It's Freedom to Marry Week

It's Freedom to Marry Week, a time to talk about love and equality and fairness.

If two unrelated adults who are in love, building a life together, in many cases raising children together, want the benefits and protections of marriage, they ought to get them. It shouldn't matter whether they're two men or two women or a man and a woman. It's a matter of equal protection under the law.

The campaign of fear, the scare tactics, that opponents of gay marriage use are deeply offensive to me. To imply that allowing gays and lesbians to marry threatens children or heterosexual marriage is bigotry, pure and simple. It's immoral and unAmerican.

My friends who are gay and lesbian pay taxes, are good citizens, decent people with the highest values. They shouldn't be treated like second-class citizens when it comes to marriage.

I look at their loving, committed relationships and I compare them to John Edwards and Eliot Spitzer and Mark Sanford, three heterosexual married men, with children, who did not take their vows seriously at all. I wonder: Who presents the real threat to the sanctity of "traditional marriage?"

I know how fortunate my friends feel to have found the love of their life. And I know how truly happy and fulfilling their lives are together. The longer I know them, the more strongly I feel that they should have the freedom to marry the person they love. They will certainly honor the sanctity of marriage better than Spitzer, Sanford and Edwards.

In Sunday's New York Times, Frank Rich wrote about the push to repeal "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," which prevents gays and lesbians in the military from serving their country openly. He said, "Most Americans recognize that being gay is not a 'lifestyle' but an immutable identity."

Like a lot of straight people, there was a time when I didn't know many people who were openly gay or lesbian. But times change and so, too, should our concept of equality. This comment sums up how I feel:

"As more gay people have come out — a process that accelerated once the modern gay rights movement emerged from the Stonewall riots of 1969 — so more heterosexuals have learned that they have gay relatives, friends, neighbors, teachers and co-workers. It is hard to deny our own fundamental rights to those we know, admire and love."

In the week leading up to Valentine's Day, that's a statement worth taking to heart.

Frank Rich on Stonewall

I truly admire the way New York Times columnist Frank Rich continually reminds us that this country's work on civil rights is not yet complete.

Last month, he took the Obama administration to task over its failure to push for the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and the Defense of Marriage Act. Today, he has a column on the 40th anniversary of Stonewall and he's still holding the administration's feet to the fire.

(I love this line: "If the country needs any Defense of Marriage Act at this point, it would be to defend heterosexual marriage from the right-wing “family values” trinity of Sanford, Ensign and Vitter.")

Rich recalls how he was caught up in the civil rights and antiwar movements of the 1960s but never heard about the demonstrations that followed a police raid on a gay bar in Greenwich Village on June 28, 1969. Even if he had, he wonders whether he would have cared. After all, he didn't know anyone at his Ivy League university who was openly gay.

"It was typical of my generation, like others before and after, that the issue of gay civil rights wasn’t on our radar screen. Not least because gay people, fearful of harassment, violence and arrest, were often forced into the shadows."

I'm younger than Rich, but I've always been interested in the history of the 1960s, particularly the civil rights and antiwar movements. I read widely on those subjects when I was in college in the late '70s and early '80s. And I never remember reading anything about Stonewall. Like Rich, when I was in college, I didn't know anyone who was openly gay.

Well, things are, thankfully, different today. Frank Rich cares, and so do I.

My audience may not be as large as the Times' but I intend to keep writing, too. How could I not? How could I tell my friends who happen to be gay or lesbian - people I love and admire - that there are some rights they don't deserve, that our laws shouldn't protect them as much as they protect me, that they shouldn't be allowed to marry the person with whom they want to spend the rest of their life?

On Monday, Rich notes that President Obama will mark the Stonewall anniversary at the White House. And he repeats his disappointment in the administration, which I share. Congressional Democrats, too. I'm not letting you off the hook. Judging from this Times story, there's plenty of foot-dragging in the legislative branch.

One line in Rich's May column gave me pause, when he said that "changes aren’t coming as fast as many gay Americans would like." I noted that there are plenty of "straight Americans" who want equal rights extended to everyone in this country. It's important for our elected officials to know that this isn't a "gay issue."

