There are other movies I'd rather see

"You haven't seen 'Brokeback Mountain'?" It's the same reaction of shock and lightly simmered outrage I get when I tell people that I - a real live, fully-out-of-the-closet, multiple-hair-product-buying gay man do not swoon for Martha Stewart. Not do I wish I could talk and do dismissive hand movement and finger snaps like Ru Paul. I may have procured myself copy of Madonna's newest, but I still don't think either Bette or Babs have lovely, moving singing voices. I guess that last one makes me a bad Jew, too.

And it's not just other fags (which is, by the way, a word that only we are allowed to use) who give this attitude over the movie. Straight people are taken aback too. Their world view appears to rest on the assumption that different people act the way they had been told that different people act, and this includes what movie you want to spend a week's wages to see: All Jews love "Schindler's List" and anything by Mel Brooks; all Blacks love "Waiting to Exhale" and "Barbershop"; all women love "My Big, Fat Greek, Wedding" and "Sleepless in Seattle"; and all gays like watching two sexy guys have hot, wild, passionate sex in a tent.

OK, so I guess like watching sexy guys have hot, wild, passionate sex in a tent (more than two is fine, even), especially two hot guys like Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal. Heath's broad, round features are slightly model perfect for my taste, but the sexy Ozzie accent certainly raises up what his thin lips bring down. And Jake! Now there's a nice, Jewish boy I could take home to my mother! But I still don't plan to see the movie anytime soon, just like I never plan to buy a Céline Dion album anytime soon (Ooop! Now I'm a bad Canadian too!). This does not make me a bad fag.

A bad fag claims masculinity and the ability to act straight (whatever that means, since both Don Knotts and Dame Edna are straight) as his highest virtues while ridiculing those ones who are firmly in touch with their feminine side.

A bad queer waits until they are famous to come out (Elton John, Rosie O'Donnell, Ellen Degeneres). They turn their coming-out into such a glitzy media event that the struggle - something the rest of us mortals go through - coming out to our families, friends, and co-workers without the piles of money the stars have to fall back on should something go wrong are about as important as mosquito bites.

A bad fag - who is certainly welcome to his political beliefs - sides with the most extreme members of his side of the political spectrum, such as Jeff Gannon, to the detriment of the rights of all queers and by extension, of his own.

A bad fag gets married and has kids, disappears on the weekend and comes home to give his wife all sorts of enchanting infections because he's not, like, gay n'stuff so he doesn't have to worry about protecting himself from, like, AIDS n'shit.

A bad fag never comes out.

I just don't want to go see an ol' love story. That's all. I'm glad everyone and their eighty-year-old grandmother realise it's an important film and want to see it, and that they seem to like it too. I'm all for that. This flick's for them, not for me. I'm glad they like it. That makes me a happy fag. I'm off to see "TransAmerica".