Bruno is meant to "expose the rampant homophobia across the United States." The title character, a gay Austrian fashion reporter, "appears to have anal sex with a man on camera." The MPAA had a hissy fit over the dude-on-dude scene and handed down the harshest rating a non-porn film can earn.

Yet last month, The Last House on the Left was released with an R rating, and critics and audiences alike shunned it over the detailed, graphic, violent rape scene. One critic called it "stomach-churningly anti-human." The MPAA shrugged and gave it an R rating.

A teenage girl is brutally assaulted — yawn. Two adult men engaging in non-violent consensual intercourse — madness! In a review of the documentary, This Film is Not Yet Rated (which exposes the biases of the board members — and the board members themselves), Kirk Honeycutt of The Hollywood Reporter noted:

Board decisions in recent years reveal a strong middle-class, male, heterosexual bias. The board has declared that female orgasms in certain films go on "too long," and it comes down hard on shots of female pubic hair. Gay sex receives harsher treatment than straight sex. Graphic violence, even against women, skates free of the dreaded NC-17 rating.

The MPAA's answer to the anti-gay accusation: "We don't try to set standards, we just try to reflect them." Translation: "White, middle-class America hates the gays, so we do, too."

Jennifer Leblanc