The Question of Equality: Culture Wars

Directed by Tina Di Feliciantonio and Jane C. Wagner

In Culture Wars the civil war for cultural values being fought by right-wing conservatives and gay activists is chillingly depicted: after activists convince authorities to acknowledge the 1990 murder of Julio Rivera in Queens as a hate crime, the murderers are convicted;Jesse Helms uses the public television broadcast of Marlon Rigg’s Tongues Untied to attack the National Endowment for the Arts; and local activists successfully campaign against Oregon’s Religious-Right-sponsored Ballot Measure 9, the first of many initiatives nationwide seeking to curtail civil rights.