BY RICHARD ROEPER SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST

Memo to GLAAD: Lighten up. Jay and Silent Bob are not your problem. Jay and Silent Bob are harmless cretins.

Harmless fictional cretins.

For those of you not familiar with Kevin Smith’s oeuvre, Jay (Jason Mewes) and Silent Bob (played by Kevin Smith) are two stoner-slackers who spend their days holding up the wall of the Quick Stop convenience store in Leonardo, N.J., dealing and ingesting drugs while watching the world pass them by, in every sense of the phrase. Jay pesters customers, cusses up a storm and sings the praises of getting high, while Silent Bob remains mute for 99 percent of his waking hours. (For all you parents offended by Jay and Silent Bob, I’ve got three words: Cheech and Chong.)

After cameos in Smith’s previous films, the dimwitted duo take center stage in the upcoming release “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.” Not to give away my review, but suffice to say that when the nominations for the Academy Awards are announced on an early morning next February, everyone connected with this movie can sleep securely without worrying about being awakened by a phone call.

There are tons of “homo jokes” in “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.” Tons. Jay delights in tormenting and embarrassing his lifelong buddy–and about 80 percent of his arsenal consists of jokes insinuating that Silent Bob is actually Gay Bob. As for Silent Bob, he recoils in horror at these “you’re gay!” jabs and shakes his head furiously to let everyone know that he’s 100 percent hetero. There’s also a hitchhiker played by George Carlin who has a sexual tryst with a burly truck driver, and a studio lot security guard who wants to watch Jay and Silent Bob, um, dance together, if you will.

Even before “Jay and Silent Bob” hits theaters, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) has started with the protests. First the organization’s “entertainment media director” (now there’s a job title that probably didn’t exist in the Old West) released a statement that read: “The audience members who think a) that Jay and Silent Bob are cool, and b) see Jay and Silent Bob making anti-gay jokes may think that they can be cool, too, if they are intolerant and cruel toward gay people. This is not OK, and GLAAD has an obligation to speak out against representations that pose a threat to gay and lesbian people.”

A threat? Jay and Silent Bob? Come on. Audience members who think Jay and Silent Bob are cool are a) smart enough to know these guys are caricatures and b) not impressionable zombies who will go out and ape Jay’s stupid banter.

I love the GLAAD folks, really I do. But don’t they realize that when they make statements like that, they sound just like Orrin Hatch? I thought it was the intolerant, humorless, judgmental conservative crowd that fears art (and Kevin Smith’s films) because of its unlimited power to pollute the mind and influence behavior. You can’t blame the right wing for targeting “Ellen” and then turn around and target the stuff you don’t like. That’s being a liberal only when it’s convenient.

GLAAD asked the film’s distributor, Dimension Films, to make a donation to the Matthew Shepard Foundation (named for the Wyoming student beaten to death in a homophobic slaying in 1998). Smith himself said he’d make a contribution to the foundation–and he’s also agreed to add a disclaimer after the main credits.

In a statement released Friday, GLAAD’s media director guy said: “As a result of the constructive dialogue between Kevin and me, Kevin will include a brief comment during the end credits of the film, indicating that use of the film’s anti-gay slurs in real life is not acceptable.”

I wish Smith hadn’t caved on any front, but at least he did say he wasn’t sorry and that he was making jokes at the expense of two characters who are “idiots.”

Exactly. Cartoonish and buffoonish as they are, Jay and Silent Bob happen to be representative of a certain segment of the doper-loser population who would indeed find it funny to slather their banter with anti-gay jokes. (Then again, there are a lot of lawyers, baseball players, construction workers and yep, journalists, who do the same.)

I find it curious that GLAAD is voicing its displeasure of “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back,” but not saying a word about the Jeremy Piven character in “Rush Hour 2″–a mincing and stereotypically gay clothing salesman who prances around while expressing his lust for Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan, who seem to have their own issues. When the cops refer to themselves as “partners,” the salesman thinks they’re partners in love–much to their horror. God forbid anyone think they’re gay!

At least Jay and Silent Bob are clearly meant to be laughed at and ridiculed for their stupidity. Tucker and Chan are the heroes in “Rush Hour 2,” so shouldn’t their homophobia be more objectionable?

Or better yet, shouldn’t GLAAD realize these are just stupid movies and concentrate on more important concerns?