Tuesday, December 19, 2017

Reflecting on THE CHALICE



Another production in the books!

Honored 

That's the only way I can describe the experience of having my play The Chalice produced at the Stonewall Inn.  As a Catholic writer, I feel that my voice ought only to be heard in an LGBTQ space with the express permission of the people to whom it belongs.  The Stonewall chose to give my play a platform, and for that I am incredibly grateful.  Seeing Xavier Theatre, a Catholic theatre company, work in tandem with The Stonewall, the historical beginning of the Gay Rights Movement, gave me hope that yes, people can in fact still listen to each other.  We can in fact still learn, and our hearts can still be changed.

I sat down with Bruce Jones, who played Alex, to talk about his experience working on the play, and what the play works for LGBTQ people and people of color.  He started out expressing his surprise, when he first saw it, that the character was written by a white person.  This says a lot about the type of roles that have been traditionally written for the stage- white people, mostly men, have written roles for other white people, mostly men.  When people of color do appear onstage, too often they are in stereotyped roles with no connection to the lived experiences of  human beings.   Bruce reflects, "Queer people have been around forever.  People of color have been around forever.  But I think that if you write these roles and the only thing you have to bring to it is this weird, formulaic idea of what you think people are like, there's nothing about that that has integrity." The exception to this, of course, is plays written by people of color.  The result that its actually difficult to imagine a white person having written a thee-dimensional lead character that isn't white.  Wow.

What was eye-opening to me about Jones' assumption was that he actually wasn't wrong.  I hadn't originally written Alex as a black man, despite the obvious thematic connections to race that present themselves in this play. From my place of racial privilege, it didn't register with me to address Alex's race, despite the fact that the central scene in the play takes place between him and a Neo-Nazi.  It wasn't until we cast Jak Watson in the original production at the New School that this layer was added to the script.  I do not think I would have been able to do justice to that aspect of the character if it wasn't for Jak's guidance and input during the re-writing process.  Thanks to feedback from Jak and Bruce, the play has gained depth and power far beyond what I initially conceived.

Bruce goes on to describe his relationship to the character himself, a person with a vastly different temperament, experience, and worldview. "There's a character who can be like you on paper- who can have the same skin color and be the same age- but you can still not know who they are, how you can get into them, or how you can crack what they are. And I feel very much like, he and I, if you were to check the two boxes, we're both black and we're both Queer.  Those are the two things we have in common, but everything else is so different.  His essence is different than mine." This really ties back to his original point.  We hear all the time about the lack of roles for Queer people and for people of color.  But the next layer of this conversation is that the roles that do exist so often lack complexity. Bruce says it best:

"It is so important to see people of color (and LGBTQ people) as being human beings experiencing pain and loss and love and everything in-between.  I think that when you have under-represented people and you have the opportunity to look at them and say 'oh this person has experienced profound pain and profound joy', that is so important."

I return again to the word honor. It's an honor as a writer to work with actors who care passionately about my plays, that see them as vital and relevant to their lives.  Thank you thank you thank you to everyone who dedicated their talents to The Chalice:

Director Tom Paolino
Stage Manager: Signey Junk
Cast: Bruce Jones, Margaret Arnold, Marisela Gonzalez, Joe Hoover, Bruce Jones, Kevin Martinez

A very special thank you to Austin Pendleton for appearing in the role of Pius XII. 

You can check out Bruce's full interview (and the accompanying ambient sounds of The Stonewall) here:

Bruce Jones Talks about the Chalice

You can also read more about the production in my article in America Magazine:

Does a Catholic Play Belong at the Stonewall?

Saturday, August 12, 2017

Why Silence Isn't an Option, (or the devil grows stronger when you deny him.)

Whoever says he is in the light, yet hates his brother, is still in the darkness.
Whoever loves his brother remains in the light, and there is nothing in him to cause a fall.
Whoever hates his brother is in darkness; he walks in darkness and does not know where he is going because the darkness has blinded his eyes.
-1 John 2:9-11

Today I wish to emphasize that the problem of intolerance must be confronted in all its forms: wherever any minority is persecuted and marginalized because of its religious convictions or ethnic identity, the wellbeing of society as a whole is endangered and each one of us must feel affected.”
-Pope Francis

