NEW YORK (AP) – TV and film producer Daniel Karslake enjoyed working on segments about religion and gay relationships for the PBS gay news magazine “In the Life.”

Yet as he watched the wrenching debates over Scripture and homosexuality in Protestant denominations and society at large, he felt a need to reach beyond an audience that already accepted partnered gays and lesbians. The result, a documentary called “For the Bible Tells Me So,” opens nationally tomorrow in New York and debuts at the Ken Cinema in San Diego on Friday Oct. 12 for a one-week run.

The film takes a different approach to the gays-in-the-church debate. It focuses on devout Christians who learn their child is gay and how that affected their belief that same-sex relationships are prohibited by Scripture.

“I made this movie for the movable middle in America,” Karslake said, before a private screening Monday at New York’s Marble Collegiate Church, where inspirational pastor Norman Vincent Peale preached for decades. Karslake, who is gay and a mainline Protestant, believes that “sincere, honorable, compassionate people” have been misled about how they should read the Bible.

The documentary features many pro-gay veterans of the theological debates.

Among them is the Rev. Mel White, the former ghost writer for the late Rev. Jerry Falwell and founder of the gay and lesbian advocacy group Soulforce.

But the movie largely focuses on the personal stories of some well-known – and not-so-famous – mothers and fathers of gays and lesbians.

The parents of New Hampshire Bishop Gene Robinson, the first openly gay Episcopal bishop, talk about how they knew nothing about homosexuality until Robinson came out to them. They bought some books about “gay folks” and decided that what they had been taught was wrong.

Former House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt, a Missouri Democrat, and his family talk about his daughter Chrissy, who is a lesbian.

A Bible-believing African-American couple from North Carolina, David and Brenda Poteat, told Karslake that while they still disapprove of homosexuality, they have found a way to build a good relationship with their lesbian daughter, Tonia.

Craig Detweiler, director of Reel Spirituality, a think tank for pastors and filmmakers at Fuller Theological Seminary, a prominent evangelical school in Pasadena, Calif., saw the documentary when it premiered at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival.

Detweiler said he admires the film because, “it explores the human cost of the culture war. I think it tries to move the conversation beyond politics into the personal.”