Eve’s Daughters

Our Rating: L Factor: Lesbian Film Short Take: 5 lesbians struggle with the church. Alternate Titles:
Year: 1995 Duration: 27 min Language: USA/English MPAA: Not Rated	Director: John Ankele, Anne Macksoud Writer: Starring:

Watch It Now	Buy It Now	Rent It

“Beware of Eve, the temptress in any woman.” – St. Augustine

Five lesbian women, each alienated from the church, call on it to accept their lives as lesbians and recognize their gifts. They ask that the church “repent its homophobia.”

This documentary interviews the five women to hear their stories and see their leadership welcome in the Noe Valley Church in San Francisco. Coni’s family told her that she won’t be going to heaven. Kathryn lived in a Pentecostal house church in which the congregants all lived together. After she fell in love with a woman and came out, she was asked to leave.

Nancy was the child of missionaries in the Philippines. Married to a pastor for 25 years, she now feels that her relationship with a woman helps her grow more spiritually. Her feeling is that the church sees Eve as the one who brought evil into the world, and all women must now bear that charge.

Lisa, who is blind, was told that there was “no room in our house for unrepentant homosexuals” when she attempted to become an ordained minister. Victoria, a former nun, expresses herself with performance art.

By coming together in their own church, they have left these prejudices behind and can celebrate the spiritual gifts that they have because they are lesbians.

This is one of those documentaries that may appeal if you are specifically interested in the roles of women in the church or issues of spirituality. As a person who has never been invested in organized religion, I did not find it very compelling or educational. (AB)