It looks like Newsweek has taken a hammer to this documentary, for obvious reasons.  Check this out:

The film is a messy and sometimes downright cheesy look at how the Mormon Church influenced the 2008 California ballot initiative outlawing gay marriage. Elections are admittedly not an easy subject to dramatize, which was one reason that the 2008 HBO filmRecount was such a revelation. The Mormon Proposition drags out the predictable participants: the gay couples angered by the prospect of losing their rights, the starchy Mormon men who cajole (or threaten) their parishioners into contributing to the anti-marriage campaign, the spit-flying arguments between gay protestors and the conservatives who love to hate them, etc.

It is not, unsurprisingly, a fair fight. The film, directed by Reed Cowan and narrated by Milkscreenwriter Dustin Lance Black, turns the debate into the usual game of good versus evil: the gays cry a lot and are largely sympathetic; the Mormons are often shot in a sort of flat, monochromatic palette designed to make them look like they're auditioning to be Professors of the Dark Arts at Hogwarts. It seems impossible that anyone will have their minds changed or even piqued by watching this film. No one will really listen to The Mormon Proposition because we’ve heard it all before.

Ouch!  But there's more:

The funny thing is that in its last 20 minutes The Mormon Propositionturns into a lacerating, shocking, and sadly overpowering film—the kind of film that might make even fundamentalists reconsider gay rights. This is the section where the movie essentially stops talking about Prop 8 and starts talking about how the Mormon church's attitude toward homosexuality in general. We meet the families of young gay men who killed themselves—including one symbol-conscious man who shot himself in a church—because its families rejected them. We hear from Mormon men who describe the shock-therapy techniques used on them by church members—Christian-minded procedures like showing gay pornography while force-feeding ipecac, attaching electrodes to genetalia, and lobotomies. 

What the film does by ending this way is subtly draw a line from opposition to gay marriage to homophobic insanity. Sure, semi-reasonable people can disagree about whether gays and lesbians should be allowed to marry—if your whole religious worldview is built on the concept of hetereosexual unions, letting go isn’t easy. But when you start taking rights away from people (which is what Prop 8 did in California), when you start implying that some people are less equal than others, you allow a sort of trickle-down hatred that seeps into all our lives. At its best, which is only at the end, The Mormon Proposition reminds us—no, insists that we remember—that demonizing a group doesn’t make the world a better place. But allowing people to be happy does.

I hope this movie makes its way to my town.  I'm not one for book burnings.  I've always felt that the best cure for sloppy speech is better speech.  If somebody tells a boatful of lies, bring a boatful of truth.  How hard is that?

Okay, so Newsweek took a dim view towards this flick.  It should be interesting to see how the rest of the "liberal media" lines up.  Will they crucify the Mormons or crucify the filmmakers?

Do you have an actual link to the article?

Jun 21, 2010 -- 10:01AM, UwishUwereMe wrote:

Mieeapolis Gay Pride happens this weekend. 

Believe it or not, I Go back to the Farm even though I am invited by many people to go.  It's just NOT my kind of scene. 

BUT, aparently there is going to be a Rally at the Saint Paul Temple... I'd almost want to be here just to see it...

But to me that's kind of SAD as Saturday is a pretty busy day at the Temple here in one of Saint Pauls outer suburbs. 

I can completely understand the frustration... but interrupting peoples' intimate Saturday Worship and probably no one there had anything directly to do with prop 8...

I say I agree with them being angry, but don't take it out on the average Joe that really has nothing to do with it.

Minneapolis Gay Pride is typically one of the top 4 or 5 largest in the country... we have people from all over the US, Canada, and other parts of the globe that come for it.

I think its great that they can have a week of celebrating who they are but I have reservations about them going to the Temple to protest.

Sadly, a lot of the more radical gay rights types don't see things that way.

In fact, whenever I bring up the fact that violence was done to 8 supporters in the aftermath of the bill's passage, the ones I've spoken with inevitably get in lockstep with each other and start chanting "they deserved more than what they got".

I've actually seen people all but applaud the folks who perpetrated that anthrax scare.

And these folks wonder why so many people in the US see homosexuals as frightening and deviant.

Jun 21, 2010 -- 10:28AM, UwishUwereMe wrote:

Well, there is a GAY campaign going around here trying to encourage the Gays to either write letters to the LDS Church expressibe their frustrations or talk to local leaders.  There is a large group of LGBT people here working to STOP the Temple protest. 

I would say its a small minority of Gays actually getting violent.  Most are patient and are people wanting dialog and the ability to talk respectfully.

What's funny is that Bishops here have said they just don't want gays to use the TERM "Marriage."  Many of our LDS leaders have stated that gay people and their partners deserve civil benefits. 

So... I think both sides need to chill out.  Look at the big picture and make some compromises.

That's my point.

In fact, the radical anti-8 types who committed all those crimes and sent all those death threats did more to justify the passage of 8 than any of 8's supporters owing to the fact that they fed into the existing stereotypes.

Jun 21, 2010 -- 12:14PM, UwishUwereMe wrote:

UWUWM: NO, THAT'S NOT HOW IT WORKS.  IF A FEW BAD APPLES CAUSE TROUBLE AND MISCHIEF, YOU DON'T PUNISH AN ENTIRE COMMUNITY. 

Let me explain something.

I'm an MBA student with a minor in marketing.

I have experience with psychology, sociology, anthropology, and criminal justice.

In short, I live and breath public relations and interpersonal psychology 24/7/365.

Human nature is to fall for the "vocal minority vs. silent majority" trap.

If one person from a group is a jerk while a hundred people from that group are nice, the public iwll fixate on the jerk and ignore the others.

In this case, you had a small number of 8 opponents who, in the wake of the bill's passage, responded with violence, intimidation, and terroristic threats.

Forgotten were the thousands who took part in peaceful demonstrations and letter-writing campaigns.

Making matters worse is the fact that among those people who would be supportive of seeing 8 be repealed, you have even more people who are willing to condone violence and other such acts (or at least pretend that such incidents never occurred).

This feeds into the commonly-held stereotype that homosexuals have an "agenda" that they wish to force on the nation and that liberal Democrats (who sided with the anti-8 crowd in large numbers) are all too eager to suppress the voice of those who disagree with them.

Thus, rather than go "Oh jive; we've got a few nutbars we need to keep an eye on", people go "Oh jive; there's a whole subculture of mentally unstable criminals who would gladly kill us all if they knew where we lived."

Hence my point: as much as people want to bash the church for its part in 8, people also need to be honest enough to admit that what took place in the middle of the aftermath was uncalled for.