Where do you stand on singing along? This is an important question at the moment (the moment I am typing this, that is) because people have been singing along during screenings of the movie, “Wicked.”

Not just during those screenings where they are encouraged by the movie studio and the management of the multiplex to sing along, but during the screenings where no one but other people who want to sing along are encouraging them to sing along.

By the time you read this, “Wicked” will be in homes where singing along or refraining from singing along will be a family matter.

But movie musicals will continue to be released to theaters and the debate over the appropriateness of singing along will rage on.

There really seem to be two schools of thought here. One expresses the belief that the exuberance and passion of fans who are moved to spontaneously sing along should be celebrated. The second school expresses the belief that everyone who agrees with and adheres to the first school should be jailed.

While I am not against singing along as a general concept,  I must confess that my sympathies lean in the direction of school of thought number two.

I am not an expert on the modern movie musical. The last one I saw was “Yentl,” which was released the same year as “Return of the Jedi.” In fact, I can’t even recall which movie was about a female student pretending to be a male student and which one was about the sister pretending to be a girlfriend.

But I do attend concerts by performers with national reputations and there is nothing that I find more annoying in that context than one or more nearby people, usually drunk, howling song lyrics so loudly and badly that I either can’t hear the people on stage or I can’t remember what they are supposed to sound like.

I even get upset when the lead singer of a band cedes singing duties to the crowd, pointing the microphone in the opposite direction of his mouth.

I want to take the lead singer aside and say, “Did I say you could clock out early? You should know better. I’m disappointed in you. I need you to get your priorities in order. You don’t seem to be the same go-getter you were when I hired you. You don’t want me to dock your pay, do you?”

I understand that there are people who go to concerts, not just to hear the headliner, but to be with other people who share their passion for the headliner.

I know that singing along together to the headliner’s music is a unifying experience for such people. I have nothing against people unifying. I think it’s beautiful. I just wish they’d go unify somewhere else.

There are two kinds of people who attend concerts by nationally known headliners, it seems to me: People celebrating their youth and people trying to relive it.

So, I have an idea for people who want to sing along: Why don’t you folks rent a gymnasium, decorate it with streamers and balloons and have a sort of high school dance where y’all sing along with a headliner’s recordings?

I would even volunteer to portray the minder who separates slow dancing couples with the admonition, “Leave room for the Holy Spirit.”

Live concerts should be for people who actually want to listen to live concerts.

I know I sound like a grouch.

There’s a very good reason for this: I am a grouch.

But that doesn’t mean I am not right.

I am not even offended by poor singing, necessarily. It may surprise you to learn that I am a fan of karaoke. Karaoke is my idea of an extreme sport. People risk a lot to get up there and sing, and their reward is (and should be) to be cheered as if they are Mariah Carey.

And I am not even sure that Mariah Carey should always be cheered as if she is Mariah Carey.

What I am against is anything that disrupts what other folks have gathered to enjoy.

To people who think they should have blanket permission to sing through movie musicals, what I want to say is, “What if we were sitting in a screening of ‘Jaws’ and I was moved through sheer exuberance to sing along with John Williams shark theme: ‘Duh dah, duh dah, duh dah, duh dah…'”

“What if we were watching one of the ‘Silent Hill’ movies and I was moved through sheer exuberance to moan along with the emergency sirens that tend to go off periodically in those films?'”

I am not saying your singing sounds like emergency sirens or that it is painful as shark bite.

I am just saying there is a time and place for everything.

I suspect that people who feel that they should be allowed to sing during movie musicals are just as annoyed as I am by fellow moviegoers who talk, throw popcorn and take phone calls during screenings.

How is singing different from asking the person next to you what is going on in the film because you are spending less time watching the film than you are asking the person next to you what is going on?

Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, who recently revisited the role of Maui in “Moana 2,” weighed in on this debate with a squawk that was rich in enthusiasm (and avarice) but poor in thoughtfulness: “Sing! You’ve paid your hard earned money for a ticket, and you’ve gone into a musical, and you’re into it. Sing.”

Does my hard-earned money for a ticket to a Farm Show earn me the right to take a tractor for a joy ride? Does hard-earned money spent at a fine-dining restaurant earn me the right to pour my shrimp cocktail down my pants for reasons that are between me and my physician?

Maybe what I am really objecting to here is people overestimating what their hard-earned money has earned them a right to do.

There’s a lot of that going around these days.

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