The bible told me so…
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Gays and Scripture. The two words sometimes seem unbridgeable, particularly to the millions of Americans who live by the latter. Let's avoid the word "Christianity" on purpose, for now, because to so many Christians who live by the literal Bible a gay Christian would be, at best, unreal.
Filmmaker Daniel Karslake sets out to bridge that gap. His new documentary, "For the Bible Tells Me So," aims to give gays tools to fight religious discrimination. He profiles five sets of deeply believing parents who came to accept their gay children.
And he makes clear that fighting religious discrimination is everyone's business, even to people to whom the church is not worth bothering with, because almost every social persecution that has plagued America in the last 400 years – slavery, Jim Crow, anti-Semitism and anti-Islam, transphobia, the suppression of women -- has been bolstered by Scriptural argument.
"The Bible is being used, misused, to condemn gay people -- it's an old trick. And they're doing it again," says the Rev. Mel White, one of many heavy hitters in this ambitious film.
Rather, says Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the Bible "is the word of God through human beings, speaking in the idiom of their time."
Do you eat shrimp? Eat rabbit? Do you mix cotton and wool? Sow two kinds of seeds in the same hole? If so, you're guilty of abominations on a level and every bit as vile as that set out in Leviticus 20:13, which famously says that a man who lies with a man as with a woman has done what is detestable, and shall be put to death.
"A guy called me on a talk show and cited Leviticus, and said I should be killed, and I asked, 'OK, who should do it? You or the civil authorities?'" White says in the film. "And he said, 'That's why it's important to elect Bible-believing men to every office in the land.'"
Few in this film are as mischievous as White, the former Falwell speechwriter who went on to found the civil-disobedience group Soulforce. Almost all the talking heads here have their game faces on, and the film suffers a bit for the earnestness.
Better time's spent on the salt-of-the-earth families, whose acceptance is mostly hard-won.
Chrissy Gephardt, lesbian daughter of the former House leader, is effervescent on screen as she recalls a youth spent needing "to find the right guy."
"If someone in your family is running for president, being gay is not an option," Gephardt says. "If it's not an option, you don't consider it."
It was a relief to the whole family when Chrissy finally gave up her secret.
"We knew we would have to dig in harder," Richard Gephardt says, "knowing what Chrissy was going to go through."
But Chrissy had married a man in a big Baptist ceremony. Telling him "broke his heart."
The Rev. Gene Robinson, Episcopal bishop of New Hampshire, also married and tried to live straight. His parents are a revelation -- rural Kentuckians, as low-church as it gets. Hard-working but charming, they clearly gave Gene more than their twang.
He describes his own drive home to come out to them as "the longest of my life.
"I honestly didn't think I was going to be able to stay in the house that night," Robinson remembers. But his parents kept their love for their child foremost.
"We wanted to learn all we could about gay people," Victor Robinson says. "We got some books."
Today, Victor says, having given Gene his ceremonial vestments during his consecration in 2003, "I guess you can see we're pretty proud."
Karslake's families come across as smart people, careful not just with the Word but with words, by no means sheep, toiling when faced with a gay child to parse a new and more accepting creed.
"I asked, 'Is this really what You want me to think?'" says Mary Lou Wallner, whose lesbian daughter Anna committed suicide at 30 after Wallner's rejection. "I read and read the Bible."
Wallner lets us see the hateful letters that she clearly believes were an instrument of her daughter's death. Now an activist with Soulforce, she takes tearful comfort in the young gay and lesbian Christians that surround her, as she says, like "hundreds of little Annas."
I don't know, if I were a fundamentalist Christian, that Karslake's parade of liberal theologians would convince me. But I would fear Wallner's pain. I would respect, and might achieve, the acquiescence of rural black minister Brenda Poteat, dismayed when her brilliant daughter, Tonia, returns from Yale an out lesbian:
"I realized that what I was embarrassed about was that I was thinking totally of how she was having sex and not about her as a person," Brenda says.
"I still do not approve of that lifestyle. If you ask me, 'Do I accept that they're lovers?' I'm not there yet.
"If you say, 'Am I glad that her friend makes her happy,' then that's where I am."
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any idea when this will be available…TV? DVD?
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No clue.
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@derektheking:
any idea when this will be available…TV? DVD?
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I don't care about anyone's views on religion and homosexuality. My catholic husband and my catholic parents love me. That's enough.
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Ugh, religion is a poison. Every church is the same; control, destory, obliterate every good feeling.
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I like the concept, I wanna see this.
