A documentary by Daniel Karslake. Unrated. Plays Friday to Monday, December 7 to 10, and Wednesday and Thursday, December 12 and 13, at the Pacific Cinémathèque

You've heard it before from Bible thumpers like Jimmy Swaggart, and you'll hear it again: the Good Book says homosexuality is an "abomination". In case you're keeping track, so is eating shrimp. One of the many revelations in Daniel Karslake's zippy, irreverent new documentary is that the scriptures' ancient Hebrew word for abomination might have meant something akin to "against tradition". His convincing cast of theologians, including Archbishop Desmond Tutu, points out that the Bible's words have been reinterpreted over the years to put down everyone from blacks to women.

Reading the Bible in context is just one part of Karslake's brisk little rallying cry for the acceptance of gays in an era of Christian literalism south of the border. Archival clips (cue homophobic orange-juice huckster Anita Bryant taking a pie in the face and promptly praying for the thrower) meet streeters, sermons, and even school science-cartoon send-ups.

But the film's heart is its interviews with gay men and women and their religious parents about the painful, and occasionally funny, experience of coming out–sometimes after decades of living a lie. You want to see courage? Imagine being the child of two preachers in Middle America and having to break the news that you're queer. Some mothers and fathers moved from shock to support for their child, with one traditional Midwestern couple eventually even protesting the antigay organization Focus on the Family. Another interviewee spurned her daughter's "choice" in a letter, with tragic results. The most moving thing that these stories illustrate is the huge importance that parental love plays in the struggle to come out.

About the only problem with For the Bible Tells Me So is that, despite its charms, it is so unabashedly partisan that it's unlikely to reach the growing ranks of the Christian right. Now that would be an abomination, in the most contemporary sense of the word.