I SWAN A GAY JESUS IN TEXAS -

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AOL News (March 26) -- At one Texas university this weekend before Easter, the apostles are all gay, Jesus is officiating at a same-sex wedding and the kiss he shares with Judas is raising eyebrows.

Those adaptations to the life and times of Christ are just part of Terrence McNally's incendiary 1998 stage play "Corpus Christi," which is being performed in an abbreviated version at Tarleton State University in Stephenville, Texas. The play details the troubled high school years of a thinly veiled Jesus figure named Joshua, who confronts a hostile environment because of his homosexuality.

As a gay teen himself, McNally grew up in Corpus Christi, Texas, in the 1940s and '50s.

Courtesy Tarleton State University
The controversial stage play "Corpus Christi" is showing at Clyde H. Wells Fine Arts Center at Tarleton State University in Stephenville, Texas. "As a public university, we are legally bound to allow the student production to go forward," said University President F. Dominic Dottavio.
"Stephenville is a very conservative, very religious town," Liza Benedict, associate vice president at the university, told AOL News. "And let's just say we've gotten numerous complaints."

One of those in the community who is upset with the university is David Harris, pastor of the Hillcrest Church of Christ. "It infuriates me that somebody would be given a platform to be able to demean and degrade the son of God," Harris told Fox News. "I'm angry about it, and every Christian should be."

"When people call to complain, I try to make it vitally clear that this is a First Amendment issue," Benedict said. "It's about academic freedom. The university didn't choose to put on this play. That was the students' decision."

"Corpus Christi" was chosen by John Otte as the final project for his advanced directing class. "I chose this play to direct and produce because I am a Christian," Otte said in a written statement, "and I believe that this play can bring people together in a story of acceptance and realization of the alienation we in the gay community feel from most of our churches."

According to Benedict, the performance date a week before Easter is merely coincidental. It was scheduled more than a year in advance, well before students had enrolled in the class, let along selected what play they might direct for a final project.

"It is being said often that this play is a direct attack on Christians -- their faith and their deity," Otte said. "It simply is not true. He is my savior as well, and I was raised in an extremely faithful and religious home."

In the play, the fabled Judas kiss -- in which Judas Iscariot kisses Christ, thereby revealing his identity to Roman soldiers -- is re-envisioned as a gay kiss, devoid of betrayal. Such artistic liberties have caused an uproar in Stephenville, prompting the university to close the performance to the public and add extra police security to the theater.

Due to safety concerns, the university is limiting attendance to the show to students and members of their families, Benedict said, and the play has been rescheduled to begin at 8 a.m. Saturday.

F. Dominic Dottavio, president of Tarleton State University, said in a statement that while he personally finds "no artistic or redeeming quality in the work," the school has little choice but to let the show go on.

"As a public university, we are legally bound to allow the student production to go forward," Dottavio's statement read.

When McNally's play was first performed in 1998 in New York, the playwright received numerous death threats, and the Manhattan Theater Company, where the play opened, drew thousands of protesters. After the play's debut in London, a Muslim group upset at the portrayal of Jesus, whom the religion views as a prophet, issued a fatwa, or decree, against McNally that called for his death.

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@Sglass,

Quote:

Controversial play canceled
© 2010 The Associated Press
March 26, 2010, 10:15PM
STEPHENVILLE, Texas " The performance of a play that portrays Jesus as gay has been canceled at Tarleton State University amid what school officials say are "safety and security concerns."

Critics say the Terrence McNally play "Corpus Christi," which premiered in 1998 in New York, is blasphemous. But the Tarleton student who was directing the production said he chose it to help gay youths who may be struggling with their faith.

Security concerns were cited in prompting the university to initially change the start time and restrict attendance for Saturday's production. Then, on Friday night, the school put a statement on its Web site saying the professor decided to cancel it due to safety and security concerns. The school said the production will not be rescheduled.

Stephenville is about 70 miles southwest of Fort Worth.

It is frightening when terrorist tactics force the cancellation of a play, on a university campus, because some fanatics just don't like the controversial content. Particularly when the play was written by one of the country's most highly regarded, and successful, playwrights, and it was being done on a university campus, a type of venue regarded as a sanctuary of academic freedom and precisely the right forum for intellectual debate and controversy.

Homophobia, and religious extremism have triumphed in Texas. In the guise of religious passion, freedom of artistic expression, not to mention freedom of choice, and freedom of speech, have been silenced by threats of violence. We don't have to worry about Middle Eastern Islamic terrorists threatening our democratic values when our own homegrown religious fanatics do such a good job of it.

McNally, who is openly gay, is one of America's leading playwrights.

Quote:

Terrence McNally is an American playwright who has received four Tony Awards, two Guggenheim Fellowships, a Rockefeller Grant, the Lucille Lortel Award, the Hull-Warriner Award, and a citation from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He has been a member of the Council of the Dramatists Guild since 1970 and has served as vice-president since 1981. McNally is married to Thomas Kirdahy.[

His works certainly merit reading, discussion, and production, and they should be considered in terms of literary or artistic merit, regardless of how controversial their content might be. Those who are offended by his content, or creative conceptions, are free to avoid attending a production of his work, and are free to voice protests in a reasonable and rational manner. I do not consider them free to threaten violence to a point where a play must be canceled for safety and security concerns.

