So, ever hear the story about the manacled Mormon sex scandal?
Welcome to Screen Gems, our weekend dive into queer and queer-adjacent titles of the past that deserve a watch or a re-watch.Oscar-winning director Errol Morris contributed one of his best–and strangest–movies to the zeitgeist in 2010 with Tabloid, based on a scandal that swept headlines in the 1970s.
Dubbed “The Manacled Mormon Case,” the story involved Kirk Anderson, a young Mormon missionary allegedly kidnapped and assaulted by a beauty queen turned dominatrix named Joyce McKinney.
The film, told through extensive interviews with the woman herself, chronicles how she met the “All-American boy” Anderson and how, in her estimation, the Mormon church plotted to keep the pair apart.But wait, it gets weirder.By McKinney’s own admission, she tracked Anderson halfway around the world to the UK where the church had stationed him as a missionary.
She then proceeded to spirit him away to a cottage and keep him chained to a bed to “cure” him of his “brainwashing.” In her telling, the BDSM element of their relationship could help Anderson overcome any lingering sexual shame.After several days of sex, Anderson proposed to McKinney.
