Nothing irritates me faster or more thoroughly than when some finger-wagging scold takes it upon themselves to save the rest of the community from the creeping stain of immorality instead of simply minding their own damn business and letting others go about theirs. This sort of thing, unfortunately, goes on all the time here in my home state, something which I’ve been depressingly aware of since I was a fairly young boy. Not a month goes by, it seems, without a letter-to-the-editor from some ninny who thinks the windows of Victoria’s Secret ought to be painted black, or news of yet another effort to “simplify” Utah’s ridiculously arcane liquor laws. Just this week, I’ve encountered two major eye-rollers from the front lines of the never-ending culture war:

First, a brief item in the Trib noted that a woman was removed from a TRAX train Monday because other passengers thought she wasn’t wearing anything under her coat. It turned out she was properly clothed; she had on a miniskirt under a long jacket. But even if she had been starkers under the jacket, what does it matter if nothing was showing? We’re all naked under our clothes, after all, and how is being naked under a coat any worse than someone who doesn’t wear panties under a summer dress? You can damn well bet that happens all the time, even here in straitlaced Utah. Sounds to me like someone on that train had an overactive imagination and — surprise! — should’ve minded their own damn business instead of inconveniencing a woman who was doing nothing wrong. I hope the transit cops who, ahem, “interviewed” the woman were as thoroughly mortified by the silliness of the incident as the woman herself probably was.

The Case of the Bottomless Commute is nothing, however, next to the news that the locally owned Megaplex theater chain has refused to screen the new Kevin Smith comedy Zack and Miri Make a Porno on the grounds that it is too sexually graphic. You may recall that the Megaplex chain made national headlines a couple of years ago by banning the award-winning Heath Ledger film Brokeback Mountain because the chain’s owner, Larry H. Miller, was uncomfortable with the film’s exploration of a homosexual relationship.

Now, I’m no fan of Kevin Smith and I have little interest in seeing Zack and Miri (although I do find it amusing that the porno they are making is apparently a parody of Star Wars). I also see the logic of those who say that Megaplex is Miller’s theater and he shouldn’t have to show any movie he finds personally objectionable. That’s true… but just like before there is a major double standard at work in Miller’s thinking. Two years ago, he refused to show Brokeback, a well-made, grown-up drama that treats its subject matter with respect and sensitivity, because of its (homo)sexual content, but he had no problem with the senseless cruelty and splatter-gore of Hostel, a movie that came out around the same time and which just about all mature viewers denounced as utterly devoid of any redeeming value. Now he’s banning Zack and Miri in the same week that he’s raking in bales of cash on Saw V, another reprehensible torture-porn flick. The message is clear, Larry: nudity and sex = bad (especially if it’s hot cowboy-on-cowboy style) but sadistic violence is A-OK. Got it.They must’ve taught that lesson after I stopped going to Sunday school.

Actually, scratch that. Larry can’t even honestly say he’s banned Zack and Miri because of its sexual content, because his Megaplexes recently ran Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Sex Drive, both of which (I understand; I didn’t see them) contain plenty of bare skin and sex themselves, including the dread frontal male nudity. In light of that little factoid, it seems obvious to me that what Larry Miller is really nervous about is running a movie with the word “porno” in the title. I’m willing to bet that if Kevin Smith had called his movie Zack and Miri Come Up with a Ridiculous Scheme for Paying the Rent or something like that, it’d be on the Megaplex schedule without question.

Sorry, but that’s bullshit.

If Miller had a blanket policy against R-rated movies (which his religion encourages its followers to avoid), that would be one thing. But he doesn’t, presumably because that would too severely limit his programming options and thus his bottom line. If he’s concerned about underage viewers possibly sneaking into a movie they have no business seeing, then he ought to post an usher at the door to enforce the rating (which, as you may recall, reads “no one under 17 admitted without a guardian or parent”). But that would probably mean hiring more hands, or hiring hands older than the pimple-faced kids who currently pay no attention to which auditorium their peers walk into. And again, that would probably affect his bottom line because adults want more than minimum wage. You see where I’m going here? Larry’s morality appears to be somewhat selective and subject to the bottom line.

Larry Miller simply has no good reason for refusing to screen this particular movie, given how he usually operates his business. Again, I’m not defending the movie itself, which I know little about beyond what I’ve read in the articles about this situation, and moreover couldn’t care less about. And it’s not like I won’t have the chance to see the film if I decide to, since there are other theater chains in the valley that will carry Zack and Miri. What annoys me here is the condescending “I know what’s good for you better than you” attitude. I hope I won’t offend my Mormon friends and readers by asking this, but if you guys are supposed to be so down with the concept of free agency, why don’t Mormons like Larry Miller trust people to actually use their free agency? Just show the damn movie and let the grown-ups of your community decide for themselves whether or not to see it. Either that or stop pretending to be so damn righteous at the same time you’re screening grotesque snuff films just down the hall. The hypocrisy disgusts me. And considering that this little kerfuffle is sure to hit the national news, just like the Brokeback debacle did, I’m also pissed that once again, my home is going to look like a backwater province filled with busybody prudes.

Which, I suppose, isn’t exactly untrue, when you think about it. God, this place can be so frustrating sometimes…

Incidentally, here’s an interesting tidbit: the man named in the article as general manager for the Megaplex chain, Cal Gunderson, was my boss back in my usher days at the old Cinemark. I don’t remember him being particularly prudish or a moralizing type, so my guess is that this decision came down from above and he’s just toeing the company line when he speaks to the press. If that’s the case, I certainly don’t envy his position…