Some of these so called Christians are full of crap, the bible preaches for love and understand yet all they do is sprout hate
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So I'm lucky enough to go to school where the director of this documentary went to school for undergrad. He was nice enough to come back and do a showing for us, with discussion before and after. It's an absolutely amazing documentary. I highly recommend it to anyone. They are going to start shipping DVDs in late February I think, and you can schedule large showings right now (churches, schools, organizations, etc). This documentary has won tons of awards too. Very much worth seeing.
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I found this on another site and decided to upload it here since it came up as a topic.
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I came from a Pentecostal church…...I have read the bible, I know what it says. I also know where so called Christians get their beliefs that us Gays are going to hell. But they don't seem to think about their gossiping they do. They don't think about how they are living their life because they are too busy putting their nose in everyone elses and trying to be all "Holier Than Thou" bullshit.
I have a personal belief on my ways of living and I don't think that I'm going to go to hell for being Gay. Before my boyfriend and I got to together I dated a girl for 6 months, but couldn't get myself to have sex or anything. I couldn't really love her the way I wanted and the way I knew I should. Well to make a long story short we broke it off after she came to me and told me that she might be pregnant. I knew the baby wasn't mine and so I knew that it was time to just end the relationship.
At this time I had given up on girls and decided to see what it was like to be with a guy. Well I had a friend that I knew was gay and we had been talking for little over a year I think. Well anyways, we decided to meet each other for the first time at a Bowling Alley. He had his friends with him so I got to meet his friends also. Well anyways, after bowling we went to his house and well we drunk some Aliza (Red Colored Liquor). This is the first time that I had ever drunk any kind of Alcoholic drink or whatever. Anyways we ended up making love and thats when I knew that I was gay and that's also when I knew what it mean't to love someone on an intimacy level.
We are still together and going on 2 years and 1 month as of February 12, 2006. I have learned what love really is and what it means to love someone who is close to you. I'm always telling babe that I love him because I do and I wouldn't take any other man out there. We have went through some tough times together and that's what makes the relationship stronger.
Anyways, back to the topic. I said all that to say this, before I found out I was gay. I myself was a hardcore church person and believed that if you didn't believe in Jesus that your soul was damned for hell. But I've learned different and have came to a personal belief on being Gay.
My personal belief........... Bible says that we were created in His image (Meaning God's image). If He created us then, why would He send someone to a place of torture and gnashing of teeth. It dosen't make sense, because that contridicts being made in his own image. Because if we are made in His own image, then wouldn't that mean that we would act the way He wants us to? Everyone has their own belief of whether their is a God or not. I personally think that their is a Higher Power, but I don't think that it's like the church people make the Higher Power appear to look like, meaning a Man with long hair, wearing ragged clothes, etc.... No one knows wheter their is a Heaven or Hell, because no one has came back from the dead to tell everyone about it. No one knows if we pass on into another world or not. I think that's why a lot of people get wrapped up in religion. Because they promise a good after life, a place of no weeping or pain. So I think a lot of people just like to think they know where they are going when they die, but truth of the matter is. No one knows what happens after we die. I just know that I believe in a Higher Power and that if I wasn't suppose to be gay, then I wouldn't be, I'd be different. I hope I haven't bored anyone with my long post.
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VERY well said !
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… am i going to hell ???
... what hell 
seriously
if a man starts to think, concludes that there is no god , and learns that the bible is a SF :laugh: ( a good SF tho 
)
altho the sad part is that religion manipulates public opinion
which is immoral ![😕](https://community.gaytorrent.ru/assets/plugins/nodebb-plugin-emoji/emoji/apple/1f615.png?v=hvqg2qn0nb4 ":-\")
you can be a good person by common sense, and be moral
AND you won't fear that you go to hell or "heaven" seriously if you'd go to heaven … you won't be allowed to be gayso start being rational
cheers to all
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Hey guys,
I have watched the documentary and am now willing to share it with some French friends. As they are not fluent AT ALL in English, I have decided to make a translation for them.
As my level of comprehension is not sufficient to write the whole transcript myself, I have been (desperately) looking for some English subtitles on the web, but found nothing.
Now, I would like to know:- whether any of you by any chance got subtitles or the whole transcript?
- or would anybody be willing to help me write them in English?
Please let me know…
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darling darling darling
you is never ever going to get through to the people who got religion cos when they get god they go mad in the head.
They dont want you to undermine that book - they want to believeeeeee in the word of god , they want to believeeeee in repentance from your sins o sinner man - bow before the son of god alleluyah aaaaammenn - Lord god almighty….They dont want some friggin upstart liberal explaining all sorts of reasonable and logical crap about history and education. Hell no. Give them the word of the Lord and damn them sinners to burn in hell .
Cos that's what they're into.
