Act Up protested the movie Basic Instinct because it portrayed bisexuals as psychotic killers. I thought they were small-minded fools. Folks are protesting the DaVinci Code today for different reasons - I think they're small-minded fools as well.

Not liking it, not wanting to see it, that's fine. Holding a prayer vigil outside a movie, or holding a sign-carrying protest while dressed in drag? I'm sorry, but you're being stupid. It's a frickin' story in both cases. I wish both extremes would just grow up sometimes.

The two protests are not at all comparable. The protests against Basic Instinct on the grounds that it promoted the idea that all bisexuals were psychotic killers was absurd because the movie claimed no such thing, it merely had a character who was bisexual who was also, apparently, a psychotic killer. Though there is, of course, underlying the plot of the movie the old favorite Hollywood theme of dangerously sexy but evil women, there was no in your face claim that bisexuals are all murderous psychos in real life.

The Duh Vinci Con, on the other hand, openly claims that Christianity is a con, and the Catholic Church has always known it and has covered this "fact" up for two thousand years. It claims that not only were the fathers of the Christian faith not simply deluded by their faith and lack of modern knowledge of whatever (as is the usual agnostic/atheistic stance against Christianity), but that they knew good and well that they built a church based on lies and the desire to oppress uppity women. The "novelist," Dan Brown, has said as much in numerous interviews. Sure, he has stated his novel is "fiction," but he claims that it is fiction based on truth, just like any historically accurate novel with fictional characters inserted into the action. He has never once admitted that "all that stuff, you know, about the church being a scam and Jesus and Mary Magdalene getting married, that was just some stuff I made up because I thought it would make a great story." No, he continues to claim these things are true. Whether he does it because he actually believes it himself or he is cynically raking in the cash that the notoriety is bringing in I have no idea, but you can't sit there and claim "well this is all fiction I don't know what you're getting upset about" when the author himself isn't saying that and neither are the numerous fans of the book who resemble in their utter belief in everything the book claims a cult more than a gaggle of fans.

Sure, the two movies are based on differing premises...and the two writers may have believed Premise A or Premise B or Absurd Premise C. The fact remains that you're getting worked up about a frickin' movie. It's just a movie! It portrays some people as bad; it portrays some beliefs as erroneous. It may well be that the writer believes some of the assertions in the book; it may also be that the writer believes in alien abduction and the designated hitter rule - it's still just a frickin' movie. It has heroes, it has villians, it has a philosphical point of view, it has car chases and explosions and it's a damn movie.

Honestly, if you spend your time getting worked up by folks not sharing your worldview and daring to express it, you're in for a very long life...

It's-- oh for christ's sake. Forget it -- there's nothing that can beat down a wall of determined whatmeworry.

I might as well say this: what really irritates me about the DVCon isn't the blasphemy or the stupidity, it's the misuse of the art of fiction. Dan Brown is the Thomas Kinkade of the writing world (now I know people go into conniption fits over Kinkade, though his "art" is at least innocuous and he doesn't go around pretending that this is how Leonardo did it).

I think we can find common ground in calling Dan Brown a pretty poor writer!