ΟΙΚΟΓΕΝΕΙΕΣ 1

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FAMILY FUNDAMENTALS
What happens when religiously conservative Christian parents have children who have “become homosexual?” Family Fundamentals is filmmaker Arthur Dong's personal attempt to answer that explosive question. Armed with a digital camera, Dong takes viewers into the private and public lives of three families who have responded to gay offspring by actively opposing homosexuality. “Heartfelt but evenhanded, Family Fundamentals is a battlefield report from America's disquieting culture war over gay issues” – Los Angeles Times.

Family Fundamentals goes to the heart of today's debate over homosexuality, where the personal is inextricably — and dramatically — bound up in the political. In today's contemporary society, sometimes even the most liberal families must find it discomfiting when gay children come out. For fundamentalist Christian families, the event can be polarizing and devastating.

Dong tackles his subject by looking into three divided families. Susan Jester is the lesbian daughter of Kathleen Bremner, a Pentecostal church leader who responded to her daughter's coming out by forming a Christian parents' ministry and organizing the San Diego Christian Trauma and Sexuality Conferences. In collaboration with such groups as Exodus and Focus on the Family, Bremner promotes faith and "reparative therapy" as a cure for homosexuality. She is not shy about expressing her views of homosexuality, and in exhorting her daughter, who is conversely outspoken in support of gay civil rights, to repent.

Brett Mathews, a former Air Force First Lieutenant discharged for his homosexual orientation, is the son of a Mormon bishop in rural Erda, Utah. Mathews' family reacts to his coming out by sending him a steady stream of letters calling on him to change. His grandmother's remarriage brings a challenge and a crisis as Mathews returns to his boyhood home for the first time since declaring his homosexuality.

Brian Bennett's story reveals a different kind of family — and a surprising chain of events. From 1977 to 1989, Bennett served as chief of staff, campaign manager and legislative aide to former California Congressman Bob Dornan — one of the nation's harshest and most vocal opponents to gay rights. So close was Bennett to Dornan, with whom he shared a Catholic upbringing and political views on everything except his closeted homosexuality, that Brian became a virtual member of the Dornan family. He lived with them for six years, calling Dornan by the family nickname, "Poppy." When Bennett came out in 1997, that close relationship was abruptly terminated and he was left to struggle with the contradictions of being a gay Republican and of still loving a father figure who rejected him for his sexual orientation.
Director: Arthur Dong

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DADDY & PAPA

DADDY & PAPA is a one hour documentary exploring the personal, cultural, and political impact of gay men who are making a decision that is at once traditional and revolutionary: to raise children themselves. Taking us inside four gay male families, DADDY & PAPA traces the day-to-day challenges and the larger, critical issues that inevitably intersect their private lives—the ambiguous place of interracial families in America, the wonder and precariousness of surrogacy and adoption, the complexities of marriage and divorce within the gay community, and the legality of their own parenthood.
As fathers, these men must take on numerous challengers: from conservatives who regard them the very antithesis of family; to average Americans who believe mothers are essential to a child’s development; to the gay community, where hard-won independence and sexual freedoms often clash with the demands of parenting. The legal hurdles alone can be daunting—the list of countries restricting international adoption by single men or gay couples is rapidly expanding, and many states are outlawing gay adoption altogether. Last year, Utah and Mississippi joined Florida in banning gay adoption. And with similar legislation pending in other states, the attack on gay parental rights is steadily growing.Despite all these obstacles, America is in the midst of a “gayby boom,” with thousands of gay men across the country making the conscious decision to become fathers. DADDY & PAPA enters into the heart of the debate over gay fatherhood, examining the value of alternative households, the effects of gender and sexual orientation on children, and the changing face of the American family.
Director: Johnny Symons