The second episode of 30 Days, the pseudo-documentary TV series produced and directed by Morgan Spurlock (of Supersize Me fame), tracks the tribulations of a beefy Christian from Michigan, just out of college (that's Ryan), who lives for a month in a small room in the apartment of a gay man (Ed) in San Francisco. Since Ed lives on the very same block where I last lived in San Francisco, and since Ryan did his football-tossing in Alamo Square Park, where I've loafed, I am of course uniquely qualified to comment on the proceedings.

For one, I'm impressed that Ryan seems to have entered the whole thing in a spirit of understanding and without defensiveness. During the show, Ryan adopts gay men as friends, as respectable people, as potentially lovable. But in every conversation with Peggy Nixon, the minister at "gay church," the question is whether homosexuality "is a sin." What "a sin" is and what it means for the people who do it, is left up the viewer's imagination. It puzzles me that people who eschew abstraction in every other aspect of their lives (who don't ken the stock market, say, or have trouble with algebra) can so easily, breezily discuss this pressing issue (homosexuality) in terms only of this diffuse abstraction (sin), and rely only on the Biblical statements that connect the one with the other. The show's man-on-the-street, I will note, uses a different word, "abomination"—but this is surely more obscure than "sin." Ryan, unlike the protesters with the "God hates fags" signs, acknowledges that this wantonness is natural and human; but he (and the preacher, too), keep returning to this phrase, is a sin.

What does it mean, "—— is a sin"? The best answer I know comes from the crême-de-la-crême of preacher-versus-fags documentaries, Trembling Before G–d. This was the 2001 film about gay folks who are (or were) nonetheless devout Orthodox Jews (and if there is a religious sect that sticks to its traditions and condemns homosexuality, this is it).

In Trembling Before G–d there is a sincere orthodox Rabbi who says to the camera that the Bible calls homosexuality—some Hebrew word which I don't know—and he translates it into English as, "You're making a big mistake." "God is a supreme being and is your spiritual guide and he's telling you you're making a big mistake."

"You're making a big mistake" makes a lot more sense to me than "is a sin," and I regret that midwestern college football players don't use such concrete words. Taking this rabbinical direction seriously, we might imagine that life is more than just this idle journey on Earth, that it includes a much longer string of experiences, and in the larger venue, there are Earthly pleasures which have unearthly echoes. The thought that some supreme being would give hints in Hebrew to what was foolish or wise in the great beyond is somewhat comforting.

But the Bible was jotted down by men, and copied by men, and translated and interpreted by men. In my opinion, there is quite a lot of opportunity for cultural values, conscious and subconscious, to be inscribed through such a process. An account has been given of how homosexuality threatens a certain legal system (a certain notion of lineage and property), and also threatens a process of doing business; these threats could plausibly account for a systematic bias intertwingled in everything we do. I'm not ready to endorse that account, but I'm not available to condemn it, either. If someone could prepare the bibliography of good writing on the subject, I'd be grateful!

In closing, a final thought: when he gets on camera, Morgan Spurlock nods way too bloody much.

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