When Mormon Beliefs Don’t Mesh With Having a Gay Son
With a hint toward Arthur Miller, a new play turns the saga of the Mormon Church’s railing against the gays into theatre! Only problem: Pointing out how the church funneled Salt Lake’s cash into California’s Yes On 8 effort doesn’t make for riveting stage performances. A Mormon mother dealing with suicide of her gay son? Now that’s a crowd pleaser. Facing East, from writer Carol Lynn Pearson (who wrote about having four children with a Mormon man who turned out to be gay and died of AIDS), opens with mom standing over her 24-year-old son’s grave… just in case you were wondering if this was going to be a warm-fuzzy sort of show. (The play, which has been touring for a couple years, makes its Los Angeles-area debut this month. Listen to an interview with Pearson here.)
I doubt this will be seen anytime soon in my home town of SLC.
@AlanInSLC:
Actually I saw it in SLC a few years ago; gay theater has quite a following in SLC, from Tony Kushner plays to Carol Lynn Pearson plays, I saw 5+ in just one semester; I also remember another famous one which came from SLC about a Mormon missionary who was sent to NYC and became a prostitute, then reanalyzed his life and quit the drugs/sex-for-pay and started touring doing his one man play (I can’t remember the title off hand).
There is a Gay & Lesbian Theater class offered at the University of Utah that is an EXCELLENT source of knowledge for this scene, and upon being required to attend all these plays it opened up my SLC world to see how many people contribute/attend gay-themed theater. If you’re an angry homosexual living in a gay-deprived culture of SLC I’d highly recommend looking into this. I recently left SLC for LA LA Land (horray!) and would also recommend this :P
*peace*
@Jesusffs:
The play was “Confessions of a Mormon Boy” and I believe it was based on the true story of and performed by Carol Lynn Pearson’s (former) Son-in-law Steven Fales.
Speaking as a Gay Mormon living in SLC in these Post-Prop.8 times, we, the Gay community, really need to stop bashing on religions and try to find some sort of working compromise so that we can have our rights, our equality and our freedom while not infringing on theirs and not trying to tear down opposition groups.
We can’t afford to take the low-road because then they can claim moral authority and trump us everytime, We must be the ones to be more Christ-like and turn the other cheek as they beat us down. I know we were upset after Prop. 8 but the rallies around the LDS temples only gave them more publicity to their cause. Had we instead held candlelight vigils and educational meetings we would have had a larger impact on our cause.
But it is not to late to change, We can still stop these attacks against the Church, these pointed attacks from without and instead rally together across spiritual groups to let them know that we are here, that we are proud, and that we too are Children of God.
@David: How are we supposed to “compromise” with people who think we are an abomination and that they know what god wants? I for one am not willing to compromise my rights. I think it was the mormans who said they didn’t oppose rights for gay people,it was just the word marriage they objected to, then they turn around and oppose civil unions. You can go ahead and turn the other cheek, but don’t expect them to stop beating you down. Also,how the hell have we infringed on the rights of religions?
Hell I thought this was going to be a post about David Archulettas Dad getting picked up visiting the Slutty Prostitute Massage Parlor Story!!!
I have no interest at all in being “Christ-like.” Regardless of whether or not there was a real person behind the myths, the Jesus of scriptures is just as much a work of fiction as Harry Potter. Churches only have so-called “moral authority” because you drank the Kool-Aid. The rest of us, free from the lies of religion, know very well that they have no moral authority. The LDS religion, in particular, is new enough that its foundations are very well documented. Anyone interested can see that the church was built on nothing but lies. I cannot believe that any adult with a working brain can take LDS theology seriously; it’s so obviously not true. Believe what you will as is your right. But those of us who find that religion is a destructive force (in addition to being false) will keep saying so whenever the superstitious interfere in public policy. There should be more protests of Mormons, not fewer. Making it perfectly clear that we will not abide by harmful superstitions, not even under law, is not taking the low-road.
@David:
We can still stop these attacks against the Church
Umm, in case you have forgotten or simply choose to overlook the fact, we didn’t launch the first missiles. They did.
Anytime the church chooses to call off the attacks will be just fine. We’ll be very happy to observe a truce.
In the meantime, however, we will continue to fight for the civil-rights that have been withheld from us by the church for far too long now.
If they want peace, they hold the key to bringing it about.
@Shane: “Hell I thought this was going to be a post about David Archulettas Dad getting picked up visiting the Slutty Prostitute Massage Parlor Story!!!”
So did I!
please sue the crap out of them for prop 8!!
David is an active Mormon. Any gay person who is still active in the Mormon church is a self-hating douchebag.
@Bitch Republic:
Isn’t that the same argument that gays have always had with marriage as an institution? Any gay person who is still married was a self-hating douchebag? Wasn’t it all about living an “alternative lifestyle”?