Documentary About LGBT Adventists Now Available to Individuals

by Monte Sahlin

By AT News Team, June 5, 2014

The documentary film Seventh Gay Adventists, after two years of showings at film festivals, churches and community theaters was released this week for individual purchase. It can be purchased or rented through iTunes.

Three young Adventists caught in the tensions between two worlds are followed in the film and interviewed so that they can tell their stories at a personal level. David, Marcos and Sherri each wrestle with how to reconcile their faith, identity and sexuality. The movie "simply tells stories rather than taking an advocacy stance," wrote Dr. William Johnsson, the retired editor of the Adventist Review, after he saw it. "It can, I believe, do much to make Adventists more compassionate," in line with one of the basic recommendations from the General Conference council on sexuality held earlier this year.

David loves Jesus and wants to go to heaven so much that he has spent five years in "ex-gay" therapy trying to change his sexual orientation. But he is falling in love with Colin. Can he ever find a way to integrate his Adventist beliefs and his sexuality?

Marcos was an Adventist pastor in Brazil until he was fired for being gay, but he still feels called to ministry. Sherri wants her children to grow up as Adventists with the beliefs she loves even though the denomination teaches that her long-time relationship with Jill is sinful. How does she explain that to the next generation?

"Whatever one's position regarding homosexuals and the church," states Dr. Roy Gane, a faculty member in the Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary at Andrews University, "this film is worth seeing because it candidly probes issues with real human faces and stories." It is "superb, a poignant and profound experience beyond any I've seen on the subject," wrote Chris Blake, well-known Adventist author and professor of English at Union College.

Brian McLaren, the widely read Evangelical author, has endorse the film although he is not an Adventist. It "isn't just a helpful movie, important for the way it can help congregations of any denomination deal graciously and truthfully with the issue of homosexuality. It's also a beautifully-filmed and artfully-conceived movie. It does what the best art does; it 'humanizes the other.'"

The film can be downloaded at this iTunes web site:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/seventh-gay-adventists/id870863177

"We've intentionally set the prices low to make it affordable for anyone who would benefit from these stories," Daneen Akers told Adventist Today. She produced the documentary with her husband. More information is available on Facebook at www.fb.com/sgamovie and at the Web site www.sgamovie.com, including how to order DVD copies.