Do you think Twist was a predator? And do you think having gay kids automatically confers credibility?

Given Cheney's example, I'd say that's a big no.

Refresh my memory... doesn't Ennis actually initiate things? And just about break the front door down in his eagerness to get going on all those "fishing trips"? While Jack Twist takes the moral low ground for running around on his wife, I don't actually see anything he directs toward Ennis being objectionable unless one has a blanket objection to homosexuality in general.

There's a HUGE difference between "pursuer" and "predator". Just because Jake was more agressive in pursuing the relationship doesn't make him predatory.

I think Jack pretty much initiates, but Ennis never really objects; and he certainly could have. But in any case, I doubt Shalit said the same thing about, say, The English Patient, or dozens of other movies about straight men pursuing reluctant women. Which is not to say that I think Shalit is necessarily homophobic, just oddly hypocritical here.

While Jack Twist takes the moral low ground for running around on his wife

Ennis is married too, at least for the first several years of their relationship.

Jack does initiate the first sexual encounter, but Ennis doesn't need any convincing, and I believe he's the one who comes to Jack the next night. Plus, as Matt says, when Jack comes back into his life, he's all too eager to continue the affair. There is a scene in which Ennis says (paraphrasing) "I wouldn't be like this if it weren't for you," but I doubt we are intended to take that as fact. So I hardly think that "predator" is the right word to describe Jack. It's a strange thing for Shalit to say, but I think GLAAD is strongly overreacting.

Ennis is married too, at least for the first several years of their relationship.

And she's the one who ends it, so it's not as if he takes the moral high ground there.

There is a scene in which Ennis says (paraphrasing) "I wouldn't be like this if it weren't for you," but I doubt we are intended to take that as fact.

Ennis is deeply self-hating, and he takes it out on Jack.

Hell, Ennis was engaged when he fell in love with Jack. He was already cheating.

I accept the power of what happened, and the intractable position they found themselves in (considering their personal limitations), but Twist as predator is weird. In fact, what I read of the review just sounded plain weird.

And I don't think of Ennis as self-hating as much as I think of him as extremely weak, and scared. I think he'd be okay with being out, if he could believe they wouldn't pay such a high price for it.

And he's kinda maybe proved right in the end--but that doesn't mean that he made the right choices between the start and the finish.

Although we don't know for sure what happened to Jack; I get the impression (from the story as well as the movie) that Ennis believes that Jack was killed by gaybashers, but there's no confirmation that that's anything but his own fearful imagination. It's certainly plausible, but it's left intentionally ambiguous.

It's certainly plausible, but it's left intentionally ambiguous.

That was my impression as well. In the film, it's deliberately left open as to whether those scenes are in Ennis' mind, or Anne Hathaway's memory (or both).