The documentary “For the Bible Tells Me So” recounts how a handful of biblical verses have long supplied ammunition for a religious argument against homosexuality. The film offers an absorbing, scrupulously researched counterargument.
The movie, like the earlier “Inlaws &Outlaws,” gets most of its punch from detailing a batch of individual stories. These are mostly about straight parents who’ve had to face the fact that a child is gay.
These include a couple of well-known people. For instance, former presidential candidate Richard Gephardt and his wife tell the story of their daughter, Chrissy.
And Gene Robinson, who made headlines when he was installed as the first openly gay bishop in the Episcopal Church, is also profiled, with comments from family and friends.
These vignettes are woven into a patchwork of material on the subject. A vintage clip of Anita Bryant sets the tone for the anti-gay evangelicals heard from. Jimmy Swaggart, who used to be a major voice in evangelism before he was exposed for ministering too closely to prostitutes on a couple of occasions, is seen in a 2004 clip jocularly saying he would kill a homosexual if confronted by one.
Most of the religious folk in the movie sound a more temperate tone. For instance, a minister named Lawrence Keene says that the original use of the word “abomination” in Leviticus referred to a ritual wrong, like eating pork or commingling crops, not a moral offense.
Other scholars talk about how the sin of Sodom wasn’t an abundance of gay sex but an obscure injunction having to do with hospitality. Well, that’s something of an answer for people who think America is about to be destroyed because of a more accepting attitude toward gays.
All this close attention to ancient cultural meanings and Hebrew translations is very interesting, but people have been drawing their own (often completely contradictory) meanings from Bible stories for 2,000 years, and they’ll keep right at it. “For the Bible Tells Me So” is so respectful of the Judeo-Christian tradition that it doesn’t ask the larger question of why any religion’s book of doctrine should be so persuasive in a legally secular society.
The movie offers a truly dumb pro-gay cartoon, and occasionally the archival footage ranges off topic. But when it sticks to its core group of families, it finds moving stories amid the ongoing squabble.
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