This past Sunday at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival, cineGLAAD hosted the panel discussion LGBT Civil Rights & The Power of Film - 8: The Mormon Proposition, which featured leaders in the fight for marriage equality debating the ways in which film and media
can sway public opinion as we strive to change the hearts and minds of voters who oppose equality. Panelists also provided fascinating insight into the current efforts to overturn California’s anti-gay Proposition 8.
The powerful documentary 8: The Mormon Proposition investigates the decades long campaign the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints has been waging against the rights of gays and lesbians to marry, and also examines the psychological toll that anti-gay bigotry takes on LGBT Mormon youth.
Kate Kendell, Executive Director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, moderated the thought-provoking discussion featuring several of the people behind 8: The Mormon Proposition: Reed Cowan (Director); Dustin Lance Black (Narrator); Bruce Bastian (Executive Producer); and featured cast Joe Solmonese (President – Human Rights Campaign) and Dennis Herrera (San Francisco City Attorney).
In the first video below, Black and Solmonese discuss the lessons we've learned since Prop 8's passage in California. In the second video, Cowan, seated next to Kendell, discusses his film's focus on the harms done to LGBT youth.
