How God Created Us: Coming Out in the Catholic Church

Jan 24, 2022

1h 0m

★ 8.5

Overview

125 employees of the Catholic Church come out as queer! In the exclusive ARD documentary, believers in the service of the Catholic Church in Germany dare to go public together. People who identify as non-heterosexual talk about fighting for their church - sometimes at the risk of losing their jobs as a result. There are priests, religious brothers, parish assistants, diocese employees, religion teachers, kindergarten teachers, social workers and many more who report intimidation, denunciations, deep injuries, decades of hide and seek and double lives. The Catholics report a system in which pressure, fear and arbitrariness leave employees uncertain as to what exactly happens when they stand by their sexual orientation or identity. The investigative documentary listens to those who live their faith every day and are nevertheless degraded by the church as an institution.

Genres

Documentary

TV Movie

Production Companies

EyeOpening Media

RBB

SWR

NDR

ARD

How God Created Us: Coming Out in the Catholic Church Trailers

No Trailers found.

Cast

Self - Interviewee

Ralf Klein

Self - Interviewee

Carla Bieling

Self - Interviewee

Theo Schenkel

Self - Interviewee

Monika Schmelter

Self - Interviewee

Marie Kortenbusch

Self - Interviewee

Rainer Teuber

Self - Interviewee

Helmut Dieser

Self - Interviewee

Thomas Schüller

Self - Interviewee

Marco Politi

"The Laramie Project" is set in and around Laramie, Wyoming, in the aftermath of the murder of 21-year-old Matthew Shepard. To create the stage version of "The Laramie Project," the eight-member New York-based Tectonic Theatre Project traveled to Laramie, Wyoming, recording hours of interviews with the town's citizens over a two-year period. The film adaptation dramatizes the troupe's visit, using the actual words from the transcripts to create a portrait of a town forced to confront itself.

6.0

Elton John: Tantrums & Tiaras

Jun 25, 1997

Unprecedented access into one of the world's greatest musical talents and his larger than life lifestyle: Elton John. With frank, funny, and touching filmmaking, this documentary is a fascinating and honest look at the complex character of a modern day composer and performing artist.

7.2

A Love to Hide

Mar 7, 2005

A young Jewish girl, Sara, is looking to escape the clutches of the Third Reich after seeing her parents and sister brutally slain by a smuggler who betrayed them while attempting to escape to England. Terrified, she is sheltered by her childhood friend Jean, a homosexual in a clandestine relationship with his lover Philippe.

9.0

Women 50 Minutes

Dec 2, 2007

A representation of queer and feminist imagery that was mainly shot in the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, remote and developing areas in southwest China, and metropolitan cities like Beijing from 2000 to 2004 to document the social changes in contemporary China. The director sympathetically and erotically represents a variety of women, including women as laborers, women as prayers, women in the ground, women in marriage, and women who lie on the funeral pyre with their dead husbands. Her camera juxtaposes the mountains and rivers in old times, the commercialized handicrafts as exposition, the capital exploitation of the elders’ living space, and the erotic freedom of the young people in a changing city.

6.5

Untold: Caitlyn Jenner

Aug 24, 2021

Caitlyn Jenner's unlikely path to Olympic glory was inspirational. But her more challenging road to embracing her true self proved even more meaningful.

6.0

My First Suit

Jan 1, 1985

14-year old Steve is caught between creatures he does not fully understand: two parents with very different ideas about the suit he should wear to his first school dance. Meanwhile everywhere he seems to look, images of men are taking control of his imagination. In Stewart Main's comical coming of age story Steve escapes his parents' good wishes, to discover his true desires. They aren't quite what his no-nonsense father had in mind.

3.8

Hold on Tight

Jul 28, 2011

A short documentary exploring the ways LGBT couples show affection, and how small interactions like holding hands in public can carry, not only huge personal significance, but also the power to create social change.

0.0

Latter-Day Glory: The Aftermath of Growing Up Queer in the LDS Church

Apr 21, 2025

In this re-worked and expanded version of the original 2018 film, two queer ex-Mormon missionaries embark on a transformative journey across America, uncovering the devastating effects of religious dogma on LGBTQ+ members and former members of the LDS Church, as a single, intimate conversation –spanning from childhood to adulthood– unfolds over the course of seven chapters.

