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You say “either” and I say “neither”
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Practically everybody pronounces the name of Bill Maher’s 2007 movie as if it were spelled r-e-l-i-j-i-l-o-u-s. They’re missing the point. If you pronounce Religulous the way it’s spelled, you realize that it’s a combination of religious and ridiculous.
Maher tries very hard to prove how ridiculous some religious beliefs are by questioning people of faith on their beliefs. But his obvious bias stacks the deck against them. Even worse, there is just too much Bill Maher bloviating about his skepticism and not enough substantive proof to back up his opinions. Maher is more amused by his own smug wit than I was, even though I’m prone to agree with him.A similar stacking of the deck against the religious is Stanley Kramer’s Inherit the Wind (1960), based on the 1925 Scopes monkey trial about the teaching of evolution in Tennessee schools. The cynics—portrayed by Spencer Tracy, as an incarnation of the real Clarence Darrow (below far left), and Gene Kelly, the iconoclast H.L. Mencken—have the best lines.
When he's asked what he considers holy, Tracy replies: “The individual human mind. In a child’s ability to master the multiplication table, there is more holiness than all your shouted hosannas and holy holies. An idea is more important than a monument and the advancement of man’s knowledge more miraculous than all the sticks turned to snakes and the parting of the waters.”
They also grab your sympathy because the narrow-minded fundamentalists are against them..jpg)
These zealots, including Fredric March (channeling William Jennings Bryant. left) and Claude Akins (as a fictional man of the cloth), are so bigoted, unfair, unfeeling, and, in the case of the March character, so senile that you can’t help rooting against them.
March’s “best” line is this feeble joke: “Do you hear that, friends? Old World monkeys! According to Bertram Cates, we don't even descend from good American monkeys!”
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Kelly says of him: “He's the only man I know who can strut sitting down.” And “how do you write an obituary about a man who's been dead for thirty years?”Only at the very end does the Bryant character get his due: “A giant once lived in that body. But [he] got lost. Because he was looking for God too high up and too far away.”
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In the documentary For the Bible Tells Me So, director/co-author Daniel G. Karslake lets the gay-bashing fundamentalists speak for themselves. Or should I say, instead, “fulminate”? Their hatred of homosexuality knows no bounds—same-sex marriage is even compared to the Holocaust. People like James Dobson (Focus on the Family) and Jimmy Swaggart, not to mention Miss Day Without Sunshine herself (Anita Bryant, who you'll no doubt remember from Milk, 2008), invariably quote Leviticus 18:22 ("You shall not lie with a male as with a woman. It is an abomination."). As is pointed out several times in the film, they ignore all the other abominations in Leviticus, like cutting your hair, eating shellfish and pork, wearing material woven of two kinds of material, not to mention Jesus’s call to give away all you own to the poor, not to commit adultery (or even lust in your heart) or divorce.
They also cite Paul’s epistle to the Romans: “For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature; and likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was meet.” (1:26-27)
But they ignore his first letter to the Corinthians: “Love is patient, love is kind. It is not jealous, (love) is not pompous, it is not inflated, it is not rude, it does not seek its own interests, it is not quick-tempered, it does not brood over injury, it does not rejoice over wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.... So faith, hope, love remain, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” (13:4-7, 13)
Nor do they pay any attention to Jesus’s observation, “Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” (Matt. 25:45)
And devout Christians that they are, they never cite Jesus’s golden rule: “Therefore, whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them….” (Matt, 7:12)
They are, to put it bluntly, what I call "lip-service Christians."
Why do Christian fundamentalists hate gays? It can’t be because the Bible tells them so, when they ignore so many other things that the Bible tells them. The Bible is simply a way of justifying their behavior, which comes not from the Good Book, but from their own fear.
Researchers at the University of Georgia conducted an experiment involving 35 homophobic men and 29 non-homophobic men. All described themselves as exclusively heterosexual both in terms of sexual arousal and experience. When shown videos of heterosexual or lesbian sex, both groups were aroused. But when shown videos of gay sex, only the homophobic men had erections.
One possible conclusion is that homophobia is a way of denying their own homosexual tendencies. How can they possibly be gay when they hate gays so much?
As the authors note, "anxiety has been shown to enhance arousal and erection," so it is also possible that "a response to homosexual stimuli in these men is a function of the threat condition rather than sexual arousal per se."
Either way, their homophobia has nothing to do with the Bible.
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For the Bible Tells Me So gives equal consideration to those who have struggled with their own homosexuality or those of a loved one. Some are famous, like Gene Robinson, the first openly gay man ordained as an Episcopal bishop. The daughter of former Senator Dick Gephardt remained a beloved member of her family after she came out (shown on the DVD cover).Not so lucky was the 19-year-old woman whose rejection by her religious mother ended in her suicide. As a result, although not immediately, the mother became a gay activist.
These stories, and many others, are inspiring, heart-breaking, provocative and empowering.
For The Bible Tells Me So will be shown at the First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia, 2125 Chestnut Street, during Philly Pride week. Each showing can only accommodate 40 people, Admission is free.
Friday, June 5th at 7:00 pm and 10:00 pm
Saturday, June 6th at 1:00 pm, 7:00 pm and 10:00 pm
Sunday, June 7th at 1:00 pm
You can watch the movie trailer here.
More About:
Movies ·
Homophobia ·
Christianity ·
Fundamentalism ·
Religulous ·
Inherit the Wind ·
evolution ·
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