This weekend, I screened “A Very Natural Thing,” a 1973 film that was among the first commercially distributed films in the United States dealing with gay relationships. Directed and written by Christopher Larkin, it was positioned as the gay community’s answer to the iconic “Love Story” released in 1970.

The film — which despite its occasional scenes of frontal nudity managed to earn an R rating — obviously was not a critical or commercial success. It is a dated piece in some respects although the writing in more than a few instances actually seems still quite contemporary and fresh even in our allegedly enlightened 21st Century environment.

Oddly enough, the film’s normalcy is quite striking 35 years later. Mainstream film critics at the time panned it for political overtones that obscured the “entertainment” value of depicting romantic relationships. Some gay groups said the film, which included scenes from a New York City gay pride celebration of 1973, was too vanilla in its political message.

Made before AIDS was on anyone’s radar and set in the still-early exuberant phase of the gay liberation movement, the film focuses on the lives of ordinary, successful middle-class men. One is a high school teacher who left a monastery, another works in advertising, and a third is a divorced photographer. And, unlike earlier gay films which focused frequently on isolation, dysfunction and tragedy, “A Very Natural Thing” ends on a hopeful note. In other words, commitment should be based on a mutual desire to be together, not one of conventional necessities. As a heterosexual film, “Love Story” suggested a similar theme about unconventional alternatives in relationships. In fact, Larkin suggested a similar tone in an interview for The Celluloid Closet, a first-rate book about the history of films dealing with gay themes:

“I wanted to say that same-sex relationships are no more problematic but no easier than any other human relationships. They are, in many ways, the same and, in several ways, different from heterosexual relationships but in themselves are no less possible or worthwhile.”

Larkin’s script from the early 1970s still resonates, primarily because one gets the sense that perhaps we haven’t necessarily made as much progress in the realm of gay civil rights as we might like to believe, especially with regard to domestic partner rights. Intolerance dies hard.

This week, the Salt Lake City Council will likely consider “mutual commitment” as the name for the new domestic partner registry which was proposed by Mayor Ralph Becker and was adopted unanimously this winter by the council. Worried that any registries might seem too much like gay marriage, the Utah Legislature passed a bill allowing such programs as long as they did not include terms like “domestic partnership.” It was subsequently signed into law by Governor Jon Hunstman, Jr.

Parsing of semantics aside, the legislation represents certainly an important victory for Becker who made good on one of his major campaign promises. And, given the sociocultural environment in Utah, the “mutual commitment” registry could be a useful small step toward the eventual adoption of a proper, legal, apt term signifying that the rights of marriage apply uniformly to all couples regardless of sexual orientation. This essential civil right is being adopted unequivocably in a steadily increasing number of states and nations throughout the world. Even Cuba, long hostile to the rights of gay individuals, is showing signs of change although it will likely move quite slowly.

While I’d like to celebrate the birth of Utah’s first version of a domestic partner — er, mutual commitment — registry, I also believe that we are still being hamstrung by a substantially large proportion of public opinion that refuses to see what should be “a very natural thing.”

I find it telling that some of New Jersey’s public officials are concerned about the second-class status afforded civil unions which were legalized in 2006. Even Governor Jon Corzine, who is campaigning for re-election this year, has misgivings about the program’s effectiveness which had more than 2,300 couples registered by this past January.

Following a 2008 report by a state commission which concluded that civil unions don’t work, Corzine said it “does raise significant concerns about whether the law has effectively granted same-sex couples the same rights and benefits of every other family in the state.” Aware that he does not want to provide cannon fodder for zealous social conservatives, Corzine has decided to wait out the election cycle this year and revisit the issue in 2009.

Let’s face it. Until federal law acknowledges civil union status or same-sex marriage for income tax purposes, any registry or partnership program will have that Plessy v. Ferguson tint (e.g. separate but equal). Parse the terms any way you want to, these programs do nothing to change what essentially remains second-class citizenship.