Even the bishops’ conference loves the gay cowboy movie

Why am I not surprised that the movie reviewer for the US bishops’ conference loves the new gay-cowboy film Brokeback Mountain. (Of course Hollywood loves it and you should expect it to receive every possible award between now and the Oscars.)

While giving the standard nod to Church teaching, interpreting as closely as possible to aver that the while the Church says homosexual activity is bad, she’s just peachy keen about homosexual orientation and relationships.

As the Catholic Church makes a distinction between homosexual orientation and activity, Ennis and Jack’s continuing physical relationship is morally problematic. ... While the actions taken by Ennis and Jack cannot be endorsed, the universal themes of love and loss ring true.

Is that all that the official reviewer for the US bishops can say about a movie that attempts to normalize homosexuality as just another lifestyle? From the beginning you detect an enthusiasm for the movie that seems a bit untoward.

“Brokeback Mountain” (Focus), the much publicized “gay cowboy love story” adapted from a New Yorker magazine piece by Pulitzer Prize-winner Annie Proulx, arrives at last ...

At last? Really want to see it, huh? The breathless description of the film as two men overcoming stereotypes and the disapproval of society, blah, blah, blah, is belied by the obligatory “L” rating of the film--provided separately from the review itself--as having a “limited adult audience, films whose problematic content many adults would find troubling.” This is not the toughest rating that can be given. That would “O” for “morally offensive.” Yet how can it not be morally offensive with this description?

Tacit approval of same-sex relationships, adultery, two brief sex scenes without nudity, partial and shadowy brief nudity elsewhere, other implied sexual situations, profanity, rough and crude expressions, alcohol and brief drug use, brief violent images, a gruesome description of a murder, and some domestic violence.

Methinks that there is a corruption in the film office of the USCCBureaucracy and in the USCCBureaucracy itself.