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Gay Play in SF Shut Down by Prop 8 Archbishopby Kilian MelloyMonday Mar 9, 2009 The San Francisco Archbishhop who invited Mormon involvement in California’s Proposition 8 campaign intervened in the staging of a play with gay themes that had been scheduled for a performance at a Castro district Catholic church.
The play, "Be Still and Know," was set for a performance at the Most Holy Redeemer church in the Castro, reported a Mar. 9 article at SF Weekly.com, but Archbishop Niederauer refused to allow the show to go on.
Joe Eskenazi, writing in the blogs section of SF Weekly.com, reported that the play had been adapted from the novel "The God Box" by Alex Sanchez, in which a teenage boy named Paul, who lives in a small town, meets an openly gay Christian his own age, a teen named Manuel.
The gay teen’s ability to fuse both aspects of his person into a unified whole, in defiance of church dogma, points the way for Paul to process thoughts and feelings of his own that he’s never dared confront.
The play was adapted by John Loschman, the drama teacher for Sacred Heart Preparatory, a Catholic school, the article said.
"While the notion of a play compassionate to the difficult plight of religious homosexuals playing in the heart of the Castro might strike outsiders as akin to a traveling presentation of A Raisin in the Sun showing in the Bayview or Fiddler on the Roof at the Jewish Community Center," wrote Eskenazi, "the student play’s pending curtain date was documented in local Catholic newsletters and blogs with the trepidation of villagers awaiting the barbarians at the gate."
Archbishop Niederaurer quashed the play by issuing instructions that it was not to be staged at the church, although it had been produced elsewhere in the Bay area, Eskenazi reported.
Niederauer, who had served as Bishop in Salt Lake City before his promotion and reassignment to San Francisco, was cited by Mormon officials as the reason why the Mormon church became involved in the Proposition 8 battle, with members of the church nationwide contributing more than $20 million to the effort to pass the measure.
In November of last year, voters narrowly approved Proposition 8, which repealed the right of gay and lesbian families in California to marry.
In December, Niederauer issued a statement titled "Moving Forward Together" in which the Archbishop encouraged people on both sides of the issue to demonstrate tolerance toward one another.
Wrote Niederauer, "Tolerance, respect and trust are always two-way streets and tolerance, respect and trust often do not include agreement, or even approval."
Continued the statement, "We need to be able to disagree without being disagreeable.
"We need to stop hurling names like ’bigot’ and ’pervert’ at each other. And we need to stop it now."
However, the statement also compared anti-marriage equality clerics to people who opposed slavery in the 19th century.
Archbishop Niederauer was also active in promoting arguments for the outlawing of marriage equality in the months leading up to the vote.
In a decade-old memo, the Mormon leadership sketched plans for how to respond if marriage equality should become law in California, discussing a close alliance with the Catholic church in mounting an attempt to ban marriage for gay and lesbian families.
Kilian Melloy reviews media, conducts interviews, and writes commentary for EDGEBoston, where he also serves as Assistant Arts Editor.
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