Scott, I really enjoyed your posts in this thread and second much of what you say.
I don't think the laughter is funny ha-ha laughter. It is akin to the laughter one hears when watching people get hurt in America's Funniest Home Videos, sort of a cringing laughter. People laugh because, especially for those unawares, it is a "you got busted" sort of moment. People are not laughing at Alma's pain but at her discovery. A bit of an "aww shit, what is going to happen now" sort of laughter. I've seen this same type of "you're busted" laughter in movies where a straight spouse/partner catches the other cheating. Why should it be any different here? In my experience, the audience has always settled down quickly and absorbed the real pain Alma is feeling. I think you guys are reading way too much into the laughter.
Lynn, I too, like the idea of personal responsibility, but I think the film makers do a good job of showing a very real alternative view: the tire iron awaits for those who step too far out of bounds. Would you really suggest that these two men live ostracized by their communities and in daily fear of their lives? Today in many countries (especially Muslim ones), gay men are still forced into marriages to hide who they are. There is a horrific picture that made the Internet rounds of two teenagers being hung in Iran because they were discovered together. What choice does their society give to them?
Even today, in America, are gay men and women really given a choice, especially in rural areas? Queers (and I use this term to refer to all GLBTQIA people) do not have the choices you have as a straight person. My gosh, we are all celebrating a movie that depicts real love between two men because it is the first BIG Hollywood picture to ever show a gay love story. And it is 2005! DOMA laws are the rule of the land. Even today, we can't enjoy the same federally recognized marriage that you can enjoy (and reap the many benefits of it), and certainly Ennis and Jack could not in the 1960s. Homophobia is still rampant in our society and in our institutions (schools, churches, military). Gay men can't be big movie stars and still have a career. We can't be generals, or priests, or Presidents, or cowboys, or oil field roughnecks, or professional athletes. We can't be assured that our families, and our friends, and our churches will accept us if we come out. So, before you tell us we have the choice to choose another path, walk a mile in our shoes, and tell me what choice many gay men have if they want to hold onto the lives they were brought up in and that they cherish? Wouldn't it be better to simply get married and hope the feelings for other men pass so that one does not lose family, friends, and community? Sadly, if Jack and Ennis were 19 yo men in Wyoming today, I still don't think they would have had much choice if they wanted to stay cowboys and professional rodeo bull riders. So what are the options for the Jacks and Ennis today? The last big news out of Wyoming was of a young gay man being tied to a fence and beat to death. Personal responsibility, indeed.
For me, these women are victims of society just as much as Ennis and Jack are. You can't convince me for a moment that they are victims of Ennis or Jack. The code of the American West during that time and its brutal treatment of gay men is to blame for their pain. I, for one, am certainly not going to make two confused, frightened, uneducated rural boys responsible for the only decisions they really had available to them, no matter how much pain and suffering those decisions caused in the end. This gay man will not lay that on their shoulders.