Educational Media Reviews Online

The mass shootings at the Pulse nightclub in 2016 had a personal resonance for filmmaker Jessica Devaney. The Orlando, Fla. club had a largely gay audience, and Devaney is a lesbian who grew up in central Florida. And given the possibility that this was a hate crime against gays, Devaney recalled her childhood and young adult years in a fundamentalist church, where she was a Moral Majority member, marched against abortion, and took a True Love Waits pledge to stay chaste until marriage. She also recalled the church’s position that homosexuality was wrong, although the church said you should “hate the sin, and love the sinner.”

On her 34th birthday, Devaney returned to the church to which she was once a faithful attendee. She found that church’s view on homosexuality had not changed. The pastor, who had grown up in the church and knew Devaney, said a “homosexual lifestyle” was “not honoring God.” But she found more doubt about the issue from other religious faithful. Devaney’s mother struggles to reconcile the fundamentalist views with the fact she has two gay children whom she loves. And megachurch pastor Jack Hunter has started preaching that the congregation needs to re-examine its views on homosexuality.

Love the Sinner is a film version of the type of brief essay you might see in a newspaper opinion page. It raises an issue, and brings in the author’s personal connection to the issue, but doesn’t offer any answers. Devaney clearly felt she had to put something out to express herself, but this video is like a rough draft. She could spend a lot more time on her own background and the role of religion, and fundamentalist churches in particular, in the gay rights struggle, and she may do so in the future. For the work at hand, the video is recommended, but more as part of a streaming video package than as an individual DVD purchase.