Apparently, he's been reading my blog because this time, he gets my point:

"It’s a press cliché that “gay supporters” are disappointed with Obama, but we should all be. Gay Americans aren’t just another political special interest group. They are Americans who are actively discriminated against by federal laws."

"If the president is to properly honor the memory of Stonewall, he should get up to speed on what happened there 40 years ago, when courageous kids who had nothing, not even a public acknowledgment of their existence, stood up to make history happen in the least likely of places."

Thank-you Frank

Frank Rich has a great column in the Sunday New York Times taking President Obama to task for his lack of courage in pushing for the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and the Defense of Marriage Act.

"Despite Barack Obama’s pledges as a candidate and president, there is no discernible movement on repealing the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy or the Defense of Marriage Act. Both seem more cruelly discriminatory by the day."

He's absolutely correct. There's just one line in Rich's column that I'd quibble with: "And yet the changes aren’t coming as fast as many gay Americans would like, and as our Bill of Rights would demand."

It's not just "gay Americans" who want change to come faster - there are plenty of "straight Americans" who want equal rights extended to everyone in this country as soon as possible. Like, today.

Yom HaShoah

On Broadway tonight, Tovah Feldshuh, the star of Irena's Vow, will lead a candlelight ceremony in front of the Walter Kerr Theatre to mark Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day. In the play, Feldshuh portrays a real-life Polish Catholic woman who rescued Jewish refugees during World War II.

Taking part in the Yom HaShoah remembrance when I lived in Israel in 1998 was one of the most unique and unforgettable events of the year I spent there.

I was standing on the corner of a busy street in Tel Aviv when the memorial siren went off at 10 a.m. At first, I didn't realize it, because there was so much noise from the traffic.

But suddenly, everything went silent. Buses pulled over to the side of the road. Drivers got out of their cars. People walking along the street stopped in their tracks. Customers at a cafe got up from their chairs. Everyone stood at attention and bowed their heads. No one moved.

For two minutes, the only sound was the siren. It was a simple, yet profound and deeply felt act of communal memory. We stood still together and silently remembered, each person caught up in his or her own thoughts.

Some Jews have argued that standing silently isn't a very Jewish way to commemorate something. And they do have a point. We shouldn't just do that.

I didn't write anything a few weeks ago when the National Organization for Marriage released its "Gathering Storm" commercial, about the supposed dangers American society faces from legalizing same-sex marriage.

But today seems like a day when I ought to say something - indeed, when I'm obligated to say something. What angers me about that video is the way it presents gay and lesbian Americans as people we should fear, the way it presents their relationships as a threat to our society.

That video is disgusting and reprehensible and unAmerican. Extending equal protection hurts no one. And our gay and lesbian friends, family members, coworkers, neighbors and loved ones are not a threat to anyone.

You can read the Human Rights Campaign's statement debunking it. HRC has also set up a Web site, End the Lies, to confront the lies and distortions used to defeat LGBT equality measures.

Tomorrow, the House Judiciary Committee will take up the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act, also known as the Matthew Shepard Act. The bill would give the Justice Department the power to prosecute bias-related crimes where the victim is chosen because of their race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability.

In The New York Times on Sunday, Frank Rich called "Gathering Storm" a turning point in the demise of America's antigay movement. "If it advances any message, it’s mainly that homophobic activism is ever more depopulated and isolated as well as brain-dead."

It may be the last gasp of the bigots but today of all days, I can't dismiss it so easily.

Whenever we present one group of people as objects of hatred and fear it becomes easier to think of them as less than human, as less deserving of equal rights. And that is the true threat to all of the values we hold dear as Americans.

Why South Pacific matters

There's a very thoughtful column by Frank Rich in today's New York Times looking at why Lincoln Center's gorgeous revival of South Pacific has struck a chord with so many theatergoers. Not surprisingly, but effectively, he ties it to the war in Iraq and to our unresolved national debate about race.

Because the Rodgers and Hammerstein songs, like "Some Enchanted Evening," are so embedded in our collective consciousness, everyone thinks they've seen the real South Pacific, Rich say, but what they usually mean is that they've seen the glossy, candy-colored 1958 movie. "They expect corn, but in a year when war and race are at center stage in the national conversation, this relic turns out to have a great deal to say."

