“God hates fags” is a common phrase in For the Bible Tells
Me So, or at least the sentiment is: The film opens with a stunning
montage of righteous bigotry, featuring silver-tongued Christian
activists, grandstanding preachers, and crazy people screaming on
street corners. All of them express one sentiment, more or less: That
the Bible says homosexuality is an “abomination,” that gays and
lesbians are doomed, and that they might be dragging the rest of us
down to Hell with them. (Thanks a lot, gays!)
Director Daniel Karslake’s acclaimed documentary has an interesting
enough premise: Going a step beyond homophobes’ rhetoric, he assembles
a slew of religious experts to examine ye olde Good Book to see if the
Jesus freaks have a point. The answer, pretty unsurprisingly, is no,
they don’t: Sure, biblical literalists insist that there’s only one way
to interpret the Bible, but anyone with a knowledge of history or
literature can attest that there’s a whole slew of ways to interpret a
text.
The fact that one can use the Bible to justify… well, pretty much
anything, really, shouldn’t be a shock to anyone. Luckily, the film has
another facet: In its fascinating examination of five religious
families in which a son or daughter is gay (surprise!), For the
Bible Tells Me So is nothing less than astonishing.
The families are a cross-section of Christian America: There are the
Poteats, an African American couple in North Carolina, both ministers,
who go into shock when they learn their daughter is a lesbian. (This
despite David Poteat’s desperate prayers: “When my kids were growing
up, I said, ‘God, please, don’t let my son grow up to be a faggot, and
my daughter a slut.'”) And there are the Robinsons, two adorable,
doddering Kentuckians—each of whom is roughly 900 years
old—who go to the library to research homosexuality after their
son, Gene, a priest, admits that he’s gay. (Later, with his parents’
support, Gene would go on to become the first gay bishop in the
Episcopal Church, wearing a bulletproof vest at his consecration.)
Other families, too, are equally remarkable: The Minnesotan family
the Reitans find themselves joining with their gay son to protest Focus
on the Family’s headquarters; one-time presidential candidate Dick
Gephardt talks about how having a lesbian daughter affected his career;
and one tortured mother blames herself for the suicide of her lesbian
daughter. It’s on the strength of these captivating
profiles—which are disturbing, moving, heartwarming, and
insightful—that For the Bible Tells Me So succeeds as it
does.
Unfortunately, Karslake is better at interviewing people than he is
at making documentaries. While his profiles of earnest, loving families
wrestling with genuinely challenging issues hit home, his cheesy music
cues don’t help, and neither does an awkward, childish animated
interlude. When Karslake’s camera veers away from the families
themselves, the film gets remedial and redundant, often feeling like an
introductory class video for Gay People Have Feelings Too 101. To some,
perhaps, it might come as a shock that fundamentalist Christian beliefs
have a very real, very brutal effect on all gays and lesbians, even
those who still love Jesus. But chances are, if you’re the sort of
person who’d be surprised by that revelation, you’re probably going to
be watching The Chronicles of Narnia with your church group for
the umpteenth time, not watching For the Bible Tells Me So.
