“The audience is forced to recognize that gay people were fixtures in the red state of Wyoming (and every other corner of the country, too) long before Matthew Shepard and Mary Cheney were born. Without a single polemical speech, this laconic film dramatizes homosexuality as an inherent and immutable identity, rather than some aberrant and elective ‘agenda’ concocted by conspiratorial ‘elites’ in Chelsea, the Castro and South Beach, as anti-gay proselytizers would have it. Ennis and Jack long for a life together, not for what gay baiters pejoratively label a ‘lifestyle.’”

“The people in that place are very conservative. They’ve very wealthy. They’re to the right of Mussolini, OK? Forty percent of the population are plastic surgeons. That is a true fact about Palm Springs.”

“I haven’t seen Brokeback Mountain, nor do I have any intention of seeing it. … I’m a very susceptible person, easily influenced, a natural-born follower with no sales-resistance. [W]ho’s to say I won’t become enamored with the whole gay business? … I just know if I saw that movie, the voice inside my head that delights in torturing me would have a field day. ‘You like those cowboys, don’t you? They’re kind of cute. Go ahead, admit it, they’re cute. You can’t fool me, gay man. Go ahead, stop fighting it. You’re gay! You’re gay!’ Not that there’s anything wrong with it.”