Bible Lesson in Gay Rights
Movie review: For the Bible Tells Me So (2007)
By MATT ZOLLER SEITZ
Published: October 5, 2007

Daniel Karslake’s documentary “For the Bible Tells Me So” won’t win any prizes for technique, but innovation surely ranks very low on this filmmaker’s to-do list. Mr. Karslake has said that the movie is mainly intended as a feature-length primer that can be deployed in arguments with homophobes.

Directorially, the movie is unremarkable, with one conspicuous and unfortunate exception: when Mr. Karslake apes the supercharged empathy of an episode of “Dateline” on NBC, right down to the verging-on-schmaltzy music. Otherwise, the interviews with scholars parsing the Old and New Testaments are paired with the expected archival photographs and illustrations of biblical scenes. “For the Bible Tells Me So” is, strictly speaking, an educational film, with the artlessness that that phrase implies.

The movie’s ensemble portrait of parents (many of them ministers) with adult gay or lesbian children strives to demonstrate that homosexuality is a genetic predisposition, not a lifestyle choice, and that those who quote Leviticus to justify their animosity are guilty not just of intolerance but also of selective piety, an inability to understand historical context and poor reading comprehension. (Abomination, for example, does not mean against God, but against a civilization’s cultural norms.)
the rest-NYT photo