“All truth passes through three stages,” Ky Dickens, a producer for commercial MK Films, says in her documentary “Fish Out of Water.” “First it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. And third, it is accepted as being self-evident.”
“Fish Out of Water” screened Sunday as the documentary centerpiece of the 29th Reeling: Chicago Lesbian & Gay International Film Festival.
Dickens interviewed religious figures, scholars and everyday Americans in more than 20 states about shifting religious, social and political views on homosexuality.
“I was surprised at how many ministers were will willing to speak up for gay and lesbians, especially in the rural south and Midwest,” Dickens says. “A few denominations in the protestant church are close to schism because so many church members disagree with their church’s stance on homosexuality.”
Dickens traces the seeds of “Fish Out of Water” to when she came out to her sorority sisters at Vanderbilt University in the late ?90s. “They reacted with unexpected judgment and religiously fueled homophobia,” Dickens says.
She turned to the bible for its take on homosexuality, and found there wasn’t much there. “Not only is the word ?homosexual’ never used in the Bible, as the word didn’t exist in Greek or Hebrew, but the verses used to condemn gays have been grossly misinterpreted,” she says.
“I instantly knew I wanted to make a film on the topic as there were very little tools out there that broke down this topic in an entertaining, accessible way.”
