I want to believe you're not a homophobic ass, Chris Carter

But I'm having a hard time with that.

For anyone who hasn't seen the new X-Files movie, and thinks they want to see it, and doesn't want to be spoiled, don't click the cut, because I'm getting ready to spoil the hell out of it.

So, there's this pedophiliac priest, right? And he's supposedly having visions about the victims of a serial killer in W. Va. This is not the skeevy part, despite some apprehension about this role that's been running around, and about how badly and/or offensively it could be portrayed. No, this is actually done pretty well, IMO.

Here's the skeevy part: The first big reveal in the mystery turns out to be that someone is maybe using sketch Russian medical research/tech to harvest body parts from people for the black market (which is where all the missing/dead people/body parts are coming from, not a single serial killer). And we find out that Skeevy Guy Number One, who swims at the same pool as a couple of the missing women, works for a supposedly on-the-up-and-up courier service for organs that are being donated/transplanted. And we find out that Skeevy Guy Number Two, who owns the courier service, is one of the former victims of the pedophiliac priest. And guess who Skeevy Guy Number Two is married to in Massachusetts? one of our characters asks another character. And the answer is: Skeevy Guy Number One.

End scene. Cue me sitting there in the theater for the next five minutes, literally, trying to figure out if I just heard what I think I heard. Because surely they didn't just casually announce that the two skeevy guys who are suspected of butchering people for body parts, who have been made to look skeevy via characterization and makeup and lighting and oh, yeah, by the way Skeevy Guy Number One ran some girl off the road, wrapped her in a tarp and shoved her in a box at a lab ... surely they did not just announce, as part of the parade of skeeve, that these two guys are not just gay for each other but legally married to each other. Surely I heard that wrong.

I mean, come on. Even Rick Santorum only claimed that gay marriage would lead to people marrying their dogs, not to murdering, black-market organ-harvesting rings.

Also, BTW, boys who are molested by men don't automatically grow up to be gay.

That's not the end of the skeeve, however. The next big reveal is that they're not just harvesting body parts, they're using stem cells to somehow graft body parts onto other bodies, and doing things like giving dogs extra heads, and attaching female arms with prettily manicured nails to the body of Skeevy Guy Number Two. And the biggest reveal of all is that Skeevy Guy Number One is actually out there running chicks off the road to procure a body so that his injured and terminally ill husband can have a head transplant onto a new body. Which is, for some inexplicable reason, female. Because homophobia wasn't enough, they had to add transphobia into the mix? Because gay men want to be women, apparently. Enough to steal your bodies, girls. (ETA: On some reflection, I'm not sure the reason for the female body was supposed to be inexplicable. There was some talk of rare blood types, and I wonder if we're supposed to infer they're just grabbing the body they could find that matched. And yet, I continue to call this out as transphobic BS, included for an added sprinkling of shock and disgust, because Skeevy Guy Number One apparently had no problem finding two women with this rare blood type at the same public pool, in the middle of winter. Why no men? Why would a man with this blood type have been that much harder to find?)

Here's the thing: There was no reason on earth to make these two husbands. There was no reason the skeevy, girl-butchering villains had to be gay. It would have worked just as well, and been far less potentially offensive, if they'd been brothers. And if Skeevy Guy Number One had found a male body for Skeevy Guy Number Two. The fact that no one seems to have taken into account just how offensive this portrayal is, the fact that multiple someones apparently thought it was a good idea ... that makes it seem as if, at best, the people involved in writing and producing this movie are reeking with heterosexual privilege. At worst, it makes me wonder if those decisions were made deliberately as a way of making the bad guys look even more freaky and weird to the "average" viewer.

I went to the super-duper-discounted matinee show, and I still want my damn $5.75 back. I want to know who to complain to about this movie, and how to get in contact with them.