How Much Will You Tolerate? [David]

Fred Butler of Hip and Thigh wrote an article last week called Why exactly is it considered “Groundbreaking?” in which he discussed the media reaction to a new movie called Brokeback Mountain, the story of two homosexual cowboys. Fred writes,

I was driving in town the other day when my eye caught a bus stop kiosk with a poster of Brokeback Mountain and at the top was a critic review stating: Groundbreaking... I thought, "ground breaking? What's so ground breaking about another gay themed movie?" Ground breaking is a word we use for something that has not been done before that sets a standard. Disney's Steamboat Willie is ground breaking. Star Wars, for example, was a ground breaking film with its special effects, and Jurassic Park was ground breaking for the CGI technology. However, the umpteenth gay themed film is not ground breaking. full article

Fred is right. Homosexual themes in movies are now common. We see yet another movie about homosexuality and those of us who are not yet calloused toward them are disgusted and have no interest in seeing them. Not too many years ago, the majority of Americans would have shared our disgust. Now they are apathetic, at best.

Even Christians are becoming desensitized to the normalization of sodomy (it sounds worse when it is called what it is, doesn’t it?). How has this happened? Well, Hollywood didn’t go directly from Old Yeller to flaunting perversion in our faces. They have fed us their morality piecemeal, and we have accepted it. They gave us implicit fornication, and we overlooked it. Then they gave us explicit fornication, and we thought, “As long as it’s under the covers or behind closed doors, it’s not so bad.” Now we are faced with fornication in plain sight on the screen, with careful camera angles being their only salvation from an X rating.

Now the same path is being traveled in the normalization of sodomy. First, we laughed at men who appeared a bit effeminate in comedy situations. Then they began slipping homosexual characters in minor roles into otherwise harmless movies, again often used with comedic effect. I don’t see a lot of movies, but a few come to mind – Remember the Titans, Sweet Home Alabama, Blast from the Past – you can probably think of a few yourself. These are movies that are basically good, clean entertainment, but have a homosexual character that could just as well have been heterosexual. There is no actual sodomy implied, so we overlook it. Where can we expect this to lead?

I am not saying that movies would be cleaner if Christians stayed off of the slippery slope that Hollywood has created. I am saying that those who have accepted homosexual characters in nonsexual roles should not be shocked to see filmmakers becoming increasingly brazen in their promotion of homosexuality. If you can laugh at a homosexual’s effeminate gestures, you might as well be entertained by explicit sodomy. To do otherwise is inconsistent.