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The Australian horror film Leviticus is a conversion-therapy allegory set in a drab, dried-out area in New South Wales dominated by industry and agriculture, where seemingly everyone belongs to the same evangelical Christian church. (The film’s title is taken from the third book of the Old Testament, the one with all the archaic rules that modern Christians generally ignore, except for the restriction—in some interpretations—against men having sex.) The nerdy new-in-town teen protagonist Naim, played by Joe Bird, becomes fixated on his blond beefcake classmate Ryan, played by Stacy Clausen, after a wrestling match between them evolves into a makeout session, then jealous after he witnesses Ryan kissing their minister’s son.

After the boys’ parents learn that their sons aren’t just bro-ing out together, the minister calls in a “Deliverance Healer,” who performs a ritual that unleashes a brutal force to keep them separated. The entity takes on the guise of whomever its object is most attracted to, luring them into complacency before attacking. It’s reminiscent of the malevolent presence in the 2014 horror film It Follows, which is basically a sexually transmitted evil for straight teens. But in Leviticus the true villains are the boys’ parents, who prefer risking their sons’ lives to letting them lock lips.

Writer-director Adrian Chiarella understands adolescent queer longing and the tenderness and jealousy of teenage infatuation as well as he does the terror that both gay teens and their parents can feel as their burgeoning sexuality becomes evident. Bird and Clausen play their characters’ overwrought high-school emotions credibly without overacting, and Clausen becomes frighteningly implacable in scenes where he’s playing the evil entity in the shape of Ryan. It’s surprisingly moving when, halfway through the movie, he tells Naim: “If I’m gonna live with this thing, I don’t want it to look like some other dickhead. I want it to look like you.”

Naim’s mother Arlene is played by Mia Wasikowska—the erstwhile Jane Eyre, and Alice in Wonderland for Tim Burton—as a zoned-out widow who clings to her faith with a white-knuckle grip: It’s the opiate that allowed her to survive her husband’s death. “Ever since we moved here,” Naim tells Ryan, “she can’t face anything that’s real.” Arlene is reminiscent of other emotionally checked-out mothers in fiction and reality who can’t accept their queer children’s identities, and part of a long cinematic tradition of moms who are disbelieving or ambivalent when their kids try to explain that they’re in a horror movie.

The familiar genre tropes also include a cop whom Naim can’t convince and an embittered and possibly psychotic survivor of an earlier intervention by the Deliverance Healer. Queer horror fans will appreciate the inclusion of such elements along with the film’s fresher aspects, including characters who feel plucked out of an intimate indie drama rather than the shallow, stereotypical chainsaw-fodder of many fright flicks, as well as the timely metaphor at the heart of the film. Leviticus suggests that though some people would like to eliminate the LGBT community, queer love just might be the key to survival.

I grew up Catholic. Not the repressive, anti-gay Catholic. The social -justice-seeking, loves-everybody Catholic.

I didn’t know the Catholic Church and some Catholics were anti-gay until I came out.

The coming-out process, which took several years for me, showed me that people don’t just hate gay people because they don’t like us, but also because their religious leader, religious family, or religious friend has told them that God and Jesus hate us. (I say gay because I am a gay man, but they hate all of us in the LGBTQ+ communities)

This was reaffirmed to me one evening when I was at dinner with two women I had met from work. I was a waiter and they were customers. They were incredibly lovely, and I was excited to spend time with them outside of work. After dinner, one of them brought a Bible to the table, and as she set it down, said: “We wanted to have this conversation with you because we love you”.

Any person who is in our LGBTQ+ communities and has experienced this knows what comes next.

To paraphrase it: “We don’t want you to go to hell.”

Iam seated in the front pew. This is where I have learned I have to sit when at my church, where I can fully pay attention. Sitting further back means I lose focus on what the pastor is saying and get into people-watching.

I never considered myself a Christian. I was Catholic. But by this point in my life, I’ve begun saying I grew up Catholic and don’t consider myself Catholic any longer. Here at this MCC (Metropolitan Community Church), I am surrounded by a hundred plus other LGBTQ+ humans who’ve had similar experiences being dropped by their places of faith, their families, and friends … yet are fully welcome here.

I mean, fully welcome.

Our pastor gives his sermon, and just like many past Sundays, I have a lot to consider after listening to him.

People of religion have done well trying to destroy anyone who disagrees with them or lives in a way that is different from how they live. 

This morning, I had a moment with tears in my eyes as I watched another LGBTQ+ sibling share their experience of this new version of “Testify to Love.” My relationship with my Higher Power is strong, and it’s also different as I find my way through a seemingly different and challenging life as a 60-year-old gay man.

The gratitude is still strong. As is the love for myself. My authentic, gay self. I at least have these two things, and this helps me as I trudge through a changing life and a difficult world.

Faith is one of the parts of my life that I typically keep very private. The release of this new version of “Testify to Love” has made me want to write about it, which is exciting for me.

I am thinking of all my wonderful LGBTQ+ siblings and all of my amazing family and family of choice while I have a huge grin on my face and a heart and soul filled with love.