DADvocate

I wasn't going to say anything about the movie, "Broke Back Mountain" but when Heath Ledger said this:

I heard a while ago that West Virginia was going to ban it but that's a state that was lynching people only 25 years ago so that's to be expected..."

I couldn't resist.

Of course every psuedo-intellectual actor/actress (and plenty of others) loves to assail the hillbillies and rednecks of Appalachia and the South. It soothes one's ego to look down one's nose at an entire region of people with an air of superiority.

In a brief search of the Web, the most recent lynching in West Virginia was 1931, more than 70 years ago.

1931. On December 10, two African Americans accused of killing two white constables were forcibly removed from the Greenbrier County jail and lynched by a mob of white men. Following several convictions for the lynching, the West Virginia Supreme Court upheld a 1921 anti-lynching law drafted by Harry J. Capehart and T. G. Nutter. Source: Posey, The Negro Citizen of West Virginia, 78-80.

As you can see, the lynching was fully prosecuted under a law passed in West Virginia in 1921. The Federal government has yet to pass an anti-lynching law although it did apologize for not doing so.

But I did find this article about a lynching that occurred in 1999 in Ledger's home country of Australia.

And, why do they keep calling them "cowboys"? They were shepherds. At least they didn't have a love affair with the livestock. I think Woody Allen did that in a movie about 35 years ago, "Everything You Wanted To Know About Sex" I believe. But I'm sure Hollywood plans to explore the more serious aspects of love between human and animal in the near future. We need more enlightenment.

BTW - according to this newspaper article in Charleston, WV, there is no ban.