Illuminating California’s Proposition 8 Trial

Dustin Lance Black - who I had the pleasure of meeting at the National Equality March in October 2009 - has a new project that will likely not please the Christofascists who were behind the passage of California's anti-gay Proposition 8. The new effort is a play about the trial conducted in Judge Walker's court and relies on verbatim testimony and statements by participants in the trial. I suspect the play will underscore that the only real arguments made in support of Proposition 8 boil down to anti-gay animus and religious based discrimination - neither of which belong enshrined in the civil laws. The ugly truth about the arguments for Proposition 8 need to have a much wider exposure and hopefully Black's new play that will premiere in September will assist in that endeavor. The New York Times looks at Black's new effort. Here are some highlights:
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A new play based on the Proposition 8 trial over same-sex marriage in California, written by the Academy Award winner Dustin Lance Black (“Milk”), will be performed in a staged reading on Broadway in September and then produced at Carnegie Mellon University, Northwestern, the University of Michigan, and elsewhere.
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The play consists mostly of verbatim dialogue and statements from the trial transcript, Mr. Black said, as well as his own observations from sitting in the courtroom most days and interviewing people on both sides of the case. Roughly a dozen people from the trial are portrayed as characters . . .
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[Black] said he became determined to write the play after the United States Supreme Court blocked the trial judge’s plan to broadcast the hearings over the Internet. “One of my hopes about the trial was to get the opposition in court, hands raised swearing to tell the truth, and have the world see the opposition called to account "for going on TV saying gay people harm children, harm families, Mr. Black said. “Since the trial itself wasn’t heard or seen, I wanted to get that story out another way.”
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The reading, on Sept. 19 at the Eugene O’Neill Theater, will have “a cast of top Hollywood names and Broadway’s finest,” a spokesman for the production said, and will be staged by the Tony Award-winning director Joe Mantello. . .
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Broadway Impact, a group that champions same-sex marriage rights, is also helping organize the reading and subsequent productions on campuses. Two leaders of Broadway Impact, the actors Gavin Creel and Rory O’Malley, will return to their alma maters — the University of Michigan and Carnegie Mellon — to hold readings there. Cast members of the Broadway revival of “Hair,” which resumes a national tour in the fall, also plan to do readings in cities where “Hair” will run . . .
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The public needs to know that hate, lies and intolerance are the only basis for Proposition 8. Kudos to Dustin for devising a means to help expose the ugly face of the Christianists.