c. 2007 Religion News Service
(UNDATED) What do you get when you cross LDS and PBS? A four-hour documentary on the past and present of Latter-day Saints called “The Mormons.”
What do you get when you cross LDS and GOP? A Mormon, Mitt Romney, as a viable presidential candidate.
What do you get when you cross LDS and HBO? “Big Love,” a family drama set in suburban Salt Lake City.
What do you get when you cross LDS and USA? Millions of people who are fascinated by, suspicious of, admiring of, condemning of and baffled by Mormons.
And what do you get when you cross LDS and G-A-Y? A lot of pain for gay church members and their families. A lot of pressure that creates many gay-straight marriages doomed to failure. And sadly, a lot of suicides, especially in Utah.
It’s the suicides that break my heart the most. I’m a fourth-generation Mormon, married in a temple and still active in my local ward. I’m also a writer. My book, “Goodbye, I Love You,” tells the story of my marriage to a gay man, the birth of our four children, our mutual anguish over Gerald’s inability to change his sexual orientation, our divorce, our ongoing friendship, and finally my caring for him as he died from AIDS in 1984.
In the years since, I’ve had the privilege of becoming a confidant and friend to hundreds of gay people and their families, particularly Mormons. I love the Mormon community, and I equally love the gay and lesbian people in my life.
I also love the theater and writing plays. So what did I get when I crossed love and outrage, religion and homosexuality, and the theater? A stage play, “Facing East,” in which a Mormon couple confront the suicide of their gay son and the careening of their religious world.
The play premiered in Salt Lake City last November to great reviews and sold-out houses. Even the church-owned Deseret Morning News cited it as “Best Drama of the year.” It’s now running (May 25-June 17) off-Broadway in New York and is headed to San Francisco in August.
At one of the post-performance discussions with the audience, our director, Jerry Rapier, said, “Who would have thought that a little play about a gay Mormon suicide would have caused all this attention?” I raised my hand.
Every night, I watched the audience coming in, and I watched with gratitude, but not surprise. I knew that these eager theater-goers were not just out for a night of entertainment; they had gathered in a ritual of communal mourning, perhaps a ritual of communal hope.
A friend sent me an e-mail the day after she saw “Facing East.”
“Every one there,” she wrote, “I’m sure, had a story, a story of pain, a story of betrayal, of confusion, of sacrifice and the struggle for love. They were looking to find redemption, hope and searing honesty, no matter what the cost. Thank you for holding nothing back.”
Watching the play _ and the audience_ from the upper balcony was very interesting. So many were weeping and holding hands and squeezing each other for comfort. After the play, they embraced each other and then embraced complete strangers. There was a shared compassion that held us in a place beyond words. It was an amazing experience to be part of.
And I received this e-mail from a man I’ve never met:
“Watching `Facing East’ was a turning point for me,” he wrote. “`God loves me and I am gay!’ _ those beautiful words, in some miraculous way, touched my heart, and I have come to know in recent weeks that I, too, am loved by God.”
As a playwright, as a human being committed to bringing a little more love into the world, I could not be more thrilled. To see the lights come up _ literally and figuratively _ on a story that is both indictment and invitation is better even than applause or just about anything I can think of.
“If people could just see us as human beings, they wouldn’t be so afraid of us,” my former husband, Gerald, would say again and again. That’s why he joined the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus. When he returned for the group’s first national tour in 1981, he was certain thousands of minds had been changed by showing them real faces of real gay people. I hope and believe that Gerald, in his seat up in the balcony, has been smiling through every performance of “Facing East.”
So what do we get when we cross the borders that separate “Us” and “Them”? A better chance of creating a world in which all of us _ no matter who we are _ have a place at the table.
(Carol Lynn Pearson is the author of the book “Goodbye, I Love You” and the play “Facing East,” which is currently playing off-Broadway in New York. She lives in Walnut Creek, Calif.)
KRE/PH END PEARSON
775 words
A photo of Carol Lynn Pearson is available via https://religionnews.com.