I was recently discussing this weekend's events in Charlottesville with a fellow Catholic whom I love and respect a great deal.  This person expressed to me that s(he) believes the proper method of dealing with people like David Duke is to take away their power by ignoring them.  In regards to the protest/anti-protest this weekend they said "I wish no one had shown up."  While I understand the viewpoint, and in many ways wish it were true, I fundamentally disagree.  Here's why:

For too long, many of us with the power to speak have chosen not to on the mistaken belief that not actively part taking in racism and discrimination leaves us morally exempt from any discussion of race.  I am ashamed to admit that growing up I felt this way.  I didn't think about race, and in doing so I believed I had achieved a sort of racial neutrality that was the same as being "not racist." This was a false belief, a belief symptomatic of the privilege that I did not understand myself to have, that I could not comprehend.  I was inactive in the conversation about race, and I thought that meant I had no effect on it. In reality, by not talking about race I was moving aside and creating an open space for racists to step into. And now they have the spotlight.

So let's be explicitly clear.  Racism is real, alive, and well in the United States.  It is part the continuation of a legacy of racial violence that began with the founding of this country and is just as integral to the American story as freedom, bravery, and moving west. As a White person, I have a special responsibility to articulate to these men who claim to represent me that I reject their entire ideology.  Because, unfortunately, White opinions are the only ones that matter to them. 

I am saddened that I have not observed a more overt stance on this issue within the Catholic community.  A traditionally conservative group, I believe many parish priests are afraid of alienating their congregation by appearing to preach in favor of one political party over another.  But the Church's stance is clear and uncompromising on this issue, so there should be no fear of offense.  We as Catholics need to stop pretending that racism isn't a moral issue.  Racism is a sin. And, just as there are both venial and mortal sins, there are both overt and subtle forms of racism.  As with all sins, racism must be stamped out within ourselves and actively combated in society.  I should no more deny my tendency to make racial judgments than I should deny my tendency to lie.  What I should do, instead, is try to stop lying- stop making racial judgments. Racism, like the devil, thrives best when we deny it's existence. The fact that it makes us feel better to believe it doesn't exist cannot make it so.  It it best that we confront it directly and with force. 

Let us also never forget that we too have a history of oppression in this country. Along with Jews and people of color, laws existed to suppress and control us.  Laws were also written prevent our immigration into the US on the basis of our alleged desire to overthrow the government and place the pope in power.  Basically, people thought we were terrorists. Groups like the KKK still include Catholics on their lists of undesirables, but in general society our status has elevated dramatically. We are, in fact, a group with a great deal of power both politically and economically.  How disappointing that, rather than using that power to fight for others experiencing discrimination, we have become safe and complacent.  We shut our doors and mind our own business.

On the rare occasion when I do hear a Catholic speak about our history of discrimination, it's often, disturbingly, used as an excuse for inaction.  The "Well, we were discriminated against too."  is usually a stand in for "We can't be the bad guys" or "It's not our job."  But it is our job.  And, yes, we can be the bad guys.  By promoting hatred against Muslims, Jews, and the LGBTQ community, we have actively contributed to the problem.  By doing nothing we have passively contributed to the problem. (Remember, we confess both what we have done and what we have failed to do.) 

Now is the time to do the right thing, to take a moral stand on the side of good.  It's what Pope Francis is asking of us.  More importantly, it's what Christ asks of us. 


Sunday, February 26, 2017

Why I Didn't Attend the Woman's March

The following was presented as part of "A Call to Action," a salon series of short political pieces from The Skeleton Rep.  It was directed by Ria DiLullo and written and performed by me.  Because I occasionally do perform things. 

I want to make one thing clear: I would have gone to D.C.  I would have stood up against the casual acceptance of sexual violence, the condescension, the inferiority woman are facing in the near future.  But when the leaders of the Woman’s March said pro-life woman need not apply, I stopped myself, and I did a double-take.  They didn’t say, come, but know we will have pro-choice speakers.  They didn’t say come, but please be respectful of the general view.  They said don’t come.  Now, the name of this march was not March for Choice.  It was the Women’s March.  For women. I basically had my vagina card rejected by the organizers of this protest.

I am a pro-life moderate.  I oppose overturning Roe v. Wade and defunding Planned Parenthood as tactics.  I oppose most legal measures to stop abortion because they are ineffective to the larger goal of ending abortion.  I am a Catholic, but my objections are not religious.  They are based on principles of human rights and social justice.  Moderates like me have no voice on either side of this increasingly dogmatic debate. 

