“Statistics show that younger religious people, including Catholics, are more accepting of gay people who are their peers. Lisa Sowle Cahill, a professor of Christian ethics at Boston College. “The debate within the church is whether to view innate attraction to the same sex as a deformity of human nature or as an alternative form of human sexual nature,” said Prof.
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On the other flank, however, a 1986 letter from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, prepared when Pope Benedict was its leader, described homosexuality as a “more or less strong tendency toward an intrinsic moral evil.” And over the years, America’s bishops have formally campaigned against both same-sex marriage and civil unions. While calling on homosexuals to remain chaste, the letter maintained, “God does not love someone any less simply because he or she is homosexual.” On the inclusive side, a 1997 letter by American bishops entitled “ Always Our Children” said that homosexuality could not be “considered sinful” and that homosexuals should not be pushed into therapy to try to change them. The Roman Catholic Church, especially in the United States, has dealt with its own complicated duality on gay issues.
The laramie project play script series#
Yet in the months after Xavier began work on “Laramie,” a series of young gay teenagers across the country committed suicide to escape harassment, and a gay man and two teenagers in the Bronx were held, beaten and tortured in an incident widely likened to the Shepard killing. LiVigni said, “what struck me most was the scene of Matthew’s funeral when you have picketers with the sign ‘God Hates You.’ But why would God hate what he created? That’s what I want our boys to understand.” Raslowsky and Michael LiVigni, the headmaster, fits firmly in the Catholic theological tradition, with its emphases on social justice and human dignity.
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If you do ‘The Mousetrap’ or ‘Brigadoon,’ you’re not going to be discussing issues of good and evil.”
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“It’s one of those plays that has the potential to be a springboard to discussion. “I’m thrilled we did it,” Jack Raslowsky, Xavier’s president, said in an interview this week. The deep significance of Xavier’s production of “Laramie” of a Catholic school doing a play with an H.I.V.-positive, bar-going gay man as the object of the audience’s empathy is that it stirred about as much controversy as, say, “Our Town.” To use a Sherlock Holmes aphorism, this was the case of the dog that did not bark. Nothing happened, which is a way of saying that everything happened. Spectators bought hundreds of “Erase Hate” wristbands to benefit the Matthew Shepard Foundation. Parents who had initially quailed about their children being in the show gave standing ovations. English and religion teachers gave their students extra credit to see “Laramie” and write responses. Ostrow’s cast performed the play three times to a total of 470 theatergoers.
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Xavier had performed “Laramie” in the 2002-3 school year, standing by the production even amid some eye-rolling and grumbling among faculty members and parents and a smattering of picketing from fundamentalist Christians. Ostrow that he was not exactly breaking new ground. Not only did Xavier’s president and headmaster approve the plan for “Laramie,” they informed Mr. Ostrow thought he might be shocking his bosses with the proposal, then he was soon shocked in return. It was to stage “ The Laramie Project,” Moises Kaufman’s play about the murder of a gay college student, Matthew Shepard. Ostrow presented school administrators with his wish list for year two. The first was a comedy, “Epic Proportions,” and then came the musical “Grease,” with its script scrubbed of profanity and one character’s unwed pregnancy papered over in euphemisms. When Eric Ostrow was hired last year to teach drama at Xavier High School in Manhattan, as a newcomer he chose two impeccably innocuous shows for student productions.