A wedding announcement for a gay couple placed five years ago in two Venango County newspapers sparked a fiery debate that is still burning.

The couple, Joe Wilson, a 45-year-old Oil City native, and Dean Hamer, 58, were married in Canada in April 2004. They used the backlash as fuel for a documentary film on homophobia in small towns titled "Out in the Silence."

Buried in a pile of hate mail generated by the announcements in The Derrick and The News-Herald was a 17-page letter from Kathy Springer, asking for Mr. Wilson's help with her then-16-year-old gay son, CJ Bills. She said in the 2005 letter that he had been bullied into dropping out of school.

Mr. Wilson and Dr. Hamer, who had made several short documentaries, left their Washington, D.C., home with cameras in hand to document the family's struggle against a seemingly uninterested school board.

The film captures CJ telling the story of the days following his coming out to classmates at Franklin High School, in Franklin. He refers to walking down the hallways as "pure hell," saying he was pushed and tripped daily, students who were once friends shouted "faggot" at him, and teachers turned their heads, pretending not to see.

He also received death threats and threats to burn his house down.

CJ eventually dropped out and started cyber school. He barely left his house for months because he was afraid of physical violence. He became suicidal, Ms. Springer said.

The film follows Ms. Springer to numerous school board meetings, where she pleads for some form of protection so her son can return to school.

Ron Paranick, superintendent of Franklin Area School District, said lawyers and administration investigated the incident and found that no teachers had ignored bullying.

"I really think it's the wrong portrayal of the school board and the district as a whole," Mr. Paranick said of the film. "We're very concerned about the education of all the kids, regardless of preference or sexual orientation or gender orientation."

Last year, Ms. Springer and a lawyer from the American Civil Liberties Union claimed a small victory: a mandatory, comprehensive, diversity training session for Franklin high school teachers by the FBI. Though teachers were required to attend, few showed up and even fewer paid attention, Ms. Springer said.

Mr. Paranick said the school district also implemented two-day diversity training for ninth-graders by Allegheny County probation officers that year.

Ms. Springer was one of about 65 people who attended a special screening of the 56-minute film Saturday at Pittsburgh Filmmakers' Harris Theater, Downtown.

The film will be shown again at a Carnegie Mellon University film festival Oct. 20. It will also be broadcast on PBS stations across the state starting Sept. 11 and nationally in 2010.

Also featured in the film is Linda Henderson, who with her partner Roxanne Hitchcock, remodeled Oil City's historic Latonia Theater, which opponents claimed was to promote the couple's "homosexual agenda."

Oil City residents were encouraged by the Pennsylvania chapter of the American Family Association to boycott the theater's grand opening.

Mr. Wilson also contacted 25 of the more than three dozen angry letter writers before the start of filming, and only one couple agreed to meet with him: the Rev. Mark Micklos, of Trinity Evangelical Congregational Church in Fern, about 10 miles outside Oil City, and his wife, Diana.

"If I grant two men the right to get married, what's wrong with, say, incest or polygamy?" Mr. Micklos, of Cranberry, says in the documentary.

Though it was difficult for both sides at first, the filmmakers and the Mickloses continued to meet through three years of filming in an effort to reach common ground. Eventually, the couples became friends and agreed that bullying like the kind CJ endured should not be tolerated.

Saturday's screening was part of the Unified for Youth Conference in Pittsburgh and was sponsored by the Art Institute of Pittsburgh and various Pittsburgh gay, lesbian and transgender organizations.

"For us, the most important thing is not just that we finished," Mr. Wilson told the audience after the film. "The bulk of work is going to be getting it out and making sure it has a life and finds an audience and reaches people."

They plan to travel the country for the next year showing the film in cities and small towns.

"If we could educate just a handful of people, it was worth it," Ms. Springer said. "There were a lot of tears and a lot of falls, but we persevered and we made it."