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The Golden Globes, as it turns out, were pretty good to The Gays, with Brokeback Mountain, Capote and Transamerica taking home the lion's share of the major awards. So welcome have these portrayals of the previously marginalized been and in particular, Brokeback's unflinching gaze upon two (ick!) masculine, sexually active men in love that some are going so far as to call last night's ceremony a "watershed" moment in the history of gay social acceptance:

Are this year's Golden Globes a watershed?


Some people, like Joe Solmonese, president of the gay-rights group Human Rights Campaign, thinks so since six awards went to movies with gay or transsexual central characters.

"It was a historic night," he told The Associated Press on Tuesday. "I think it says a lot about where we're going as a country."

"The more people live out and openly and honestly, the more we are simply part of the everyday fabric of Americans' lives," he added. "I think that's what not just the release of these movies demonstrates, but the fact that they won the awards that they did."

It's a touching image: Clusters of good ol' boys, huddled around our nation's sports bar TV sets and throwing a near riot when the bartender tries to switch from the Globes to the Spurs game, lest they miss a single word of Felicity Huffman's moving Transamerica acceptance speech. It's not for nothing that the Globes should fall on Martin Luther King Day.