This afternoon I watched For the Bible Tells Me So, a documentary about religion and homosexuality. The film didn’t have any atheists, secular humanists, naturalists, post modernists, or any of the usual critics of Christian fundamentalism. Instead, the interviewees were all Jews and Christians, speaking from religious perspectives and largely conservative backgrounds.

For a moment, I’ll stop playing the role of vitriolic atheist and say that if all theists behaved the way that many of the theologians in the film did, then I probably wouldn’t even be writing a blog about atheism. I doubt I’d suddenly start believing in the super natural, but the passion with which I oppose such belief would certainly flag.

For the Bible Tells Me So was a sweeping deconstruction of the religious opposition to being gay. A large part of it follows a group of independent, conservative families that had gay children, and how homophobia and intolerance affected their families after they came out. In all of the cases, religious opposition to being gay initially fractured the family. In the families where they reconnected and relationships were rebuilt, it was only though acceptance and love. Not all of the stories have happy endings, but they do all demonstrate the same painful point: conservative theology is doing a worse number on The American Family™ than homosexuality could ever hope to.

I’m not going to repeat every argument in the film, but I think it’s worthwhile to mention that if you’re looking for a good rebuttal of “but the Bible says it’s a sin!” then there is an extremely thorough deconstruction of every passage that even mentions homosexuality. I challenge any fundamentalist to listen to those arguments without changing their mind. (Remember, these are good Christian folk saying these things, not a damned heretic like myself!)

If you’re looking to buy the DVD, it’s up on Amazon right now. If you’re less concerned with legality, I’ve heard whispered rumours that you can find it through the usual channels.

But before you leave, you should probably take a look at the clip below (from the Hate Lies and Videotape, referenced in For the Bible Tells Me So), in which a young man so eloquently describe why he gay bashes.