Film with Tacoma ties asks: What if the Bible was never meant to demonize gay people?

Homosexual.

It’s a word that appears up to six times in several popular versions of the Bible, and its use is fodder for some Christians to marginalize if not demonize, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) people in America.

It’s also a word that didn’t appear in any version of the Bible until 1946.

Last week, a documentary film showing at Tacoma’s Grand Cinema sold out as theaters filled with members of the LGBTQ community, Christians, retired pastors, theologians and people just interested in seeing it.

“1946: The Mistranslation That Shifted Culture” takes a look at how “homosexual” was added to the Bible by a team of well meaning translators and the harm it’s done since then. The film’s executive producers, a longtime Christian Tacoma couple, helped fund the film after their son came out as gay and upended what they thought they knew about the world and their faith.

The movie was so popular, said Grand Cinema executive director Philip Cowan, that he’s bringing it back for another round of showings Aug. 9-15.

Tacoma producers

Although executive producers Teresa and Todd Silver make only a brief cameo in the film, their story is crucial to both the film’s creation and its intent.

For decades, the former evangelicals were major backers of Pierce County’s Young Life , a Christian organization for young people. Todd Silver co-created and for decades ran the Young Life barbecue stand at the Puyallup Fair, now rebranded as the Washington State Fair.

When their 24-year-old son, Kent, came out as gay in 2014, their world turned upside down.

“We were deeply, deeply involved in Christianity,” Todd Silver said last week at one of the film’s screenings.

The couple realized that they had been living in a bubble — a white, straight, Christian bubble, as Todd Silver describes it.

“What else are we missing? We became more involved (in the LGBTQ community) and saw those who were injured and saw their love and their desire just to be normal, get married ...,” Todd Silver said.

After running the Young Life stand for 37 years, the couple realized their own son wouldn’t be fully accepted in the Young Life community because of his sexual orientation. They left the organization.

“One of the initial things that really got our attention, and I think softened our hearts, is how much this was affecting our son,” Teresa Silver said. “He felt like he was going to lose everything. And in many ways he has.”

Kent Thomas lost friendships and, they say, eventually his job with a Christian organization.

Director

The film’s writer and director, Sharon “Rocky” Roggio, was in Tacoma for most of the screenings at the Grand and conducted Q-and-A sessions after showings but isn’t able to return for the August dates.

Roggio appears in the film as she interviews scholars and armchair researchers turned semi-pros who travel to Yale University to examine the vast archive of documents from the 1946 committee that created the Revised Standard Version of the Bible and first used the word “homosexual.”

She also has a personal story to tell.

Roggio is the daughter of a New Jersey pastor with whom she shares screen time in the roughly 90-minute film. Pastor Sal Roggio isn’t an ally to the gay community. While he clearly loves his daughter, he preaches that living as a member of the LGBTQ community is an abomination in the eyes of God.

It was Roggio’s realization she was a lesbian, her father’s discovery of her sexuality in high school and their ongoing relationship based on love mixed with profound disagreement that charges the film with a personal through story. It’s a story, she says, she had to tell.

“It would be irresponsible of me not to make this movie,” she told an audience at a screening at the Grand Cinema.

Deep down, Roggio said, she knew from a young age that what her father was preaching was wrong.

“I don’t think that this is accurate, but I didn’t have the evidence to combat it,” she recalled thinking.

Mistranslation

The first English version of the Bible didn’t appear until the 1500s. The earliest versions had existed in Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic.

In 1946, a committee of Biblical scholars convened to produce the most accurate English version of the Bible they could, using those ancient versions. The result: the Revised Standard Version of the Bible.

That’s when two Greek nouns, “malakoi” and “arsenokoitai” that had been referenced in the King James version as “effeminate” and “abusers of themselves with mankind,” were translated to homosexual.

In the film, Roggio interviews Greek, Hebrew and Biblical scholars who paint a nuanced and, they contend, more accurate meaning of the words.

The scholars say malakoi meant soft, referring to men who were lazy, preening, self-absorbed. Arsenokoitai, a compound word, meant “male bed,” and they contend referred to rape, pederasty and other immoral sexual practices.

Biblegateway.com lists more than 50 Bible versions of Leviticus 20:13 — the verse most often cited to condemn homosexuality — each with a slightly different translation.

Researchers in the film discover correspondence between the 1946 committee’s head and a seminary student making the case that the committee got it wrong. The head, Luther A. Weigle, eventually concedes the words were mistranslated. In a subsequent 1971 version, the committee changed “homosexual” to “sexual perverts.”

But it was too late.

Subsequent versions of the Bible, such as The Living Bible (a 1970s paraphrased version) and the New International Version , ran with “homosexual” with damning effect.

Shocked

“When we heard that 1946 was the first time the word ‘homosexual’ was in the Bible, it was such a shock,” Teresa Silver said.

Most of the LGBTQ audience members, whether they are people of faith or not, come to see “1946” because they want to learn the source of so much ire directed at them, Todd Silver said.

“It’s been so freeing, saying, ‘OK, that’s why you guys have been hurting us,’” he said.

Because of the Silvers’ longtime involvement in the local, and particularly Christian, community, they’ve been able to encourage friends, sometimes reluctantly, to see the film.

“We’ve been in this community for decades,” Todd Silver said. “And there are a lot of people who love and trust us. But there are some who are not here.”

Dogma or doctrine?

At one point in the film, Roggio asks her father if he believes God made the world in six 24-hour periods. He replies in the affirmative, which elicited some laughter in at least one Tacoma screening.

The exchange illustrates how important each word in the Bible is for some Christians. “1946” poses the question: What if some of those words were mistranslated?

In addition to the language scholars interviewed, several theologians appear in the film.

Rabbi Steven Greenberg argues that many of the passages that contain sexual references in the Bible are really about power, citing the story of threatened rape in Sodom and Gomorrah.

To make his point, Greenberg notes that the biggest insult in Western culture is, “(expletive) you.” If sex was just about love and not power, the phrase would be a compliment, not an insult, he says.

Others in the film notice the incongruity in the Old Testament that never references lesbians or lesbian sex, strengthening Greenberg’s power argument.

Reaction

“1946” premiered in 2022 and has won accolades from film festivals and reviewers but has yet to break into the mainstream.

“We haven’t had any luck getting picked,” Roggio said. “Social justice advocate films like this, especially about the Bible and challenging the Bible, is too political. It’s too Christian, it’s too gay.”

The reaction of Tacoma audiences has been typical, she said, with screenings selling out.

The Silvers hope that those who are seeking answers, just as they were in 2014, will come to see the film in August. For them, the journey to acceptance has brought their family together. They took a Canadian vacation this month with their son Kent, his husband of eight years and the couple’s 15-month-old son.

If you go

What: Documentary film, “1946: The Mistranslation That Shifted Culture”

Length: 1 hour 32 mins. Not rated.

Where: The Grand Cinema, 606 Fawcett Ave., Tacoma.

When: Aug. 9-15. Check theater for show times.

Tickets: General Admission $12; seniors (62 and over) $10; students with current ID $10; military with ID $10; children (ages 0-12) $10; matinee $9.

Information: grandcinema.com , 1946themovie.com , 253-572-6062