GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE Pride Guide 2010

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www.GayPeoplesChronicle.com

Timely but intense film leaves audience with hope

RED FLAG RELEASING

CITY HALL

ever

Tyler Barrick and Spencer Jones leave San Fransico City Hall as newlyweds.

by Anthony Glassman

With the trial over the constitutionality of California's Proposition 8 wrapping up on June 16, smack in the middle of Pride Month, no film could be timelier than 8: The Mormon Proposition.

Proposition 8 was passed by voters in California five months after the state's Supreme Court ruled in June, 2008 that samesex marriage was constitutionally mandated. The amendment inserted text into the state constitution specifying that only opposite-sex marriage was legal or recognized in California. (Ohio and 29 other states have similar measures.)

While some would say that the California Supreme Court moved too fast, that the people of California were not ready for it, the simple truth of the matter is very differ-

ent.

Proposition 8 passed, not because of the feelings of California voters, but due to millions of dollars pumped into the campaign by the Utah-based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints-the Mormon Church.

That is the matter at the heart of 8: The Mormon Proposition: the well-organized campaign by the church to outlaw same-sex marriage.

Director Reed Cowan originally set out to do a documentary on gay homeless youth in Utah, where telling your Mormon parents that you are gay is an invitation to be sent to “reparative” therapy or be booted out on the street. However, it became clear that the homophobia endemic in the church was hurting more than Mormon youth. It was stripping the rights from the populations of other states, most recently California.

Cowan interviewed proand anti-gay activists and advocates who did an incredible job of connecting the dots, including Fred Karger, who filed n-law complaints against the Mormons for hiding their donations to the Proposition 8 campaign. Over the course of months, what had been a

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couple of thousand dollars of in-kind donations on disclosure forms became hundreds of thousands, a figure he still believes is but a fraction of the truth.

He interviewed Bruce Barton, a mental health nurse and a former student at Brigham Young University, who was subjected to electroshock and aversion therapy by BYU security in an effort to "cure" his homosexuality. That was one of the most difficult interviews to watch, as this frail man describes what was done to him decades ago, still fighting back tears.

A handful of gay Mormon survivors of suicide attempts spoke to him for the film, and their stories are equally painful. While they did not have the same tales of torture, the emotional scars left by their church and families telling them that they were undermining God's plan are similarly horrific. Seeing seemingly good, decent people who were so serious about taking that final, fatal step is quite unnerving.

Even those who didn't attempt suicide, who weren't electroshocked, may be leading terrible lives. Cowan followed two teens, holdovers from the original theme, who were kicked out of their houses and were living in a vacant building, teeming with rats. In the winter, there is no heat. One of the teens tells him, "Be here in spring, you wake up with ten or fifteen cockroaches on you almost every day."

He asks the other teen, Miyo, how youth can maintain hope in such a dire situation. The boy looks directly at him, and says with soul-shaking certainty, "There is no hope."

At the very heart of the film, though, is the love between Tyler Barrick and Spencer Jones, a young gay couple who were married the first day nuptials were legal in California.

During the anti-Prop. 8 protests, they were there, along with family members and friends, fighting back against the church's efforts to negate their marriage.

Both Barrick and Jones were raised Mormon; Barrick's mother, at least, is very supportive of him. Along the course of the film, she shows herself to be a tireless crusader for LGBT equality, as well as being an emotional dynamo. She stands up to family members who believe that Tyler has turned away from God, and she is not taking shit from anyone.

In an interesting irony, Tyler Barrick is directly descended from Frederick Granger Williams, one of Mormon founder Joseph Smith's closest aides in the early days of the church. While Williams was hounded from state to state because of his beliefs, the church he helped found has now taken the rights of his own descendent.

It should be mentioned as well that the film is narrated by Dustin Lance Black, the Academy Award-winning screenwriter of Milk. While Black was himself raised Mormon and is an outstanding critic of the church's political meddling, his narration is almost completely beside the point.

He gives the proper emphasis to excerpts from church memos and documents illustrating the cold-bloodedness of their machinations, but that is barely half of what the film is about.

8: The Mormon Proposition is about those people that the Latter Day Saints have hurt, whose rights they've stripped, who they have driven to desperate situations including homelessness and suicide. It is about a church, which was the target of religious persecution, itself persecuting others.

Above all, it is about hope, the hope that the Mormons will support instead of ostracize, and the hope that those who have been hurt can find healing, and the hope that struggling against an injustice can end it.

DAVID DANIELS, RED FLAG RELEASING

Telling your Mormon parents you are gay can get you thrown onto the street.