Review of Latter Days (2004) by Cdub Y — 10 Feb 2007

First off, this movie has an [i]excellent[/i] soundtrack, including, at the end, one of my favorite Toad the Wet Sprocket songs. We even have an explanation for about half the songs, given that one of the characters is a struggling musician.

You can't know gay people without knowing some pretty horrible coming out stories. The whole range, often--a friend of my sister's was disowned by his parents when he came out in his sophomore year in college. A very expensive college. He ended up having to charge his sophomore year, and he can't get credit now, or couldn't, last I knew.

At that, very few of my gay friends come from die-hard religious backgrounds of any persuasion. Very few of them have had the whole "you're going to Hell and aren't my child anymore" experience. It does happen, though, and far more often than it should.

God is Love, they say. And then, so often, they use God as an excuse to hate. As stated in this film, the LDS church didn't give blacks the priesthood until the 70s. Gays and women still can't have it. They aren't equal.

Sometimes, the miracle is the kiss in the snow. It doesn't matter, exactly, who you kiss. The miracle is the love behind it. It's true. God is Love. But Love is God, too. Love is a gift from Heaven, and we are intended to share it. The colour of skin doesn't matter, though an awful lot of people were behind laws against love shared between people of different skin colour. The gender doesn't matter, though an awful lot of people are now behind laws against love shared between people of the same gender.

And oh, I miss Graham. That love is a sacrament, even if we aren't married. I couldn't love him more if we were.