Posted on 10/15/2009 5:30:44 PM PDT by stan_sipple
The filmmakers want to crack open your heart.
So that even if you've heard -- or you think you've heard -- everything you need to hear about being Christian and being gay, about feeling unwelcome in a church pew, you will be willing to open your heart.
To listen again.
"We're deep believers in the power of hearing someone's story," Daneen Akers says.
Daneen is a new mom and a former English teacher. Now she makes documentaries with her husband, Stephen Eyer.
The California couple made a movie about fibromyalgia a few years ago.
Now they're traveling the country for three months, gathering stories for a second film -- a documentary with an irreverent title about a serious subject.
They're calling it "Seventh-Gay Adventists: A film about love, sex, and eternal life."
They stayed in Lincoln last weekend with their baby, Lily, and their video equipment.
And while they were here, people told the filmmakers what it's like to love a church.
And not feel loved back.
The Seventh-day Adventist Church takes an official position on homosexuality. It's a-love-the-sinner-hate-the-sin position, the couple says. Not so different from positions some other denominations take.
Not as damning as some others.
So why single it out?
Because Daneen and Stephen grew up in the Seventh-day Adventist Church and taught in Seventh-day Adventist schools. Both had grandfathers who were SDA pastors.
Adventist is what they know.
It's a culture, almost an ethnicity, Daneen says.
The church and its members proudly stand apart.
Adventists worship on Saturdays. They don't eat meat. Their children attend SDA schools and colleges. They gather at camp meetings. Become close as a community.
Robb Crouch misses all that.
The 39-year-old Lincoln man heard about the filmmakers through an advocacy group for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered Adventists called Kinship.
And on Saturday, he sat down to tell Daneen and Stephen his story.
He told them about struggling with depression after he came out in 1997. About his fears of losing his family and his job.
And his desire to change the church he grew up in -- and misses.
"It was really amazing to know that Daneen and Steve and the company behind them are interested in giving our community -- gay Adventists -- a voice," Robb said a few days after his interview with the filmmakers.
"It will enable us to share who we are with a larger audience."
In Lincoln, the filmmakers stayed with the mother of a gay man, a woman who spent years feeling alone with her secret.
They interviewed local SDA faculty members. They talked to gay church members and to gay students still not ready to come out.
A theme has emerged from all of their interviews here and across the country.
"Everybody said they prayed mightily to be changed," Daneen says. "They knew how hard it would be for their families and their churches."
And they couldn't make sense of the notion of love the sinner, hate the sin, because that was who they were -- the way God, it seemed, had seen fit to make them.
"You can't believe that God rejects part of you without feeling damaged," says Daneen. "It affects you in profound ways."
So they filmed gay Adventists talking about attempting suicide, about feeling alone and alienated.
"Struggling so hard to reconcile their faith with their sexuality," Stephen says.
"They just want understanding within the church and compassion."
That's what they hope the film accomplishes. Change in the church. Change in people who see their gay friends and neighbors telling their stories.
In making their documentaries, Stephen does most of the camera work. Daneen asks questions.
She sat across from a gay man last weekend, and listened to him talk.
It's not about sex, he said. It's about love.
"He longingly misses his church. He aches for his church."
His heart cracked open long ago.
“We’re deep believers in the power of hearing someone’s story,...”
Huh?
I’m sorry, but God does not accept us fulfilling our desires if they are not what He wants. I might be tempted by someone’s wife, but it is a sin for me to seek after her.
It is also a sin to engage in homosexuality. You may be attracted to someone of the same sex, but it is a sin to allow yourself to have homosexual relations. It is not a sin to be tempted and to not engage.
This is Bible 101 stuff.
Regardless, it's my humble opinion that each of us will have to answer for our own lives and behavior. Goodness knows I'll be way too busy shuckin’ and jivin’ trying to handle my own life to wish ill on anyone else!
Face it. If any one of us could live a life free of sin then there would be no need for a savior. Everyone is going to sin, before they are saved and after they are saved. All the way to the grave. God knows this and thankfully made arrangements to take care of it, long before any of sinned!
I am reminded of Paul, when he lamented understandng why he didn't do the things he knew he should do, but did did do the things he knew he shouldn't do. Boy is that the story of MY life!
The interesting thing to me about such a documentary is the desperation of people to belong to institutions that don’t want them. Now I certainly understand that people fight for an education or an opportunity to work or the right to get married. But why fight to be accepted into a private institution that is rather a figure of fun to the great majority of Americans who don’t agree with Seventh Day Adventist beliefs? In their hearts I think the dissenters simply believe they are right and the traditionalists are wrong, so they have a duty to stand firm on principle. It will be very interesting to watch the evolution of the belief that homosexual behavior is sinful in this church and in the Catholic church. Maybe someday homosexual behavior will lose its sinful classification just as loaning money for interest did.
I don't get this. Why would he fear losing his job? I've only worked for corporations or small business in my life. Gays were completely tolerated. Maybe in small family or private businesses it is a problem?
This is basically because small towns tend to be conservative and most people go to church. To be gay shows you are strange and you do something disgusting that is wrong in the eyes of God, so why are we supporting you here at this business when everyone in town knows you are a fudgepacker. People at church, the local store, etc. will tend to stay away from someone who seems most likely to be the one person in town carrying the AIDS virus.
I came from a small town. This is just not acceptable in school or at places of work there. Part of it is the unusual nature of the activity. The rest is from discomfort, fear, disgust, etc. I totally understand. With livestock, you don't tend to keep the gay animals around as stud because there is something wrong with them.
Sounds like judge noonans early research into how the church changed its mind on usury.still there is huge gulf between moral business practices and sexuality
is it me or do all these incomplete sentences bug anyone else? If the dinosaur media are going to get bailout. $ reporters should pass remedial grammar
It’s not just you. Editors ignore content AND grammar. Perhaps that’s the way the owners want it...
what bs, when you go on vacation the paper asks you to donate your papers to the schools. what would your old school high school english teacher say?
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