And I think that’s bullshit.  Do you believe there weren’t disagreements within the suffrage movement?  Those bitches fought each other like crazy.  Alice Paul and Carrie Chappman Catt hated each other.  And let’s not forget other movements. Malcom X and Martin Luther King- diametric opposition of tactics. Think how shitty a musical Hamilton would be if the founding fathers agreed about everything.  By laying out a specific doctrine and declaring it the official stance of “women,” you are limiting yourself and robbing yourself of allies. I know some kick-ass pro-life women, way more radical than me, who would be invaluable assets to what you are doing.  But you don’t know them.  Because you told them not to show up.

Yesterday, a friend posted an article about how progressives should no longer use the term “pro-life,” because pro-life people don’t really care about life. My friend pledges to only call people like me anti-choice from now on. This is not discourse. This is re-framing an argument so you are guaranteed to win.

 Let me break down something for any of you who think this is a good idea.  I have a degree in philosophy, with a focus on the Jewish Enlightenment thinker Baruch Spinoza.  He wrote about democracy before John Locke.  From his example, I’ve extracted two basic rules for effective discourse. First, always assume your opponents value what they say they value. In other words, don’t assume your opponent is lying or trying to trick you. Second, you must choose the strongest and most convincing of your opponent’s arguments and engage directly with that argument.

When you reframe the prolife- prochoice debate into a pro-choice-anti-choice debate, you are committing two philosophical fallacies.  You are assuming your opponent is lying about her values, and you are insisting that her weakest argument is her only true argument. You require less of your intellectual power to beat a less powerful premise, bringing the entire conversation down.  You weaken the level of discourse and that’s bad for me and it’s bad for you.

Listen, clearly I’m not stupid.  I know you have reasons to believe that pro-life people are contributing to more abortions.  I’m aware of those arguments and I have counter-arguments.  Give other people the benefit of the doubt.  Why do you assume people are dumb?  Or is it just because you know the real discussion, the hard discussion that we might have will be painful for you? I’m in pain too.  It’s okay, we can get through that together. And with that pain, we can find common ground.  We can ask- where and how can we work together? 

By excluding me from the Woman’s March you have also excluded my ideas, my values, and my dreams.  You’ve devalued me as a woman.   If, on the other hand, you’re open to pro-life women in general being part of the conversation, then pro-life moderates will most likely side with you in elections and in policy.  We will join you in the fight for equality in the workplace, for an end to sexual violence, for more support for single mothers and increased resources for children in foster-care and for families.  We’ll ally with you in the fight for diversity and inclusiveness and a strong thriving democracy.  I’ll ally with you on so many things. And I’ll fight with you about the other thing. I think that’s okay.  But it’s up to progressives to decide whether one more person marching makes a difference. If not, I’ll sit the next one out too.



Tuesday, January 31, 2017

To Pro-Life Christians: Please Support Refugees



Pope Francis, right, washes the feet of prisoners in 2015. CREDIT: AP PHOTO/L’OSSERVATORE ROMANO, POOL

As Vice President Mike Pence addressed crowds of supporters at the March for Life, protests raged across the country decrying President Trump’s ban on immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries.  This executive order includes an indefinite ban on refugees from war-torn Syria. The Vice-President did not mention immigration in his comments to Pro-Life activists, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be on our minds.  It is the height of hypocrisy to march for protection of the unborn and ignore the plight of children around the world.  Mr. Pence, it seems, is unaware that immigration is a life issue

The Pro-Life movement has fallen into a dangerous trap of one-issue politics.  The fixation with overturning Roe V Wade has chained us to the Republican Party, distracting us from vital work and weakening our stance. In fact, the Republicans often oppose measures that are vital to our cause: a stronger safety net for single mothers, fixing our broken foster-care system, and putting an end to the death penalty.  Lessening our focus on these goals has given weight to our opponent’s argument that we don’t really care about life at all. They perceive Pro-Life Christians as only focused on controlling women and forcing them into motherhood.  We, they argue, are hypocrites who only care about the life of a child while it is still in the womb. This stance would be insulting if it wasn’t so close to the truth.  We have lost touch with our calling as Christians and fallen into the simplistic story of the culture war.  And now President Trump has slammed the door on immigration. This is our chance to prove ourselves.  