When audiences saw the original musical, which opened on Broadway in 1949, the memories of World War II in the Pacific were obviously still fresh in their minds. They "had sons and brothers who had not returned home." Today, relatively few Americans have such a personal connection to the war in Iraq. Rich goes on to say that South Pacific forces us to do something most of us have become very adept at avoiding - think about that war.

"South Pacific reminds us that those whose memory we honor tomorrow — including those who served in Vietnam — are always at the mercy of the leaders who send them into battle," Rich writes. "It increases our admiration for the selflessness of Americans fighting in Iraq."

Like war, the matters of race at the heart of South Pacific also are very much alive today. Nurse Nellie Forbush struggles to accept the mixed-race children of French planter Emile de Becque. "Years before Little Rock’s 1957 racial explosion," Rich says, "Nellie moves beyond her prejudices, propelled by life and love and the circumstances of war. She charts a path that much of America, North and South, would haltingly begin to follow."

What struck me most about the column was its ending. A few months ago, I weighed in, along with many other bloggers, about the value of theatre. Rich, who was the Times' theatre critic for years, gives us an indication of what his answer might be as he contemplates the hopeful scene at the end of South Pacific and why it moves many theatergoers to tears.

"We weep for the same reason we often do when we experience a catharsis at the theater. We grieve deeply for our losses and our failings, even as we feel an undertow of cockeyed optimism about the possibilities of healing and redemption that may yet lie ahead."

Some Frank talk

Don't get me wrong, I like Frank Rich. I really enjoyed Ghost Light, the poignant memoir he wrote about growing up in Washington, D.C. I read his column on the op-ed page of The New York Times every Sunday. But I have to respectfully take issue with a comment he made in the Times' discussion of August: Osage County.

Rich was responding to another panelist, playwright Marsha Norman, who said that critics need to be public advocates for the theater.

He agreed with her, but added that as much as critics might love a play, they don't really have much power to persuade people to go see it. Rich says: "If the critics have as much power as Marsha says, why do they have no power to get audiences to buy tickets to “The Seafarer” or to stop audiences from flocking to, say, “Young Frankenstein?"

Then he noted the range of information available on the Internet, where potential ticket buyers have access to to any number of reviews of movies, plays and musicals 24 hours a day. Once something makes it onto the Internet, it's there forever, available to far more people than would ever see it on the printed page.

Now this is the remark that got me a little steamed. Rich adds, almost as an afterthought, "By the way, many of the most vicious reviews are written on theater blogs, and they can’t be stopped either."

I think that line is really unfair and it tells me that Frank Rich needs to start reading more theater blogs. I'm not sure whether he's referring to someone in particular. I guess there could be some vicious theater bloggers out there, people who take delight in tearing someone's work to shreds, but I've never come across them.

I've read more than a few blogs over the past few years on a wide range of subjects. I read movie, pop culture and literary blogs in addition to theater blogs. While I normally hate to make generalizations, here's one I'm fairly comfortable with: people who blog about the arts generally do so because they're passionate about that particular art form. They don't do it to be rude or vicious or to tear anyone down. (I've also read a few political blogs, and they're a completely different animal).

I'm sure there are exceptions, but people who write about the theater or movies or books or music do so because they love theater, movies, books or music. And they're very knowledgeable about the subject, even though it may be far removed from their day job. Their reviews are every bit as thoughtful, discerning, well written and professional as any you'd find from a "professional critic" in a newspaper or magazine. (And I'm not anywhere near that level yet).

Reading bloggers certainly fueled my growing interest in going to the theater. Far from being vicious, it was the exact opposite: their enthusiasm and love for the art form made me enthusiastic and excited. Now that I have my own corner of the blogosphere, I hope I'm doing the same.

Even my little blog gets quite a few queries about Broadway shows, about touring productions, about local theater I've attended. I think we complement traditional media. When people get excited about something, they want to read and hear as much as possible. And I'm someone who believes the more information, the more voices, the better it is for the theater. Frank, I hope you agree.

Ok, I've vented. I feel much better now.