Zander’s Weblog

Surely one of the best soap operas I’ve ever seen! A delightful black comedy drenched in Texas drawl with not a little wisdom.

Did you believe things as a child that you have since learned are not true? Have you changed and grown during the last 10 or 20 years? Has the world changed? Was there such a thing as laparoscopic surgery or the iPhone or a computer disk drive with no moving parts 20 years ago? And when you go to a foreign country do you get the impression that people are not like you–that they think and speak and behave quite differently? So now try to place yourself back 2000 years, into a very different culture–one struggling to survive in a difficult environment–and try to imagine what they were thinking when they wrote what they did in the bible. Do you think they spoke like kids in California today–that they used words in the same way–to mean the same things we do? They didn’t even have a word or concept for homosexual (word not created until 1869).
Today it is well established that one’s genes (not even imagined in 33 AD) are more important in determining sexual orientation than, say, right or left-handedness. And that the prenatal hormonal environment has a strong influence (as a woman bears more male children, the odds of gay offspring climb since she builds antibodies to male structures).
Many people have little cause to concern themselves with these questions, but if you do this is the best recent film on the subject and well worth a viewing.

I thought the cinematography was great–the scenery is beautiful. The music was well done for the film as well. Now if there were just a feature on the DVD whereby one could remove the script and actors the film would be a winner! While it’s true that many gay people grow up in hostile family environments, including brain-dead christian fundamentalist ones, I doubt that many would watch this film or find it helpful or entertaining. If you fall into this category there are better resources for certain–tip-toe into your local library and read John Boswell’s book or one of the newer works on the subject. Or, better yet, go directly to the books by Joseph Campbell and put the whole ridiculous dilemma in a proper perspective.

A powerful argument for gay people not to live in Mississippi, and for those who do to lose weight! The interview with the “Reverend” Fred Phelps was reminiscent of watching Hitler cut loose on the Jews–I think the pathology is the same. Finally, I thought that the film presented a very skewed sample of the population–those who not only haven’t moved away from MS (!) but also whose social lives revolve around a bar scene or drag performances–so don’t expect enlightenment.

An HBO lazy documentary showing a rather random swath of true believers. Seeing Ted Haggard lie his ass off all through the film was priceless. One viewing is plenty to convince me there is no god: if she existed she probably would have created people more capable of thinking their way out of this bizarre cage called religion. The only explanation for the existence of religion is that we evolved from monkeys.