Movie Shows Capacity for Human Love to Go Astray

from Agape Press
by Ed Vitagliano

Brokeback's Heartbreak
[Forbidden love can BREAK one's back and spirit]

"It is the talk of Hollywood, a movie about two homosexual cowboys that is being touted as a vehicle that will change the way America views homosexuality -- and perhaps even same-sex marriage."

[At least it is hollywood's hope that once again they can influence American viewpoints. I think they may have a more difficult time of it this go round as many Americans do not consider homosexuality normal, or healthy.

Of course, it they just keep bombarding us with it, then perhaps many will become more accepting of this lifestyle.......just as most Americans have become accepting of the normalicy of pornography~~ thank you "Friends"; or the normalicy of prosmicuity~~thank you the 60's: "love, sex, rock & roll" or "make love, not war".

I suppose if you scream it enough, it becomes FACT.

But there are just as many Americans who will ALWAYS affirm that homosexuality; as well as pornography and promiscuity; are BAD for people. ]

"The movie also serves as a shameless shill for homosexual advocates who demand society's full acceptance of homosexuality. Even secular reviewers could see this, although they then applauded the message.

Beneath the surface, however, there is much more going on in Brokeback Mountain, so much so that Entertainment Weekly's Owen Gleiberman said the film was 'a quietly revolutionary love story.'

And it is revolutionary, because Brokeback Mountain asks the viewer to embrace what is essentially a pagan view of love and sex.

That pagan, pre-Christian view of what we call 'romantic love' was called eros, and it proposed that love was a power that simply grabbed people unaware and drove them to each other with an irresistible force.

This is not necessarily something new for Hollywood, which has been promoting such a view of the uncontrollable power of love between heterosexuals long before two homosexual cowboys became the focus." [The English Patient; or The Bridges of Madison County. Both received RAVE reviews; but I despised both~~thought they were horrible stories and had no empathy for the characters at all. Wondered what had happened to people's "self-control"?]

Boundaries for the Fire

Certainly, eros is a powerful emotion. When kindled within the heart, it can burn like a warming fire. But it can also inflame everything and everyone around it. In other words, like fire, love may, indeed, have the appearance of a "force of nature."

What gives love its destructive fire is, of course, the fact that love is often consummated by sex. The act of sex not only expresses the love but deepens it, as it welds the souls of those who physically join themselves together.

It is interesting to note, as Pope Benedict does, that of the three Greek words for love -- eros, philia, and agape -- the New Testament never uses eros in its discussions of Christian love.

This is not to suggest that romantic love is considered un-Christian.

Instead, Christianity revolutionized the concept of eros altogether. In the Judeo-Christian worldview, man is not simply a passive agent, acted upon by eros or anything else. The expectation was that human beings -- within the institution of marriage -- would experience and enjoy eros, but they were to be its masters, not its servants.

The potential for heartbreak when two people begin down the wrong path towards a sinful coupling is one of the reasons why God has set boundaries on human relationships. This is certainly why sex is reserved by God only for marriage and only between heterosexuals.

However, love Hollywood-style flagrantly disregards God's boundaries.

In Premiere magazine, Gyllenhaal says of Brokeback: "The idea of the story is that love has no bounds .... People just think, 'Guy gets the girl, guy loses girl, guy gets stoned.' This movie is not that. The idea ultimately is, if you have love, no matter what that love is, whatever the boundaries, you have to hold on to it."

One has to wonder if Gyllenhaal would give a big Hollywood thumbs up to incest as long as the participants "have love."

Why not? If two people -- three people? four? -- love each other, why should they heed any boundaries? And what about adultery? When Gyllenhaal marries, surely he would look unkindly upon his wife were she to be unfaithful a la The English Patient.

The truth is, love is not right simply because it exists. Boundaries in human relationships -- like boundaries for driving, voting, or getting money out of one's ATM -- are there for a reason. In instituting boundaries for love and sex, God protects us and provides the means for orderly and honorable human society.

We break those rules at our own risk and our own pain. [We CAN get burned by love.]

In his review for CNN.com, Paul Clinton says, "Human beings have a deep need to love and to be loved in return. Brokeback Mountain celebrates that need without making any moral judgments."

But this worship of eros has the effect of justifying things which God has forbidden and, in the case of Brokeback Mountain, things which He declares to be an abomination.

While Clinton is certainly right about the human need to love and be loved, he assumes that human love is the answer to that need.

The full truth, however, is that mankind was created -- above all other things and all other loves -- to love and be loved by God.

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