The sacred and the profane

Pair of DVDs show God's love for man, and men's love for each other

by Anthony Glassman

With the holiday season slipping into the rearview mirror, some Scrooges think that the season of love and good tidings and cheer is over.

Of course, with three months of arctic temperatures ahead, there’s nothing like a warm cup of love to keep one feeling all toasty.

There are certainly different kinds of love, and the “purer” of those will be the first stop.

Cascade Community Church in Akron created a DVD of their presentation during the Out in Akron cultural festival discussing what the Bible actually says about homosexuality, which is really not much.

The Truth, The Whole Truth and Nothing But is hosted by the church’s music director, Joel A. Brown, and he plays the part of an anchor in a newscast.

His “correspondents” are Rev. Karl A. Selman, the pastor of Cascade, and the minister’s assistant, William Bennet.

Throughout the hour-long DVD, available from their website (which is the movie’s title followed by .net), they cover everything from the story of Sodom and Gomorrah to Paul’s letter to the Romans, and everything in between, giving chapter and verse of why what the religious right says is not necessarily so.

For instance, when the men of Sodom came to Lot’s house and demanded he send out the angels so that they might “know” them, the word used was yadha. This word appears 900 times in the Old Testament and only in ten instances is it a euphemism for sex. In all ten, it is heterosexual contact.

Brown points to Ezekiel, who later in the Bible states flat-out the crimes of Sodom, mainly inhospitality and cruelty.

They also discuss Naomi and Ruth, which Brown notes was a familial relationship, almost certainly not a sexual one, and David and Jonathan, which seemed a wee bit naughtier. After all, as David says, his love for Jonathan surpassed that of women.

They even bring in references to eunuchs, which, in a classic sense, did not always mean a castrato. Another meaning was one who had no interest in women. Matthew discusses the three types of eunuchs: those made by man, those “made from their mother’s womb,” and those who forsook female companionship for “the kingdom of Heaven.”

So, apparently Matthew knew some men just popped out not liking women . . .

The Truth, The Whole Truth and Nothing But is available for $19.95 from the website or by calling 877-398-5678.

Of course, if you want a love that hits a little lower than the heavenly gates, there’s always Big Bang Love: Juvenile A, directed by Japanese übermensch Takashi Miike.

For those who aren’t in the know, Miike has directed 76 films and TV movies since 1991, making him the most prolific openly gay director on the planet. He already has two films slated for release in 2009, and can probably slam out another two before the year ends.

And he’s covered it all: gangster films, sword-and-sorcery, family drama, heartfelt adventures for the kids, everything. His habit of bending genres and presenting a twisted view of the world added up to a complete lack of surprise when he released a gay love story, set in a prison, with virtually no nudity or sex whatsoever.

Jun Ariyoshi (Ryuhei Matsuda, the waiflike samurai in the also very gay film Taboo) is sent to prison after brutally murdering one of his tricks. He is a waiter at a gay bar, and the man he brought home got a little too rough, so he winds up plastered across the bedroom.

At the same time, young tough Shiro Kazuki (Masanobu Ando) is jailed for beating a man to death after an argument. He’s been to the pokey before, for a heinous crime that comes back to haunt him during the course of the film.

Shiro becomes the young Jun’s protector, inflicting swift and dizzying violence upon anyone who would harm his charge.

Naturally, love blooms, and although it is chaste, it is most certainly romantic. In fact, Jun is moved to great anger when he hears a rumor that Shiro has been having sex with another prisoner.

When Shiro turns up dead, however, Jun confesses to the murder. But things are far from what they appear, and the detectives assigned to the case have an incredibly tangled web to unravel before they can find the truth.

Blending Jean Genet, Bertolt Brecht and his own incredibly skewed sensibility, Miike continues his subversive streak of hits with this film, which he calls his masterpiece.

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