While this is a nicely encouraging docu, I wasn't all that happy with the cartoon in the middle illustrating how science suggests homosexuality is part of our genetic imprint. Maybe that's because I'm from Germany and half gypsy, which under the laws of the most unfortunate period of that country's history would have meant that I am ethnically impure and therefore not fit to live; racial biology in Nazi Germany heavily relied on sociological and physical surveys to prove a link between criminal or anti-social behavior and race, as a justification for eradicating these elements. I therefore consider the gay gene theory a rather double-edged sword: while it might counter the assessment of many fundamentalist Christians that being gay is a choice, and therefore 'curable', it could also be used as an argument for total annihilation if times should ever get as rough as in, say, the Weimar Republic: they can't help being perverts, so let's kill them all (and enrich ourselves with their possessions in the process).
Fact is, sexuality is a very complex thing, in which the difference between choice and innate need cannot be clearly drawn; it would be rather dull if it was. Think of your own sexual preferences: don't we all have things we'd rather do or not do? How much of this is part of our nature, and how much of it is part of our choice? It's impossible to say, right? So it would seem to me that a more neutral approach might have been more fitting here: so fundamentalist Christians say gays make a 'choice' to be gay. Well, so what? Even if they make a choice, does that hurt anyone? Should anybody be ostracized for the choices they make?
And while the stories of the interviews were nicely chosen in respect to the encouraging message they are meant to deliver, I can't help but thinking that a lot of the realities of gay life have been omitted. After all, what drives people to question their homosexuality and regard it as something that must be cured? Yes, of course, church plays a very important role in this. But all guys I have known who tried to 'reform' themselves did so because they felt as outcasts in the gay community itself, either because they felt not attractive enough or because they couldn't cope with the difficulty of establishing a real relationship; I know one guy who got married to a woman for the latter purpose, and he says he's happy. I also know the counter example. So I would say that it's neither in my nor in anybody else's judgment to say reform is only denial, as long as nobody gets pressured into doing it.
But OK, that dilemma is not what the film is about, it's directed towards an audience influenced by or familiar with fundamentalist Christians, and as such it does a really nice job to point out the futility of their arguments. Only if you're gay, not really religious and just watching this to see what makes these people tick, you're none the wiser: the real question to me is why homophobes draw on that issue so much. Like, isn't there enough other stuff that's more indisputably wrong with America that they should be more concerned about? The hate is in the film, but I still don't get where it all comes from.
Fact is, sexuality is a very complex thing, in which the difference between choice and innate need cannot be clearly drawn; it would be rather dull if it was. Think of your own sexual preferences: don't we all have things we'd rather do or not do? How much of this is part of our nature, and how much of it is part of our choice? It's impossible to say, right? So it would seem to me that a more neutral approach might have been more fitting here: so fundamentalist Christians say gays make a 'choice' to be gay. Well, so what? Even if they make a choice, does that hurt anyone? Should anybody be ostracized for the choices they make?
And while the stories of the interviews were nicely chosen in respect to the encouraging message they are meant to deliver, I can't help but thinking that a lot of the realities of gay life have been omitted. After all, what drives people to question their homosexuality and regard it as something that must be cured? Yes, of course, church plays a very important role in this. But all guys I have known who tried to 'reform' themselves did so because they felt as outcasts in the gay community itself, either because they felt not attractive enough or because they couldn't cope with the difficulty of establishing a real relationship; I know one guy who got married to a woman for the latter purpose, and he says he's happy. I also know the counter example. So I would say that it's neither in my nor in anybody else's judgment to say reform is only denial, as long as nobody gets pressured into doing it.
But OK, that dilemma is not what the film is about, it's directed towards an audience influenced by or familiar with fundamentalist Christians, and as such it does a really nice job to point out the futility of their arguments. Only if you're gay, not really religious and just watching this to see what makes these people tick, you're none the wiser: the real question to me is why homophobes draw on that issue so much. Like, isn't there enough other stuff that's more indisputably wrong with America that they should be more concerned about? The hate is in the film, but I still don't get where it all comes from.