On November 30 and December 1, the Somerville Theater in Somerville, Massachusetts, presented Faith Soloway’s, “Jesus Has Two Mommies.” It was also performed on December 21 and 22 at Boston’s Copley Theater.
Called a “multi-media schlock opera,” the performance features Ms. Soloway, who plays herself, and Christine Cannavo, who plays her pregnant Irish-Catholic girlfriend; the two women join in a “commitment ceremony.” Ms. Soloway meets Jesus who assuages her fears about her non-traditional relationship: he admits to having two mommies, Mary and Josephine. His mommies met at a dyke bar called “The Burnin’ Bush.”
When Faith Soloway was asked why a Jewish lesbian was staging a play starring Jesus, she replied that Jesus “is the most absorbed, he’s like the icon of the Bible” and that around Christmastime he is “sort of the star.”
We took note of the fact that she described her own work as “holding up my middle finger at some of our social constructions.”
On December 7, William Donohue debated Soloway on the Fox News Channel show, “Hannity and Colmes.” He told the audience that she had admitted that this play was her way of holding up her middle finger at the Catholic Church. When she denied this was true, Donohue called her a liar. He also said, “She’s not putting her middle finger at Jews or African Americans or gays. We don’t have a play called ‘Matthew Shepard Had Two Daddies.’ We don’t have a play called ‘Adolf Hitler Had Two Angels.’”
Supporting the attack on Christians at Christmastime was Daniel Gewertz of the Boston Herald. He could hardly contain his enthusiasm for the play saying it “Sounds like a lesbian revision of the nativity tale just in time for the Yule season!” To which we replied, “How observant.” We then took issue with him for saying that the play is “the most audacious show on the Somerville Theater schedule.”
We remarked that it takes no courage to bash Christians in Somerville. We know this because the town sports a “cultural index” (see the online site for Somerville) that is nearly twice the national average. In our comment to the media, we said, “it has been our experience that the more urbane the neighborhood, the more hospitable it is to anti-Catholicism.”
The bigots in Somerville and Boston just can’t get enough of this stuff. They love it whenever someone mocks Christ and they take especially great delight when gays and lesbians are doing the bashing.
