Set in the present day of 2014 Christian reporter Christopher Hunt as a punishment for upsetting powers that be gets a puff assignment that won't guarantee him a Pulitzer reporting on his city's first gay pride parade. That's the first thing I had a problem with in Right To Believe, the notion that even in 2014 I can't think of a large metropolitan area in the USA that does not have a Gay Pride event. Still that's our premise so Hunt meets with Timothy Paul Taylor the chief organizer.
It isn't long before his Christianity flares up and Hunt and Taylor are at it. But they decide to meet again to hash out their differences. What it comes down to is that Hunt kind of likes Taylor but that Creator/Deity says in the Bible that gay is no good and we have a perfect right to voice our opinions after all we love you and are just trying to save you from eternal damnation.
To prove that a distraught man with a gun walks into their cafe meeting place threatening to kill Taylor, after all his brother died of AIDS and we know gays are AIDS carriers. Good Christian that he is Hunt intervenes Jesus like and tells him to go and not to contemplate the sin of murder.
In this day and age having lost the debate on gay marriage, Fundamentalist Christianity has now taken to the parapets and now defend their right to speak out against sin as the Bible says it is. Now why the Creator/Deity of the entire vast universe is interested in the alternative sexual attractions of one of his creations on one dust speck in said universe has never been really answered. The book records He said it was it is wrong.
So it's not gays who died by the thousands because of an uncaring government, it's not gays who were maimed and killed by people raised in a culture to think that same sex attraction and acting thereon is worse than murder, no indeed. It's Fundamentalist Christians who are being ridiculed because the basic lunacy of their position, they are the true martyrs.
What this film does do is present in Hunt a 'true Christian'. When it's pointed out that a lot of terrible things have been done to individuals and cultures in the name of religion, this film and many a believer I've run into say that those who did these things aren't really Christians. That sweeps away a lot of indictable offenses by many people against any religion let alone Christianity. But Hunt is how these people see themselves or like to project themselves to the world.
As I write this review Fundamentalist Christianity is now falling all over themselves seeking to embrace a presidential candidate whose behavior one could never remotely describe as Christian. It's all about power, the power to foist your antiquated religion into the civil law, something that these people had for scores of years. It's about having the Attorney General on your speed dial. Whatever it is, Right To Believe is not about the right to believe.
It also though never quite coming out and saying so being able to cure a gay and set one on the path of heterosexuality. Tell that to the thousands of people who were told these same sex attractions were a curse, a burden to be borne, something that with prayer and all kinds of voodoo cures can be taken away. Hasn't worked, never has worked yet Fundamentalist Christians are fighting desperately to prevent laws from being enacted to stop these practices. They call it "the intimidate Christian counselors bills".
I think if this film had gotten any kind of mainstream viewing it would have been picketed. Let us hope it stays decently obscure.
