Holly's Secret Garden

I. What is the film about?

The film Prayers for Bobby deals with the controversial issue of homosexuality. Based on a true story, it depicts the conflicts and reconciliation of a devout Christian mother toward her homosexual son. The scene of her speech for homosexual rights in the city council summarize the theme of the film:

I deeply regret my lack of knowledge concerning gay and lesbian people. Had I allowed myself to investigate what I now see as Bible bigotry and diabolical dehumanizing slander against our fellow human beings, I would not be looking back with regret---  我深深懊悔自己對同性戀的無知。如果我早能覺察聖經對此等人是一種偏執又殘酷的詆毀，我現今也無須頻頻回顧，深自悔恨--

God is pleased that Bobby has a kind and loving heart. In God's eyes, kindness and love are what life is about. I did not know that each time I echoed 'Amen' to the eternal damnation, referring to Bobby as sick, perverted and a danger to our children that his spirit was broken---- 巴比因一顆和善慈愛的心而得上帝的讚賞。在上帝眼中，慈愛是生命最可貴之處。我從前不知道的是，當我每次說「阿們」，呼應對同性戀萬劫不復的詛咒，把巴比視為是病態、墮落、危及子孫之人時，他的靈魂是如此受創。

It was not God's will that Bobby jump over the side of a freeway overpass into the path of an eighteen-wheel truck, killing him instantly. Bobby's death was the direct result of his parent's ignorance and fear of the word gay....Bobby's hopes and dreams should not have been taken from him, but they were.... There are children like Bobby sitting in our congregations. Unknown to you, they will be listening to your 'Amens' as they silently cry out to God in their hearts. Their cries will go unnoticed for they cannot be heard above your 'Amens'. Your fear and ignorance of the word gay will soon silence their cries. Before you echo 'Amen' in your home or place of worship, think and remember...a child is listening.巴比從高速公路天橋上一躍而下，當場被大貨車輾斃，這絕非是上帝的旨意----他的希望與夢想不該被奪走，但事實卻是這樣---- 像巴比這樣坐在教堂聚會當中的，不乏其人。你們所不知的是，當你們說「阿們」時，他們正在聆聽，而他們的心卻默默地對上帝哭泣。他們的哭泣聲沒有人會聽見，因為「阿們」的聲音遠蓋過這些哭聲。你們對「同性戀」這個字的恐懼與無知會讓哭聲很快停止。在家裏或教會，當你們回應以「阿們」時，要三思並銘記: 某個孩子正在聆聽。

Mary A. Griffith

II. The reasons of homophobia in Western culture

The film also presents the homophobic complex in society by the mother's referecnes to the Bible. She quotes the saying from Leviticus 18:22 as an evidence that homosexuality is a sin: "You shall not lie with a male as one lies with a female; it is an abomination." There is a further illustration on this point  in Leviticus 20:13: "If there is a man who lies with a male as those who lie with a woman, both of them have committed a detestable act; they shall surely be put to death. Their bloodguiltiness is upon them. Other Biblical sources of homosexual condemnation occur in Corinthians 6:9–10 and Romans 1:26–28 respectively:

"Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals,  nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God." (Corinthians)

"For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error.(Romans)

All the quotes above point to one thing, that homosexuality is not allowed in the kingdom of Christianity. The words "unnatural," "desire" and "effeminate" shed some lights on the reasons. First of all, "unnatural" implies homosexuality involves no reproduction, no childbirth and then no possibility of human multiplication. That is absolutely a reverse of the Christian tenet: "Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over  the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living  thing that moveth upon the earth." (Genesis 1:28) Here come the second and third traits of homosexual abomination: "desire" and "effeminate." The "unnatural" act of homosexuality is caused by sexual desire between males. They enjoy sex for sex's sake without concern of reproduction and constraints on sexual appetite, which is considered a sin in Christian morality. Once indulged in sexual pleasure for its sake, the male couples tend to change partners, which defies the value of monogamy. Furthermore, homosexual relationship requires the partners to play two significantly different roles: active/ passive, dominant /submissive. The effeminate man plays the latter part, and therefore is condemned in Christian theology, which emphasizes the value of masculine domination and female submission with her body subjected to male's regular phallic irrigation. An effeminate man is sick in that he unnaturally plays a feminine role characterized by weakness, passivity and submission.

In summary, the main reason for the condemnation of homosexuality in the modern Western Christian society is "unproduction” in both the physical and metaphysical sense. For the physical sense, “unproduction” signifies indecent pleasure begotten from male sexual intercourse. For the metaphysical one, “unproduction” implies the incapability of the effeminate male in a labor market. In bourgeois ideology, effeminacy belongs exclusively to the female, who should take care of the household while virility is a praiseworthy quality of a male, who should struggle outside, subduing or conquering something for a living. Therefore, we may conclude that the sexual ethics in the Western culture are the products of bourgeois hegemony. Instead ofbeing natural, they are artificial in its praise of monogamy, condemnation of effeminate men and glorification of resistance to sexual appetite.

III. The fictionality of homo/hetro category

The chronic modern crisis of homo/hetrosexual definition has affected western culture in the hierarchies of masculine / feminine, natural / artificial, wholeness / decadence, majority / minority, and health / illness. All these binary oppositions are derived from the sexual polarization of hetro / homosexuality. Associated with the former are the positive qualities, the latter the negative ones. People invariably belong to one or the other of the two exclusive categories.

But as some poststructuralist thinkers indicate, the polarization of our sexual identity is a modern, Western, bourgeois production. It is unstable and subject to change. The Foucault designates 1870 as the date of birth of modern homosexuality characterized by a sexual sensibility, which inverts the masculine and feminine in oneself. To be more precise, homosexuality is a kind of “interior androgyny,” a hermaphrodism of the soul. Therefore, we may well say that a gay is a feminine man while a lesbian a masculine woman. Such an androgynous quality is embraced by Nietzsche as an ideal of Dionysian man, who ignores no signal from emotions. Homoerotic desire as Nietzsche sees it is “precious virility” of Dionysian ititiates.

In Greek culture, what was approved and celebrated was not homosexuality per se, but a certain hierarchical relation between a free adult male and an adolescent youth with an inferior social status. The homosexual relationship had to be a hierarchical one; that is, every male couple had to include one social superior and one social inferior. The superior one is the active and dominant side while the inferior the passive and submissive one. So long as a mature male maintained an active sexual role vis-à-vis his social inferior, did not consume his own estate in the process or was enslaved to the sexual pleasure he obtained from contact with this partner, homosexuality was approved as a personal choice for a small elite. The ancient Greeks’ self control of sexual appetite, in Nietzsche’s view, is an expression of asceticism, or a powerful will, an instinct of mastery over self and others. This is the true essence of what he calls the “precious virility.”

In conclusion, the condemnation of homosexuality has its origin in the Bible. The development of bourgeois society in the nineteenth century makes for the degrading of homosexuality and valorizing of heterosexuality . The privilege of the latter depends on the exclusion of the former. The association of a natural and biological sex with a discrete gender behavior is an unnatural social construct in service of the bourgeois value of reproduction. Through the research on sexuality, we learn to suspend the binary categories of thought which habitually conduct our lives.