For the Bible Tells Me So

And that’s the subject of The Bible Tells Me So, an enlightening, hard-to-watch documentary about how the religious right has used the Bible to screw over the gay community.

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For the Bible Tells Me So (now in DVD) does not speak ill of religion; on the contrary, it uses the Bible — and an abundance of ministers and Biblical scholars — to attempt correct the record.

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It’s the church, the movie argues, not the Bible and not God, who have created this discriminatory fervor against homosexuality; in fact, this aspect of Biblical literalism is fairly modern, originating in the 20th century.

But what does the church have to gain by it? This is a question that’s always bugged the hell out of me: What Christian agenda does anti-homosexual discrimination serve? Writer/director Daniel Karslake looks into the origins of homophobia for that answer: Homophobia, the documentary posits is, in essence, just another form of misogyny — it stems from a hatred of women. The church doesn’t want men sleeping with other men because it emasculates them, which flies in the face of our patriarchal society, which I suppose threatens church leaders’ right to have a meal on the table when they get home(?) So, instead, the church has created an environment of intolerance, which — in a decidedly non-Christian twist — has not only fostered violence against gays and lesbians, it legitimizes it — empowering cruelty and hostility (thanks Reverend Falwell! You fuck).

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Here's the trailer: