Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal "Brokeback Mountain"

Name a pre-Oscars movie awards, such as the Golden Globes, and chances are “Brokeback Mountain� is penetrating deep inside all its major award categories. The film is based on a remarkable short story by Annie Prouxl that originally appeared in The New Yorker. It involves two big-time cowpoke closet cases who fall in love, and depicts the society that holds the closet door resolutely shut on their private parts.

So utter and complete has been Hollywood’s non-treatment of homosexual love stories that now when one about closet cases in the western countryside is released, out urban gays go bonkers with happiness and enthusiasm. Ironically, “Brokeback Mountain� was released in the same week that a New York State appeals court threw out a lower court ruling that would have legalized marriages between Gs, Ls and Ts. A Bosh raspberry, along with a mooning, to that appeals court.

Wagging tongues have asked why the two lead roles were given to straight actors, rather than to actual closet cases, as there are so many of them in Hollywood. But Heath Ledger’s portrayal of Ennis is so persuasive, his suppressed desires and pent up sexual frustrations made so palpable, that film-goers everywhere can accept him as a closet case.