Love Free or Die

6 pm Tuesday, June 11
Champaign Public Library

The Sundance Award-winning documentary Love Free or Die from Independent Lens tells the story of Gene Robinson, the first openly gay person to be elected bishop in the high church traditions of Christianity.

Join us for a free screening and discussion of issues it raises.

On the discussion panel are Saida Bonifield, assistant director of the University of Illinois Office of Inclusion and Intercultural Relations’ Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) Resource Center, and Rev. Vince Elam, pastor of Lighthouse Restoration Center in Champaign. The LGBT Resource Center and Lighthouse Restoration Center are partnering with Illinois Public Media for the event.

Love Free or Die also airs on WILL-TV at 9 pm Monday, June 10.

Robinson’s 2003 elevation in the New Hampshire diocese ignited a worldwide firestorm in the Anglican Communion that has threatened schism. In the face of it all, Robinson confronts those who use religion as a means of oppression and claims a place in the church and society for everyone. Even as he has pushed for greater inclusion within his own church, Bishop Robinson has become a standard bearer in the fight over the rights of LGBT people to receive full acceptance in church and state.

Director Macky Alston’s camera follows Robinson as he steps onto the world stage, traveling from small-town churches to the Lincoln Memorial, where he delivers the invocation at Barack Obama’s inauguration; from London, where he is scorned and relegated to the fringes of a once-in-a-decade convocation of bishops to which he is deliberately not invited, to a decisive meeting in California of the Episcopal Church, where Robinson plays an instrumental role in establishing the full inclusion of LGBT people.