The Chicago Tribune ( 3/27 ) pans David Mamet's new play Romance, calling the gay-tinged play 'pathetic.' Mamet, it says, has '... reduced himself to lampooning chiropractors and Episcopalians.' A main character has a 'campy' male lover. On the plus side, it is funny. Writing as one who has always found Mamet plays wordy and obnoxious, one can't work up much sympathy for the playwright.
The New York Times Magazine ( 3/26 ) highlights another playwright, Richard Greenberg. Greenberg, as you may know, wrote Take Me Out, the gay baseball player drama. Greenberg has five plays in production: A Naked Girl on the Appian Way, The Well-Appointed Room, ( in Chicago ) Bal Masque, The House in Town and a revival of Three Days of Rain ( starring Julia Roberts ) . Greenberg is inordinately shy and is about two steps away from being a recluse, according to this account.
PlanetOut, the online news service ( 3/27 ) , revealed that the family and partner of hostage James Loney, a Canadian member of a Christian Peacemaking Team in Iraq, kept quiet about his gayness until after his release due to an anti-gay fatwa issued by the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani directing Shiite militia squads to target and kill gays. An American member of Loney's team, Tom Fox, was found executed.
To show fundamentalist 'Brothers In Bigotry' agreement across religious lines, the Chicago Sun-Times ( 3/24 ) reported a rabbi in Israel said avian flu was 'God's wrath for efforts to legalize same-sex marriage.' Andrew Sullivan quoted in that paper ( 3/26 ) says that the Republicans having led this country into a $9 trillion debt limit among other things are trotting out their old anti-gay turkey, '... another bout of hysteria around the terribly dangerous prospect of gay couples settling down and committing to each other, ... but each time, it gets a little staler, doesn't it?'
Possibly, though, even some conservatives are getting a little tired of this theme. Uber-Neanderthal columnist Charles Krauthammer, in the Chicago Tribune ( 3/20 ) writes 'I'm not one of those who see gay marriage ... as a threat to or assault on tradtional marriage .... Astronomical rates of divorce ... existed before there was a single gay marriage ... . I have enough gay friends and feel the pain of their inability to have the same level of ... confirmation of their relationship with a loved one that I'm not about to go to anyone's barricade to deny them that.' May the avian flu take away this tired old turkey of an argument.