I am not Bahamian, I'm American. I want to make sure that's clear. I'm only here for the moment, I'm a traveler, a consultant, an explorer of sorts, so just consider me an observer.
As an observer I can say that for those fellow liberal US citizens that feel you are being so terribly smothered by the current Rebuplican administration that is so harshly overrun and overburdened with conservativism, racism, sexism and every other -ism that we spend our lives trying to seek out and destroy, you don't know squat til you do some time in The Bahamas.
The 'Christian Nation'. Land of the Christian Council.
And as such, The Bahamas, along with Jamaica and apparently China, even though director Ang Lee is Taiwanese and highly acclaimed and celebrated in China. Odd. Yes, The Bahamas is amongst the handful of homophobic countries that feels that banning "Brokeback Mountain" will cure or end gayness. However, they aren't quite sure (could be the unusually high number of gay people here) so the movie was released into theaters, ads were released, people went to purchase tickets, then anti-homo-Christian minds were changed, and movie-goers were disappointed.
The Nassau Guardian Online Guide - Brokeback uproar
But then, as wise as ever The 'from the mouth's of babes'....
The same 'young' adults that they want to keep from seeing the movie show a great deal more maturity about the nature of the film and tolerance for diverity and true Christianity than the supposed 'mature' adults. These are the same 'mature' adults that protested and rallied at the docks when Rosie O'Donnell's gay-family friendly cruise visited Nassau for a day, and the good Christians felt that their gay presence and tourist dollar would somehow again convert the population to homosexuality, which of course instantly damns them all to hell. Of course the rally, in the middle of downtown Nassau, only served to scare off Bahamian shoppers (not here, queer, and used to it American Gays!), and upset Bahamian store owners who rely on the business on a busy Saturday. Hmph, that wasn't very effective.
And all the while, bootleg copies have of course been going around the country since the day the movie was released, so it's not hard to get your hands on a copy anyway (and in a couple of days the official DVD will be released so it won't even be one of the crappy copies where they have to keep focusing and some guy is whispering in the background "Now, see, if we were just honest with people we wouldn't end up like them!"--ok, so I had to throw one bad 'Brokeback' joke in there!).
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