Product Description

Extremely relevant, highly entertaining and utterly humanist, the critically-acclaimed film festival favorite TYING THE KNOT poignantly explores one of today's hottest issues, the ferocious political battle in the US between gay people who want to marry and those determined to stop them.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #64971 in DVD
• Brand: New Video
• Released on: 2005-05-31
• Rating: Unrated
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 81 minutes

Customer Reviews

strong documentary
Gay marriage is not a pie-in-the-sky issue. This film shows 2 real-life examples of couples that would have benefited from having their relationship realized. One woman's wife died serving as a policewoman. Because there was no gay marriage, the widow got nothing when the deceased's greedy relatives stepped in. In the second example, a man was going to lose his farm because the property was only in the deceased husband's name. Even though the deceased's sons think of the man as their second father, creditors took away horses and all other items.
Additionally, this documentary shows academics detailing the history of marriage. They go into its contractual and sexist background. But they also point to the fact that "love marriages" are only a creation of the past two centuries. I actually wish the movie would have touched upon pre-colonial, non-European cultures where such unions were accepted.
Thirdly, this film shows two members of the Congressional Black Caucus, John Lewis and Maxine Waters, defending gay marriage and standing against DOMA on the House Floor. This sequence goes against the ludicrous presentation in the disgusting "Gay Rights, Special Rights" where that film implies that (straight) people of color don't support gay rights. Barney Frank once said the CBC is more supportive of gays than any other congressional caucus. This film shows that visually.
This film would be perfect for gay male and lesbian couples to show to individuals of all sexual orientations. I wish the DVD had foriegn language subtitles, however.

"If you don't like same-sex marriage, don't have one."
I wish Jim de Sève's Tying the Knot could be shown on primetime network television because this film really puts a human face on the same sex marriage debate. Whether you are for, or against same sex marriage, this film is required watching as it does terrific job of presenting, in a rational, common sense way, the reasons why such unions have become so highly galvanizing in the United States.

As gay marriage steadily becomes legal in some European countries (Holland, Belgium and shortly in Spain), and also in Canada, the U.S. seems ever more determined to forbid it. It is a serious issue for gays, for whom no will, beneficiary document or city or state civil union protection guarantees the 1,138 federal rights the documentary asserts are granted straight married couples.

Tying the Knot effectively lays out the movement's steps forward and setbacks, and effectively sets the issue of marriage in a cleverly drawn historical and cultural context. But the movie also gives a heart-rending account of two people who have been caught up in the inequities of marriage law, who have lost their life partners, and have suffered terrible economic and emotional consequences as a result.

In Florida, the union of two police officers was obviously accepted; Mickie Mashburn and Lois Marrero had been a couple for a decade and were well-liked by both friends and colleagues. Home movies from 1991 show a religious ceremony uniting the lesbians, dressed in matching tuxedos. Yet when one was killed in 2001, the other was afforded spousal burial honors but denied spousal pension benefits. After Two Tampa pension hearings, Mickie is denied the benefits

Even worse is the case of Sam, an Oklahoma rancher whose partner of 23 years, Earl, died, leaving him everything. But Sam was denied the ranch they shared that was specifically bequeathed to him.

The case rested on a technicality, a missing third signature; a self-seeking cousin was allowed to claim the property and then approach Sam for the back rent. It makes those in same-sex relationships both angry and paranoid - anger that this type of injustice is happening and also paranoid of landing in this type of situation.

De Sève interweaves Mickie and Sam's ordeals with the push for same-sex marriage across the nation along with archival footage, one of which is an attempt of a to overturn a New York state ban way back in 1971. There's also footage of couples lining up at county registrar offices to obtain marriage licenses in New York and Los Angeles

Much of the Tying the Knot concentrates on the landmark Massachusetts decision to award marriage rights to same-sex couples, but the film also shows that there's a long way to go - for example, there's no federal immigration rights available to bi-national gay couples, and even Massachusetts couples are prohibited from filing federal joint income tax returns.

Tying the Knot is an important film that effectively challenges an institution that social conservatives view as immutable and unchanging. Historian E.J. Graff takes us on a very sensible journey through the history of marriage and shows us how economics, not love, determined marriage for thousands of years.

This is a paradoxical, and commanding film, which delves beneath preconceived prejudices to explore what the institution of marriage really means within the context of today's society. Unfortunately, it also shows that bigotry and intolerance is rife, and that in the United States, full equality for same sex couples still has a long way to go. Mike Leonard June 05.

An Important Documentary
As a gay man living in New York who is out in all aspects of my life, I tend to mistakenly think of myself as having all the rights I really need. For that reason, sometimes I forget (and I admit I haven't thought enough about) the very real reasons why this issue is so important. There are over 1,000 Federal rights and privileges that straight married people have that gay couples are denied because of the legal invisibility of their unions.

This film powerfully and poignantly underscores why gay marriage is such an important issue. The film was entertaining, informative, gripping and enraging all at the same time. Unlike many small independent films, the DVD issue contains many extras that made the whole package even more worthwhile.

I strongly recommend this film.