Unfortunately, that doesn't leave much to do for me in the way of plot description, though Ingram mainly uses the establishment in question--located in Shannon, MS, near Tupelo--as a avenue to discuss the trials of being gay in the Bible Belt. That's easy pickings, but the movie reminds us that not everyone wants to leave, and not everyone who wants to leave, can.
It's all tidy and uplifting, until Ingram brings forth the rotting body of the Rev. Fred Phelps, a man whose skin seems to be plastic-wrapped onto his skeleton, which is all covered perpetually by a Kansas State jacket, giving the university publicity they might rather have done without (but then, they did hire Bob Huggins). I'm generally skeptical of anyone who wheels out Phelps as any kind of serious antithesis, but I came out pleasantly surprised--if that's not too obscene--to discover Phelps has a kind of psychopathic clarity.
"It's pure, absolute asinine balderdash to question that God hates people," Phelps says. "He doesn't send their sins to Hell, he sends them to Hell. The judge doesn't send the crime to jail, he sends the criminal."
Phelps' idea of Hell if, of course, one among many, and quite fringe, but I don't think it can be dismissed entirely. If you're going to have a God sending people to Hell, then you have to come up with some justification. A common slogan which has emerged in some conservative church areas in an attempt to seem more humane is "love the sinner, hate the sin." There are situations where this would seem acceptable, correctional rehabilitation for instance, but it is almost universally quoted to pass as a "softer" stance on homosexuality. If you deny the "sin" in your essential nature, are you still the same "sinner?" There seems to be little difference.
Hell exists, we're told, because it must serve as a kind of cosmic justice system. Without it, people would be able to plot uninhibited whatever wickedness they pleased. (It isn't surprising, then, that most of them are the same people who tirelessly dissect the letter of the law, both human and theistic, to see how far they can push the envelope.) But Phelps' analogy comes up short because it isn't severe enough. Hell is immeasurably more corrupt than almost any human legal system, being a gross overreaction to often frivolous "crimes," which can only be bypassed by satisfactorily kissing the judge's ass.
This is, I think, understood by a good number of believers, but they are held firm by the thought of self-preservation. If the great cosmic wizard can send them to Hell, then, by God, they're going to do what they have to do, sense and humanity be damned. Speaking for the rest of us is Huck Finn:
It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was a-trembling, because I'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself:"All right, then, I'll go to Hell" -- and tore it up.
It was awful thoughts and awful words, but they was said. And I let them stay said; and never thought no more about reforming. ... And for a starter I would go to work and steal Jim out of slavery again; and if I could think up anything worse, I would do that, too; because as long as I was in, and in for good, I might as well go the whole hog.
