One of the less persuasive arguments against same-sex marriage involves opponents using the word "fad," as if gay marriage suddenly came into vogue but will quickly fade from fashion, like ponchos or Pokémon. The documentary Tying The Knot attempts to demolish this notion right away. Director Jim de Sève opens with a sound clip of a New York-based public protest in favor of same-sex marriage, then brings in the video to reveal it as an archival clip from 1971, when, after Stonewall, the love that dare not speak its name began screaming it loud and clear.
Still, if it comes down to an argument about years, gay activists will lose to tradition every time, so de Sève wisely finds another way to attack the issue: by presenting same-sex marriage as both an urgent legal concern and a matter of the heart. Between clicking off the recent developments in the debate, Tying The Knot focuses on two sad cases. One involves Mickie Mashburn, a Tampa police officer who lost her partner, also a police officer, in the line of duty. (She has to battle against her partner's family for the pension she believes is rightfully hers.) The other concerns Sam, an Oklahoma farmer on the verge of bankruptcy after losing a battle to keep the land left to him by his partner of more than two decades. Both interviewees insist that the court's refusal to recognize their marriages doesn't make them any less married, or any less entitled to a surviving spouse's rights.
The heartbreaking footage of Mashburn recounting the details of her partner's death and Sam trying to scrape together a few hundred dollars to keep the lights on prove remarkably persuasive. So do talks with scholars and pundits like E.J. Graff (who argues that the definition of marriage has always been fluid) and The New Republic's Andrew Sullivan (who voted for Bush and now finds himself alarmed at the president's stance on the matter).
But de Sève is a first-time director, and he doesn't quite know how to tie it all together. He brings in worn-out Hawaiian-music cues when the film turns to developments in that state, and a sad, twangy country score whenever the attention turns to Sam. And, while it's fair to draw comparisons between anti-same-sex-marriage initiatives and anti-miscegenation laws, did he really have to use footage from the 1996 TV movie Mr. & Mrs. Loving, starring Timothy Hutton and Lela Rochon? Even with such clumsy gestures, however, Tying The Knot's central point remains insistently stated. It would be hard for anyone to watch it and still think of the demand for same-sex marriage as a mere passing fancy.