Out In The Silence

When Joe Wilson married his husband Dean Hammer in Washington DC he put an wedding announcement in the local newspaper of Oil City Pennsylvania, his small home town, which was met with such an outpouring of vitriol and hate. However amongst all the abuse also came a cry for help in the form of a letter from Kathy Springer the mother of C.J. a 16 year old high school boy who was being relentlessly persecuted just for being gay. It started Joe thinking whether attitudes had changed at all back home in the past 25 years since he left so he sets off to Oil City … and C.J. ….. to investigate.He soon discovers that most of the misinformation and scaremongering about gays comes from Diane Gramley a local woman who is the president of the American Family Association of Pennsylvania and it is her constant battery of emails that actively encourages the community at large to be part of what she terms as a ‘call to action’. Her ubiquitous Association circulated a video stirring up irrational fear and warning about the perils of allowing ‘the homosexual agenda’ that was taking over the whole community if people didn’t fight back.

Meanwhile Joe encourages Kathy to fight back, and when she couldn’t get the school to tackle the discrimination that CJ suffered, she made him leave and registered him in a cyber school, and then took the matter to the local School Board. It took time, patience, and help from others and when the Board refused to budge, the ACLU helped her to bring a successful action against them.

This heartwarming film is about courage. And lots of it. When one feels trapped and alone in the world, and safer keeping silent than being one’s self, it takes a C.J. and his mother, to show to us all what being really out and proud is all about. Theirs ends up being a happy story and we see in this wonderful movie that director Joe Wilson has helped make people re-think and sometimes even doing the seemingly impossible such as getting an evangelical pastor go from hate to understanding.

Sitting here in the comfort of a strong community, it’s a gentle reminder that elsewhere even in these so-called enlightened times gay people still have to fight for something that the fundamentalists call an ‘agenda’ but we know it simply as our lives.