Regarding his own Texas background, McNally himself has said

Quote:

I was attracted to fellow species members. You know, I don't have a big coming out story to tell you. It seemed very natural to me -- I never felt it was wrong. I think something as natural as sexual attraction is not to be fought. We so often hear about people feeling great shame, and "I must be the only sinful person like this." Thank God I never had those feelings. I guess I defined God on my own terms -- terms that were comfortable to me. I attended Catholic school and the one message I got from being in Catholic school was that I was created in God's image, therefore I was okay...
I'm fortunate that I had the smarts to get out of Texas, to get out of a hostile environment and live life openly as a gay man. There are people who do not relocate. But I don't want to live in an environment where I' m embattled every time I go out the door.

And, regarding his play, "Corpus Christi" he has said

Quote:

MCNALLY: I didn't think it was controversial in this day and age to suggest that Christ and his Apostles could be imagined as gay men. I was naïve because I thought the message that we're all created in God's image had been more accepted than it has been. I thought people would at least say, "Yeah, this world should be about love and acceptance and tolerance, about love of our family and fellow man, and that we all have divinity. And when we recognize the divinity in each other we become truly complete people." But it was all dismissed as a sacrilegious, dirty blasphemous play. I really didn't see that coming.

The reception to Corpus Christi revealed how much homophobia still exists in polite society. In New York there's not a lot of gay bashing, but there's a lot of insidious stuff said at dinner parties when gay people leave the room, I have a feeling, and I think we have to address that. I wouldn't be writing half the plays I did if I didn't think homophobia still existed. The reaction to Corpus Christi just shows how strong it is. You can say Christ was a woman, you can say Christ was black but if you suggest that Christ might have been a gay man, then you're suddenly a blasphemer.

The production of this play in Texas wasn't even a full theatrical presentation with tickets being sold to a general public audience. It was a drama class exercise open only to students and parents. And, even that was too threatening for some people to tolerate. Just because Jesus and the Disciples were presented as being gay.

It is interesting to note that the brutal murder of Matt Shepard, a young gay man, in Laramie, Wyoming, occurred the day before *Corpus Christi* opened in NY in 1998. Shepard was targeted because he was gay. Shepard's murder brought national and international attention to the issue of hate crime legislation at the state and federal levels.

If people want to have a reasonable discussion about Christianity and homosexuality that is fine. If they don't like McNally's play, or find it offensive, that is fine, they don't have to watch it. It is not fine when they resort to threats of violence to close it down.

I think the people who forced the shutdown of this play have a great deal to learn about tolerance--and about freedom of artistic expression. I wonder what Jesus would think of them.

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@firefly,

It doesn't suprise me the play was canceled. I was raised in west Texas in the bible belt and I know how the local folks would respond to this. Hate to see the college burnt down or something else violent happen.

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@Sglass,

It's not just Texas, the play's debut in New York in 1998 was almost canceled because of the same kind of threats of violence. Fanatics, homophobes, and religious zealots are found in all parts of the country. In NY, however, they decided not to back down, although they had to install metal detectors in the theater and provide greatly enhanced security. But, that was at a well financed theater, in a large city, where they could handle that sort of thing.

But a lot of things have changed in this country since 1998. And that does include generally greater acceptance and tolerance of homosexuality, to the point that we now have legal gay marriages in many places. We also recognize that attacks on gays, simply because of their homosexuality, are hate crimes, and can be prosecuted under federal law, something we didn't do in 1998. Even people who may not condone homosexuality, are more willing to adopt a "live and let live" attitude about other people's lifestyles. Homophobia is less acceptable within the general population now, although it clearly continues to exist. Within the Christian evangelical community, which includes part of Texas, it is obviously alive and well.

I don't doubt that some people might find a portrayal of Jesus as gay as being offensive. I also doubt that many of them have even seen or read McNally's play to know what they are actually getting worked up about. It is just a knee jerk reaction to any notion of Jesus being gay. But, just because a dramatic work offends some people, doesn't mean that other people shouldn't be allowed to view it. It doesn't give anyone the right to threaten such violence that a play cannot be put on.

Some people can't tolerate any notion of Jesus being sexual at all--straight or gay. Both the book, and the film, "The Last Temptation of Christ", provoked similar controversy, and, in the case of the film, similar violent reactions, partly because Jesus is shown as being sexually active with a woman.

That doesn't mean we have to muzzle artistic or creative efforts, by serious novelists, and playwrights, and film directors, because some people don't like to have their conception of Jesus tampered with. These works do not threaten or impede any one's religious beliefs or religious freedom. They are works of art, products of the human imagination, and it is fine if they challenge us to think or to debate or to question or to argue. It is not fine when people are willing to harm or kill, in the name of their religion, because they don't like the content of such creative work.

Lawful protest is fine, what just happened in Texas is not fine and it is not excusable. Particularly on university campuses, academic freedom must be preserved. That is the one place that ideas must be openly discussed and explored in as free, and rational, a manner as possible.

The university had to cancel the presentation if it presented a serious security problem. They could not risk anyone being harmed. But I find this entire incident rather sad. It is a sorry commentary on the current state of affairs in that part of Texas. I hope that the more enlightened and rational people in that state, and elsewhere, speak out loudly against these religious fanatics and their terrorist threats and tactics.

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I SWAN A GAY JESUS IN TEXAS -

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