I recently watched the documentary called For the Bible Tells Me So on the hearty recommendation of Becky at grrrl meets world. It’s a discussion of homosexuality and the way the issue has been treated by religious people. More specifically, it is about existing groups of religious people who believe that religious people need to have a serious shift in attitude towards homosexuality based on an educated, contextually critical and intelligent reading of the Bible and a better understanding of what science tells us about it.

The film follows several religious individuals and their struggles with being gay or lesbian, coming out to their family and the subsequent acceptance or rejection that took place. Some of the stories are sad. Some are inspiring. I have come away feeling better educated, and wishing there was some way to wipe clean the Christian church’s mistreatment of the issue and the people in the midst of it.

If you are in any way religious (and even if you aren’t) you should definitely see this film. I can’t stress enough how very informative and enlightening it is. And even if you believe you won’t agree with it, I still think you should watch it. For the facts it contains about homosexuality and the facts it contains about the church. You may be surprised. Check out the trailer:

In a way it was freeing for me. Because some of us have felt for a long time that homosexuality is not ruining the family as we know it, or causing the moral decay of our society or any of the other nonsense that a large percentage of the Christian right spouts. But, to our shame, we aren’t always brave enough to say it.

There are many real people sharing their stories and relating a lot of important information. The information on suicide by GLBT teens is shocking (thee to seven times more likely to commit suicide) and the extreme rejection by religious people is so very sad, to me.

I have a lot of favourite quotes from the film (some of the very well known and wonderful people interviewed include Bishop Gene Robinson, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Reverend Peter Gomes, Rabbi Steven Greenberg and Reverend Jimmy Creech) and I couldn’t write this post without sharing a few of them.

The consequence of homophobia is to stereotype gay people and then to define them in negative ways and once we do that we’re able to treat them negatively and brutally. Fear does terrible things to a society.

When people are afraid they have to find scapegoats. And then they want to get rid of those people who are the bad guys.

There’s someting about human nature to always look for an outsider.

The thing that frightens men about homosexuality is that they think about a man allowing himself to be treated like a woman and there is nothing worse, nothing so flying in the face of patriarchy than for a “privileged man”, privileged by being male, rather than female, to be treated like a female.

It is the hatred of women that is the fuel of this whole thing…when the coach wants to humiliate his team, he calls them a bunch of girls. Why does that work? Because the worst thing you can do to a man is call him a woman. Men who are not men in whatever way the patriarchy wants us to be, threaten masculine power, and it’s too much to bare.

We have very peversely used difference to justify cruelty of the most vicious sort. I equate homophobia to the injustice of apartheid, and that is all contrary to the heart of our lord and saviour Jesus Christ.

I can’t for the life of me imagine that God would say I’m going to punish you because you are black. You should have been white. I will punish you because you are a woman. You should have been a man. I punish you because you are homosexual. You ought to have been heterosexual. I can’t for the life of me believe that that is how God sees things.

If you grew up within a Christian community I can almost guarantee that much of this is shocking to you. I think religious people need to ask themselves some hard questions.

What are we afraid of? Are we really still so prejudiced against women that the perception of a man being treated like a woman causes so much fear? Do we so desperately need someone to be a scapegoat? Are we so very fearful? Why are we so afraid to admit that homosexuality is not a choice? (This film quite tidily puts the “choice” argument to rest.)

What are we really afraid of? This is what I have not been able to figure out. Ok, so I babbled on for quite a while. Bottom line? MUST WATCH.