Not to be outdone, conservatives are quick to point the finger of hypocrisy at the left-wing outrage surrounding the immigration ban. Obama took similar measures in 2011. (The seven countries on Trumps list are drawn from the Obama-era’s Visa Waiver program.)[1]  It’s natural to want to point fingers and say “Where were your protests then?” My question to pro-life activists is this: who cares? We have no time to waste removing splinters from other people’s eye’s- our beam is enormous.  We owe no loyalty to the Republican Party. We are Christians.  Our loyalty lies only in what is true. The question is not why are they outraged all the sudden but rather why weren’t we outraged before?  Pointing out the flaws in others is a distraction.  We only have time for the flaws in ourselves.
We’ve known for years about the refugee crisis in Syria, but we chose to do nothing.  We’ve known that translators who risked their lives to help our military were being denied entry into the United States.  We in the Pro-Life movement should have been the first to take up this cause. Instead, we are making excuses and blaming others. Worse, we are allowing our fears to control our actions. 

The story of Jewish refugees being turned away at the border during the Second World War has been passed around so much in connection with the current crisis, that it has started to feel like empty rhetoric.  But it is not.  The fears about allowing these refugees into the country are almost identical to the fears being expressed today: we haven’t vetted these people, we don’t know who they are, the enemy could be hiding among them, their values seem different than ours.  Roman Catholics often forget that we were at once suspected of wanting to set up a Papal Kingdom in the United States, echoing the current fear that Muslims will try to institute Sharia Law.  None of these fears ever came to fruition in our country, but we allowed them to guide our choices.  Every passenger on that ship of Jewish refugees died in concentration camps. 

I want to be clear:  I am not suggesting that all the rhetoric around this issue is accurate- popular media is rife with misinformation, which is certainly fueling the protests. I am also not suggesting that the Pro-Life movement ought to side with the Democratic Party.  On the contrary, I’m begging that we become entirely non-partisan. From the outside, it is much easier to perceive how both parties are right some of the time.  It is reasonable that a Pro-Life person might feel immigration policy needs to be reexamined, and a temporary hiatus may be necessary to do this. But if this is the case (and I’m not convinced it is) these changes must be made as quickly as possible.  An indefinite ban is not acceptable.  And, once the process is completed in a swift manner, we must dramatically increase our acceptance of refugees.  The numbers under President Obama were not remotely high enough. Every day that our borders are closed is a gift to ISIS and a victory for death.

Finally, I strongly urge Christians to take the charges of religious discrimination seriously.  Virtually every religious group has experienced persecution at some point in their history.  It is tragically rare for members of one religion to stand up for members of another.  This is to our shame.  Once again, conservatives will argue that the phrase “Muslim Ban” is hugely inaccurate, used to spur partisan rage.  The undeniable truth is that banning Muslims was one of President Trump’s (admittedly contradictory) campaign promises.[2]  If he intends to keep this promise then this executive order is the first step, as was disturbingly described by Rudy Giuliani [3].  While the immigration ban may not directly forbid entry based on race or religion, when taken within the context of President Trump’s previous statements, it sends a very specific message. As Senator John McCain, observes, “This executive order sends a signal, intended or not, that America does not want Muslims coming into our country.”[4]  Now, the President will wait and see how the Christian majority will react to this message.  We must not allow ourselves to be comforted by legality.  There is always a division between what is technically legal and what is morally acceptable, and we can only fall down on one side. We must protect the sacred right to worship, and vociferously oppose anything that comes close to challenging that right. 

The United States has so far failed to protect the innocent victims of our greatest enemies.  Some of these people are fellow Christians and ethnic minorities, many more are Muslims- all are targeted for extinction by extremists.  This is unquestionably a life issue.  When meditating on the moral path, we must remember Christ’s words in what is significantly known as the Judgement of Nations:

“Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me.” (Mt. 25 v34-36)


Will Pro-Life Christians demand protection for refugees, or will we once again fail in our mission?


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[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/news/archive/2017/01/trump-immigration-order-muslims/514844/
[2] https://www.donaldjtrump.com/press-releases/donald-j.-trump-statement-on-preventing-muslim-immigration
[3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/01/29/trump-asked-for-a-muslim-ban-giuliani-says-and-ordered-a-commission-to-do-it-legally/?utm_term=.2fbb7b78df6e
[4] http://www.mccain.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=587F2A2D-8A47-48F7-9045-CF30F0A77889