8: THE MORMON PROPOSITION
Written & Directed by Reed Cowan
Produced by Steven Greenstreet, Chris Volz & Emily Pearson
Released by Red Flag Releasing
USA. 80 min. Not Rated  
 

Whether Joseph Smith was a conman or a zealot or both is debatable. To perhaps the outside observer, the tales of buried books and Native American angels is pure charlatanism, nothing more than the decorations of a 19^th-century huckster cult. Whether the origins were genuine or fraudulent, though, the Mormon Church is certainly powerful today and willing to wield its power in the name of what it believes is right. The new documentary 8: The Mormon Proposition starkly shows the incredible amounts of money and logistical work the Church of Latter-Day Saints dropped into the campaign to support Proposition 8, which overturned the legality of gay marriage in California, all while strategically shielding itself by assembling a cross-faith coalition that it controlled.

Homosexuality is an anathema to the LDS because it is an existential threat to its belief system. For Mormons, the afterlife is predicated on being sealed in a celestial marriage, which is performed within the temple and may only be between a man and a woman. The existence of homosexuality then contradicts these beliefs. How can a family be reunited in the afterlife in the Celestial Kingdom if members of the family are gay? The logic is fairly straightforward. Thus, the LDS church expends incredulous amounts of time, energy, and money in trying to impose their belief system onto California’s constitution, while defining homosexuality as a problem akin to alcoholism and denying the reality of gay family members.

8 doesn’t criticize the church’s beliefs, instead it saves its criticism for the church’s culture, politics, and basic lack of empathy. One can be Mormon without being a bigot. One can be Mormon without believing homosexuality is a threat. With painstaking documentation, former Mormons Reed Cowan and Steven Greenstreet interview those who were able to dissect the Prop 8 battle, and through various investigations, discover the pro-proposition money trail. The narrative unfolds showing just how organized and single-minded the LDS church was and how it has continued to be involved in influencing the debate in America over gay marriage. For this heartbreaking story alone, 8 is worthwhile.

Aesthetically, the film is messy, employing stock graphics and generic cutaways. When a subject mentions something, say money, instead of staying on the subject, it tends to cut to footage of money, when really it’s the human reaction that’s important. As a documentary itself, the feeling is disjointed. This perhaps stems from the fact that Cowan originally began the film as a documentary about homeless Mormon youths and then combined it with Greenstreet’s Prop 8 research when it was discovered they were dancing around the same subject. However, while many aspects of 8 are amateurish in nature, the journalism at its core is professional. It’s only the delivery system itself that’s problematic. Andrew Beckerman
July 5, 2010