Bill Donohue comments on the performance of Paul Rudnick’s, “The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told,” March 15-17, at the Pioneer Valley Performing Arts Charter Public School in Northampton, Massachusetts:
Scott Goldman, who runs this charter school, boasts that putting on Rudnick’s play proves how “intellectually rigorous” his community is. It does nothing of the sort. If anything, it exposes how low-class it is. Nor is it accurate to say that the play is a “gay-friendly Biblical spoof.” In fact, it is an exercise in obscenity and Christian bashing.
When the play opened in 1998, I described it as featuring “full-frontal male nudity, filthy language, discussions of body parts, butch lesbians, effeminate gay men, ranting against nature, damning God for AIDS, etc.”
Some sage from the ACLU, William Newman, defends all this by saying, “The highest function of art is to make people think and talk and consider and be challenged.” Despite the fact that the ACLU should have no dog in this fight—no one is threatening to stop the play—Newman would never defend a gay-bashing performance, even though it would no doubt make people “think and talk and consider and be challenged.” No, it would never be scheduled. Christian sensibilities, of course, don’t matter to deep thinkers and civil libertarians.
Springfield Bishop Timothy McDonnell got it right when he said, “I didn’t know it was the responsibility of charter schools to teach religious bigotry.” That is why all this chatter about tolerance and inclusion is nothing but hot air. Tolerance and inclusion for whom?
