For a recap of the rest of the Queer Film Festival, click here.
The University hosted the Queer Film Festival, an annual event put on by the University Cultural Forum@@http://qff.uoregon.edu/ AND http://culture.uoregon.edu/@@, this weekend. This was the festival’s 20th anniversary. Among the 17 shorts, two feature films and four documentaries shown were works from as far away as Argentina, Spain and Australia.
On Saturday night, the festival showed “The Right To Love: An American Family,” @@http://www.r2lmovie.com/#!/page_Screenings@@a documentary released earlier last week that chronicles the lives of husbands Jay and Bryan Leffew @@http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1571416/fullcredits#cast@@as they raise their two adopted children Daniel and Selena@@http://www.facebook.com/TheRightToLove@@.
In 2008, the Leffews began posting videos of their daily life to YouTube after Proposition 8, a California law that banned the right for gay men and women to marry, was passed. About a year later, filmmaker Cassie Jaye@@imdb link@@ got in contact with the couple and requested an interview with them. The interview turned out to be one of many with the couple that became the basis for Jaye’s new film.
After the showing of the film, the Leffews and Jaye held a discussion with the audience. During the discussion, the Leffews said they decided to make their first YouTube video while Californians were lobbying for the original passage of Proposition 8. Specifically, Jay Leffew said that it started when he watched a commercial that showed a gay person’s mother talking about how she wanted her gay son to have the same rights as her straight daughter.
“We were really frustrated by that because California wouldn’t show gay couples on TV,” Jay said. “They were only showing our friends, our doctors, our family members talking about why marriage equality was important for their gay friends.
“We went on YouTube and we typed in ‘gay families’ and there were none. Everything is on YouTube. The fact that there wasn’t a single example of a functioning gay couple raising kids really bugged me,” he said.
Jay went on to explain that after they posted the first video, it received more than 50,000 views and the two received many letters of thanks from viewers. After Proposition 8 passed, Jay and Bryan decided to begin posting more videos to their YouTube account.
Over time, Bryan and Jay have gained notoriety for their videos, and at Saturday night’s event 10 YouTube fans showed up from as far away as Canada to watch the film and to meet the couple. Siri Harding, a self-labeled straight ally from Portland, explained how she found the Leffews.
“I just ran across them. It was about two years ago. It showed up on the side and I happened to click. I was compelled by the Leffews, they were awesome,” Harding said. “It’s taken me from someone who sort of passively supported marriage equality to someone who is more active in wanting to do what I can.”
Jay Leffew@@imdb link@@ said he hopes the movie will have the same effect on its future audiences.
“We’ve had some really nice compliments from conservative preachers who say that, ‘If this is what gay people want, I’m for it,’” Jay Leffew said. “And for me that’s kind of what our goal is — to hopefully at least change a few people’s attitudes at what it means to be gay and want to be married. I think people think that we just want to play house and it’s so much more than that.”
Jaye said she was pleased at how an audience in San Francisco reacted to the film.
“We had a lot of people coming up to us afterwards saying, ‘I’ve never seen what a gay family looks like’ — there were LGBT youth coming up to us and saying that,” she said. “And I thought that was really special because I guess growing up, they didn’t know that they could have that American dream that everyone wants.”
Jaye, a self-labeled straight ally, was passionate as she spoke to the audience.
“It’s not their issue or LGBT’s issue. Equal rights is everyone’s issue in this country,” she said. “Only if we all have equal rights does anyone have equal rights.”