Over the last two days I have posted about the saga of Scott Eckern, the Mormon artistic director of the California Musical Theatre, who less than brilliantly gave $1,000 in support of Proposition 8, thereby causing a firestorm for the Theatre and putting it at risk of a boycott and loss of the right to use certain works. Today Eckern resigned his position after yesterday giving a less than convincing statement/apology to the gay community. Needless to say, the Christianists and Mormons will be wailing that Eckern is the victim of religious discrimination - of course their religious based discrimination against gays their interference with the CIVIL law rights of gays is just fine. *
As is typical, the Christianists and Mormons (including a number of those who posted comments on the Sacramento Bee story) always want discrimination to be a one way street where they can discriminate and foster hate, but they are suppose to be treated with kid gloves and exempt from any consequences for their discriminatory actions. As for Eckern, WTF was he thinking when he made the contribution? Did he seriously think gays would not be upset and take it personally or is he simply an idiot? Personally, having been basically forced out of a law firm in the past since some of the "godly Christians" in the firm did not want a gay partner, it is nice to see the persecutors experience some blow back. Here are highlights from the Sacramento Bee:
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California Musical Theatre's artistic director, Scott Eckern, resigned from his post today amid controversy over a donation he made to the Proposition 8 campaign to ban gay marriage. Eckern gave $1,000 in support of Proposition 8, a donation that sparked criticism from theater workers and the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community. "We have released a statement that Scott resigned," said Chris McSwain, community affairs director for the theater company. He declined to comment further.
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Eckern also released a statement today saying that he quit "after prayerful consideration to protect the organization and to help the healing in the local theatre-going and creative community." Eckern said that he "honestly had no idea" that the contribution would spark such outrage and made the donation to act on his belief as the traditional definition of marriage be preserved. "I support each individual to have rights and access, and I understand that in California domestic partnerships come with the same rights that come with marriage," he said.
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Hopefully, Eckern will be the first of many to learn that discriminating against others due to one's intolerant religious beliefs can come back to bite one in the ass.
1 comment:
Well if he truly understood domestic partnerships he would have realized they don't come with the same rights as marriage. Glad he is gone. We need to continue to enlighten people. I think we are starting to get their attention.
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