In this episode of 30 Days, a Mormon mom spends a month living with two gay men who have adopted four boys. The men agreed to do the show because they believed that personalizing the situation could change an opponent's mind; the woman agreed to do the show in order to test her faith.
She spends much of the show feeling like an outcast; feeling very defensive; watching her non-religious myths about gay families crumble in the face of reality; however, she clings to her faith as the core of her identity. Her faith tells her that homosexuality is wrong and therefore any apparent benefits surrounding gay and lesbian individuals must be wrong and worked against. If it weren't for her faith, she would be on board with the family by the end of the month, I have no doubts. HOWEVER, she sees her religious belief as absolutely equal a gay man's desire to adopt children. Early in the show, a gay dad tries to tell her that if she had her way, she would take his children away from him, and her reply is essentially that if he had his way, he would take her faith away from her. He would erase her identity, because her identity is so bound up in what she sees as her beliefs - as an Orange County Mormon, she must have been active in or at least very aware of the pro- Prop 8 campaign.
For me, this points out that there must be a faith-based argument FOR same-sex adoption, marriage, and families. That was the only tactic not used by anyone in the show, and without some way of reconciling same-sex families with her identity/faith, she could not let go of her position. An articulate argument for the Separation of Church and State, showing how that separation protects churches, might have made some inroads, and that wasn't tried either.
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