“8: The Mormon Proposition” opened on Friday and plays for one week only in Atlanta

Church, state and anti-gay marriage hate

“8: The Mormon Proposition” takes an in-depth look at the Mormon church’s efforts to pass Proposition 8, the ballot measure that ended gay marriage in California.

After a screening in Atlanta in April as part of the Atlanta Film Festival’s “Pink Peach” series, the documentary has returned for a one-week run at the Midtown Art Cinema.

Narrated by Mormon-born, Oscar-winning “Milk” screenwriter Dustin Lance Black, the film features Spencer Jones and Tyler Barrick, a Mormon couple who’d been together for six years and married in San Francisco the day it became legal.

“8” focuses on the campaign orchestrated and funded by the Mormons through various fronts, such as the National Organization for Marriage.

The church, which once faced persecution for its belief in polygamy, pressured its adherents to donate sacrificially.

As the official movie description explains:

Director Reed Cowan initially planned on making a documentary about gay teen homelessness and suicide in Utah but soon realized that the homophobia that prompts otherwise loving parents to kick teenagers out of their homes is deep-seated in current Mormon ideology. Cowan, with his fellow filmmakers, experienced what it was like to grow up gay in Utah in the Mormon faith, then turned their attention to the historic campaign by the Mormon Church to pass Proposition 8 in California believing that it was the cornerstone of an ideology that has worked for decades “to damage gay people and their causes.”

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