Gay cowboys eating pudding...

I had the "pleasure" of listening to Fred Nile on Triple M this morning (the alarm is set to play Triple M as an incentive to get the hell out of bed) explaining why gay people suck, and shouldn't be portrayed in movies. He gave examples such as young people will be confused because cowboys are supposed to be macho, and how upsetting it is for a wife whos husband leaves her for another man...

So on our way to burn down the nearest cinema in protest, Suzy and I... oh wait, I almost forgot I think Fred Nile is a small minded lunatic. He is quoted here as saying that he feels it shouldn't be available to anyone, but he supposes if it were available on videos a few gay people might want to see it.

Do we really live in a world where the thought of a romantic story that happens to be about two men should cause such commotion? We aren't talking about taudry, hard-core gay porn here, what the hell is the difference between this, and memoirs of a geisha (another story about two people and their long enduring love for each other, but its OK because its about a man and his high class hooker). Why can we have a movie which revolves around people getting skinned alive and hung in trees by an alien, but as soon as two men kiss it must be BANNED!

I just hate this concept of censorship where loonie extremeists like Fred try and tell the rest of us what is appropriate to watch and think. The idea that there are people sad enough to picket movies like this, or performers they don't like (I recall a demand to ban Eminem from the country, a global embarressment to non-insane australians everywhere) is depressing to say the least. When will they learn that a) they have no right to force their views on the average person and b) all they really do is highlight what they oppose, and give it tonnes of free promotion, encouraging people who otherwise wouldn't have bothered to go out and see/read/buy whatever it might be?

I guess the thing that really bothers me about this isn't so much that these people are closed-minded bigots (which is still sickening, don't get me wrong), it is more that they feel that their beliefs give them a right to try and force others to conform to those beliefs.

If you don't like something... don't go! But don't use that as an excuse to stop others from making up their own minds!