Homosaywhat

It seems strange to think that no one has made a documentary chronicling the ugly history of homophobia in America—until now. Filmmaker Craig Bettendorf’s flawed but also prescient and necessary documentary attempts to tell this often-disturbing true story. The film is concerned with what Bettendorf refers to as the 'institutional' homophobia that despite recent pro-LGBT advancements, still rears its ugly head in 21st-century America. Bettendorf’s film begins in unsettling fashion with uber-creepy clips from 'educational' public service announcements in the 1950s and 1960s, ostensibly meant for a middle American family audience, which explicitly portray homosexuals as not just mere deviants but literally predators and molesters bordering on serial kidnappers and murderers. Bettendorf also has the guts to (rightfully) compare this anti-gay indoctrination in mainstream mid-century America to the sick propaganda tactics that Goebbels and the Nazis used against the Jews in mid-1930s Germany. Bettendorf moves chronologically through this sordid history, which would have a fight on its hands in each successive decade: the 1970s saw anti-gay activist Anita Bryant using her high public profile to squelch gay rights legislation in Florida; the 1980s saw the Reagan Administration’s failure to take the AIDS crisis seriously, which cost thousands of lives; and the 1990s and 2000s saw the struggle to legalize gay marriage, which didn’t happen until 2015. But as Bettendorf’s film makes all too clear, even in the supposedly enlightened post-millennial age, you still have bible-thumping bigots. Take Oklahoma congresswoman Sally Kern, for instance, coming out publicly against homosexuals, branding them as a bigger social problem than terrorists. Most American anti-gay sentiment, of course, has a religious foundation. But Bettendorf brings in his own religious representative, Rev. Rusty Smith, who apologizes on behalf of the church’s treatment of the LGBT community over the years and intelligently debunks biblical myths about homosexuality and the Bible. The film’s only drawback is that it tends to rely on the same handful of commentary sources to reinforce its central thesis of American institutional homophobia. And it completely overlooks some key moments in LGBT history—the 1969 Stonewall Riots, for example, which were sparked by anti-gay police brutality—and how the mainstream media routinely slandered the LGBT community at the time. But on balance, Homosaywhat is an important contribution to LGBT cultural activism. Recommended. (M. Sandlin)