BuzzFlash Reviews

BUZZFLASH REVIEWS

"Powerful! A brave and noble effort to heal a gaping wound in our society."

-- Salon.com

"Confronts with whimsy and hellfire, the clash between [the Christian] religion and homosexuality."

-- New York Magazine

"An incredibly powerful film everybody should see. It restores your faith in people."

-- National Public Radio

Dick Gephardt and his family are featured along with four other families in this exploration of how the alleged Biblical condemnation of homosexuality plays out in families with gay sons or daughters. (In fact the Gephardt family -- in a photograph when their children were young -- is on the cover of the DVD.)

It's a solid, personally absorbing documentary that unobtrusively allows you to know the challenges each family faced in accepting their children -- and how the commonly accepted fundamentalist homophobic dogma often creates obstacles to the most important family value of an embracing love.

You can watch the trailer here .

Review from Newsday:

"For some, it will be nostalgic seeing that old gay-bashing beauty queen Anita Bryant getting a pie in the face, or the not-yet-scandalous preacher Jimmy Swaggart endorsing murder in God's name, as long as it involved homosexuality. ("It's a bomnation!!!")

But this rational, human and very serious documentary by Daniel Karslake gets at the historical distortions of the Good Book as well as the ease with which holy writings have been used in America to propagate hate.

Although the gay issue, vis a vis religion, is the heart of the film, Karslake ultimately cuts a wider swath by showing how Leviticus, for instance - the part of the Old Testament that advises against homosexuality, but in favor of child slavery - is a chapter of convenience, in a book subject to violent misreadings. No handwringing or bile-spewing in this entertaining film, but plenty of reasoned examination."

From the filmmakers:

Can the love between two people ever be an abomination? Is the chasm separating gays and lesbians and Christianity too wide to cross? Is the Bible an excuse to hate?

Through the experiences of five very normal, very Christian, very American families -- including those of former House Majority Leader Richard Gephardt and Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson -- we discover how insightful people of faith handle the realization of having a gay child. Informed by such respected voices as Bishop Desmond Tutu, Harvard's Peter Gomes, Orthodox Rabbi Steve Greenberg and Reverend Jimmy Creech, FOR THE BIBLE TELLS ME SO offers healing, clarity and understanding to anyone caught in the crosshairs of scripture and sexual identity.

From an online reviewer:

"For the Bible Tells Me so" is a sober theological discussion which is surrounded by heartfelt personal stories. It will open hearts and minds of those whose beliefs are founded in the Bible and give them an alternative to a literal interpretation of the holy scriptures. It takes on a loaded topic and looks at it both emotionally and intellectually and the result is a movie that proudly allows us to shed tears as it uplifts our spirits. It is provocative and heartfelt and moving and unbelievably intimate. The film is valuable in that it encourages us and others to examine our beliefs with serious examination instead of by blind acceptance as well as to recognize matters of faith and understand how they can be co-opted by politics.

It also shows how the Bible is used to explicitly sanction discrimination against homosexuals. As it boldly confronts the clash between religion and sexual orientation, it confronts the fulcrum of the objection to homosexuality by the religious right. The movie hammers away at those who do not believe that homosexuality and faith can come together and it digs deeply into the divide between those who take the Bible literally and homosexuals. The results we get both break our hearts and infuriate us but also inspire greatly.



BUZZFLASH REVIEWS