0.0

Justin Fashanu: Fallen Hero

Sep 3, 1998

Documentary chronicling the sensational life and death of British footballer Justin Fashanu. Broadcast as part of the BBC series "Inside Story".

1.0

(Tell Me Why): The Epistemology of Disco

Jan 1, 1991

The history of gay liberation traced through the phenomenon of disco. Glitter balls, feather boas and Levi jeans become signifiers of a movement 20 years after the Stonewall riots.

5.7

Homotherapy: A Religious Sickness

Nov 19, 2019

In 2019, some still consider homosexuality as a disease that needs to be cured. Focusing on movements with roots in the United States, which draw on both religion and psychiatry to justify so-called conversion therapies, an investigation into the devastating consequences of certain practices that seem to successfully avoid any control by European public authorities.

9.0

Novena

Aug 14, 2013

In 2012, Stephen Vaughan and Kay Ferreter are invited to address the congregation at St. Joseph's Redemptorists Church in Dundalk, Ireland for the Solemn Novena Festival. In a powerful speech, the pair describe their experiences being gay and lesbian in Ireland, feeling excluded by Catholic doctrine, and the importance of a more inclusive church.

0.0

Trans*BUT — Fragments of Identity

Apr 16, 2015

Fragmentary perspectives on Human Rights and transgender (trans*) People in Turkey. What remains at the place where a murder happened? What constitutes trans* life? How to cope with daily violence and hatred? We begin to search for traces. We follow the tracks of resistance and survival. We are collectors of the expelled. We gather fragments of trans* lives inspired by texts of Nazim Hikmet, Foucault, Benjamin and Zeki Müren. Trans*BUT is a documental research study driven by the question: “What keeps you going when all else falls away?”

1.0

No Goodbyes

Jun 1, 2021

Love in a concentration camp. A young Jewish gay man, Otto, is protected by a "kapo" (a fellow prisoner) and an SS guard who unexpectedly ends up saving his life.

3.4

I Always Said Yes: The Many Lives of Wakefield Poole

Jun 9, 2013

I Always Said Yes is a portrait of pioneering filmmaker Wakefield Poole, whose careers as dancer, choreographer, and director spanned the golden years of Broadway, television, porno chic, and gay liberation.

4.9

Queens and Cowboys: A Straight Year on the Gay Rodeo

Dec 20, 2014

A feature film that chronicles a complete season of the International Gay Rodeo Association. Roping and riding across north America for the past 30 years, the IGRA's courageous cowboys and cowgirls brave challenges both in and out of the arena on their quest to qualify for the World Finals at the end of the season. And along the way, they'll bust every stereotype in the book.

10.0

Out of Uganda

Jun 20, 2023

Philip, Lynn, Hussein and Shammy, young LGBT Ugandans, are fighting for survival. Staying in their country, where religious oppressions and discriminations prevail, endangers their lives. Then, their latest hope is to leave it all behind and experience a long and painful exile.

9.0

Sweetheart Dancers

Feb 23, 2019

Sean and Adrian, a Two-Spirit couple, are determined to rewrite the rules of Native American culture through their participation in the “Sweetheart Dance.” This celebratory contest is held at powwows across the country, primarily for heterosexual couples … until now.

10.0

Australia Says Yes

Nov 16, 2018

Packed with drama, high emotions and cliff-hanger moments, Australia Says Yes is the intimate and personal history of struggle and perseverance that propelled Australia to say Yes to marriage equality. The film shows how a group of determined individuals fought tirelessly against unjust laws that treated LGBTIQ people as second-class citizens, creating a movement that saw them go from criminals to legally equal over the course of five decades.

7.0

A Song At Twilight

Jul 9, 1982

Enormously successful writer Sir Hugo Latymer has a tryst with the past not altogether to his liking. This bittersweet comedy is the story of a cosmopolitan author caught in his declining years between two women, one being his wife of convenience for twenty years, the other, one of his former lovers.