Sundance Film Depicts Anti-Gay Bible Interpretation Is A "Modern Invention"

[Ian David]

Sundance Film Depicts Anti-Gay Bible Interpretation Is A "Modern Invention"...

Opening Sunday night at the Sundance Film Festival is Karslake's "For the Bible Tells Me So," a documentary in the independent film competition. The production, which took more than three years to complete, was funded in large part by Orem-resident Bruce Bastian, co-creator of the word-processing software that became WordPerfect. The film shows how the Bible's verses have been used to justify, over centuries, various forms of discrimination, and how today religious conservativesuse the Good Book to back anti-gay rhetoric.

For gay and lesbian people who grew up steeped in Scripture and tied to church communities, this rhetoric - something referred to in the film as "a modern invention" - has been especially painful. Not just for them, but for their families.

More:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2007/01/20/sundance-film-depicts-ant_n_39152.html



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January 20, 2007
For the Bible told them so: Documentary shows how the Bible's verses have been used to justify anti-gay bias

"Last week I bought a gun. Yesterday I wrote the note. But last night I happened to turn on your show and just knowing that someday I might be able to go back into my church, I threw the gun in the river. My mom never has to know." -- A boy in Iowa

The e-mail was only four sentences long, but it shaped Daniel Karslake's future.

Karslake, 41, was a young television producer in 1998 when he received the above note from a boy in Iowa. His segment on a lesbian theologian had just aired on the PBS program "In the Life." This boy's short message, one that still brings Karslake to tears, was the first of hundreds he would receive from gays and lesbians across the country - from people who felt rejected by their church families. The aspiring filmmaker had found his mission.

"This e-mail fueled everything I've done since," he said this week.

Opening Sunday night at the Sundance Film Festival is Karslake's "For the Bible Tells Me So," a documentary in the independent film competition. The production, which took more than three years to complete, was funded in large part by Orem-resident Bruce Bastian, co-creator of the word-processing software that became WordPerfect. The film shows how the Bible's verses have been used to justify, over centuries, various forms of discrimination, and how today religious conservatives use the Good Book to back anti-gay rhetoric.

More:
http://gay_blog.blogspot.com/2007/01/for-bible-told-them-so-documentary.html

[Solo_in_MD]

1. However the film is wrong...its a long term historical interpretation.

[Meeker Morgan]

2. Why try to sanitize the historical reputation of the Bible?

It clearly says that people who do what I do should be executed. There is no wiggle room. Better to reject the Bible than yap about how God loves everybody and pretend the bad stuff doesn't mean what it says.

Also what's this nonsense of supposing that anti-gay prejudice is something recently cooked up?

It is deeply ingrained in our culture all along and not just for religious fanatics. Plenty of secular rationalizations about us being diseased, etc.

Fighting prejudice means a hell of a lot more than scoring a few cheap points off right wingers.