On Tuesday, February 22^ndat 7:30 PM, The Loft will screen “Out in the Silence” an event co-hosted by the Theater and the Pima County Library.  The film’s director, Joe Wilson along with members of Wingspan’s Anti-Violence Project, will be present at a post screening Q and A.

The hour long documentary, “Out in the Silence” follows Joe Wilson as he returns to his home town of Oil City, PA, to seek out the reasons why his boyhood community reacted the way it did when he announced his same-sex wedding in their local paper, The Derrick, and why the people in Oil City were not protecting a 15 year old gay student, C.J. Springer , who was enrolled in the local High School from harassment and violence.

I watched the documentary on HULU and learned that Oil City is not unlike many small town communities today, who still struggle with bigotry and hatred fueled by organizations such as The American Family Association and their efforts to fight equal rights for the GLBT community. During Mr. Wilson’s personal interviews with townspeople he meets Diane Gramley, a member of the American Family Association who has a local radio show.  There is audio of Ms. Gramley’s radio show where she can be heard speaking out against the possibility of the Oil City School Board instituting a diversity curriculum, something that might protect both gay students and minorities in their schools. He also interviews a local pastor and his wife, the gay teen’s mother and father, and another family of a gay teen who was harassed at another nearby school in PA.

After watching Out in the Silence, I came away with two confirmed messages. One, there is still a long way to go with fighting hatred and bigotry against GLBT Americans and secondly that, when it is the right time for a person to come out-and that is not all that easy and safe for some people to do, the coming out opens windows of opportunities to open dialogues which may help to decrease the bigotry.  The quote by Audre Lourde at the beginning of the film sums up this  point,  “When we speak we are afraid that our words will not be heard or welcome. But when we are silent we are still afraid. So it is better to speak.”