The film, which never succumbs to easy answers, manages to convey bittersweet humor as well as deep pain over a seemingly intractable family divide. He lived with them for six years, calling Dornan by the family nickname, “Poppy.” When Bennett came out in 1997, that close relationship was abruptly terminated and he was left to struggle with the contradictions of being a gay Republican and of still loving a father figure who rejected him for his sexual orientation.įamily Fundamentals takes us inside the struggle over homosexuality in the heartland of the American family. So close was Bennett to Dornan, with whom he shared a Catholic upbringing and political views on everything except his closeted homosexuality, that Brian became a virtual member of the Dornan family. From 1977 to 1989, Bennett served as chief of staff, campaign manager and legislative aide to former California Congressman Bob Dornan - one of the nation’s harshest and most vocal opponents to gay rights. His grandmother’s remarriage brings a challenge and a crisis as Mathews returns to his boyhood home for the first time since declaring his homosexuality.īrian Bennett’s story reveals a different kind of family - and a surprising chain of events. Mathews’ family reacts to his coming out by sending him a steady stream of letters calling on him to change. She is not shy about expressing her views of homosexuality, and in exhorting her daughter, who is conversely outspoken in support of gay civil rights, to repent.īrett Mathews, a former Air Force First Lieutenant discharged for his homosexual orientation, is the son of a Mormon bishop in rural Erda, Utah. In collaboration with such groups as Exodus and Focus on the Family, Bremner promotes faith and “reparative therapy” as a cure for homosexuality. Susan Jester is the lesbian daughter of Kathleen Bremner, a Pentecostal church leader who responded to her daughter’s coming out by forming a Christian parents’ ministry and organizing the San Diego Christian Trauma and Sexuality Conferences. For fundamentalist Christian families, the event can be polarizing and devastating.ĭong tackles his subject by looking into three divided families. In today’s contemporary society, sometimes even the most liberal families must find it discomfiting when gay children come out. “Heartfelt but evenhanded, Family Fundamentals is a battlefield report from America’s disquieting culture war over gay issues” – Los Angeles Times.įamily Fundamentals goes to the heart of today’s debate over homosexuality, where the personal is inextricably - and dramatically - bound up in the political. Armed with a digital camera, Dong takes viewers into the private and public lives of three families who have responded to gay offspring by actively opposing homosexuality. What happens when religiously conservative Christian parents have children who have “become homosexual?” Family Fundamentals is filmmaker Arthur Dong’s personal attempt to answer that explosive question. Grandview Films: Cinematic Crossings with Joseph Sunn Jue.Hollywood Chinese: The Arthur Dong Collection.Claiming a Voice: The Visual Communications Story.Educational, Library, and Institutional Sales.
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