finally have some of the freedom that Jack and Ennis yearned for. What will we do with it? Let that be the last gay word.

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Brent Hartinger, [http://www.afterelton.com, 16 de enero].