Jesus Meets the Gay Man

There are cogent arguments based on theological, sociological, and biological scholarship that reject faith-based homophobia. "Jesus Meets the Gay Man", a documentary by Jean-Claude Lafond and Timothy F H Doucette, seems utterly ignorant of all that.

Less a documentary than a mishmash of styles and approaches, "Jesus Meets the Gay Man" starts as a YouTube clip-littered home movie that talks about Lafond's struggles as a gay youth in rural Canada -- struggles that continued, to his chagrin, even when he moved to a big city. The most damaging part of that struggle might have been when he joined a church and tried to become straight. Needless to say, a rich man would have an easier time of getting into Heaven than a gay man would have entering the bogus promised land of heterosexuality.

But the experience seems to have ignited a question for Lafond: Why is it, exactly, that many sects of Christianity have such a problem with gays and lesbians? (Or, rather, with LGBTTIQQ2SA people... an acronym used jokingly in the film but in which, oddly, the "A" stands for "Allies" rather than "Asexual.")

Lafond strikes out in all directions at once in a quest to better understand what Jesus himself would think of gays, and to reconcile the Christian message of love and compassion with the Christian practices of hate speech and exclusion. The result is tedious, unfocused, and amateurish, though it has to be said there are some funny bits, thanks to interviews with comedians like Daniel Murphy (who envisions Jesus and the disciples as normal guys hanging around and talking theo-philosophical trash: "I'm not saying they were smoking a joint, but there's the burning bush - what is that?") and Scott Thompson of The Kids in the Hall, who acknowledges that being gay has cost him career opportunities but who also frets that political correctness is taking too much fun out of the world. ("Be faggy!" was, he relates, his advice to straight guys in a sketch comedy workshop afraid to imitate gay men by affecting stereotypically gay speech.)

Equally funny are the film's "Biblical re-creations" in which Jesus and company swig wine on the shores of the Sea of Galilee (the disciples speculate the Jesus is an alien or, perhaps, a Jedi), raise Lazarus and then heal a sickly female believer, and interact with an armored servant whose master has sent for Jesus to heal a beloved slave boy (who is also, we're given to understand, the master's same-sex lover). There's a comic episode in which gay people get VIP passes to Heaven (for being kind and charitable during their earthly lives) while a couple of Christians stand by, stunned: "What the hell!" they exclaim, having always thought the rules were simple and inflexible: Gays burn, Christians go to Heaven. But, no. Looking over their earthly accomplishments on an iPad, the guardians of the Pearly Gates tot them up in just a few words: "Booze... porno... more booze. More porno."

Less intentionally funny are the passages one supposes were intended to be poignant or hard-hitting: Interviewees that go wildly off topic; an insanely inept poem (or something) about Jesus weeping at the sins of the world; an indecipherably bleary mini-drama about a hate crime. It's like watching a rainbow version of "Reefer Madness," if "Reefer Madness" had been put through a variety show blender.

In short, this is a documentary with good intentions but no clue. In fact, you have to wonder whether this even is a documentary. Between skits in which Jesus works as a bartender (changing bottled water into cocktails with a wave of the hand and then curing departing patrons of their drunkenness before they can hop into their cars and rack up DUIs), video clips of American evangelical pastors calling for gays to be murdered in the name of God, and weird little snippets of a fake televangelist show called "Welcome to Goddle with Your Host Moses," this project feels like a feature-length, all-purpose audition tape. You might laugh out loud, but you won't learn much.

"Jesus Meets the Gay Man"
DVD
$17.99
http://www.shop.breakingglasspictures.com/Breaking-Glass-Pictures_c5.htm?page=all