GAY AND CHRISTIAN IN AMERICA

GAY AND CHRISTIAN IN AMERICA: Documentary to help Christians focus on the facts and not rhetoric concerning LGBT issues.

May 1, 2009

Soulforce was founded in 1998 by Rev. Mel White and his partner, Gary Nixon. Gary was raised as an evangelical Christian, White fought to 'overcome' his homosexuality for decades with prayer, psychotherapy, exorcism, electric shock, marriage and family.

His struggle to understand and accept his homosexuality and his Christian faith are described in his book, Stranger at the Gate: To Be Gay and Christian in America.

In 1997, he was awarded the ACLU's National Civil Liberties Award for his efforts to apply the "soul force" principles of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. to the struggle for justice for sexual minorities.

“SoleJourney,” is the new documentary by Kate Burns and Sheila E. Schroeder, that documents the protest efforts of LGBT-rights group Soulforce, which uses nonviolent resistance and creative acts of civil disobedience to oppose religious and political oppression.

The film begins by examining the dangerous political policy making and anti-LGBT rhetoric of Dr. James Dobson and Focus on the Family, the well-funded, well-connected evangelical Christian organization.

A culmination of two years of advocacy and action, SoleJourney concludes with the ongoing "Focus on the Facts" campaign. Participants show how they hope to help America connect the dots between the false and defamatory rhetoric that flows from Focus on the Family and the unending crusade against the rights of LGBT people and their families.