If Donald Rumsfeld were frum, he would likely have said that life without “Brokeback Mountain” is like deer hunting without an accordion. Most of our readers will have no more problem avoiding the film than sitting out the International Tiddlywinks Competition. In a blog that seldom bothers to comment on the world of entertainment, avoiding “Brokeback” would seem to be both appropriate and easy.

It was, until Don Savage did his op-ed piece in the New York Times. One line of that essay, and one line alone, cries out for a response.

I didn’t see the movie. Then again, neither did long-time gay activist Savage. Brokeback, he tells us, is a realistic wake-up call to all of those homophobes who would have gay men try to go straight. It just doesn’t work, he says. Look what happened to Jack and Ennis when they to their own selves were not true:

They marry women, start families. But their wives are crushed when they realize their husbands don’t, and can’t, ever really love them. “Brokeback Mountain” makes clear that it would have been better for all concerned if Jack and Ennis had lived in a world where they could simply be together.