If you haven’t viewed the one-hour movie Desire of the Everlasting Hills, click on the link and do it. I have never endorsed a film before; it isn’t the sort of thing I do. But if you do watch, you will know why I am doing so now. It awes me to contemplate the courage of Dan, Rilene, and Paul, the three people whose lives are portrayed, in telling their stories of longing, seeking, confusion, bewilderment, and grace in connection with same-sex desire. I know one of these good people, and am privileged to call him my friend. But I find myself wanting to give all three of them epithets, like “the lionhearted.”
The film takes for its epigraph the remark of Benedict XVI, “Look at the face of the other .… Discover that he has a soul, a history, and a life, that he is a person, and that God loves this person.” If ever you were in doubt of that, let these three remove it.