Exodus: Live Out Loud

Entertainment Industry Shows "Tolerance" for Christianity One More Time

http://www.al.com/news/huntsvilletimes/index.ssf?/base/news/1087577179284211.xml

Moore comedy opens tonight, but former judge isn't laughing
Play about gay couple a 'mockery,' ex-jurist says;writer says it's just farce
Friday, June 18, 2004
By LEE ROOP
Times Features Editor [email protected]
BIRMINGHAM - Former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore has star power even when he doesn't want it, judging by a new play about gay marriage that opens here tonight.

Playwright Tom Wofford spent the week doing state and national media interviews about "Judge Roy Moore Comes to Dinner," a story featuring a character playing the judge.

Moore garnered international attention last year when he was booted off the bench after refusing to remove a granite copy of the Ten Commandments he'd installed in the state's judicial building soon after taking office in January 2001.

The play is a comedy about newly married gays who come home to Birmingham to meet their respective parents. "A sort of farcical 'Guess Who's Coming to Dinner' for the new millennium," Wofford said Wednesday, referring to the 1967 movie about an interracial marriage.

Broadway's Best Shows Too Risque for Republicans

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20040607/media_nm/leisure_broadway_dc_2

Mon Jun 7, 5:46 PM ET

By Larry Fine

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Gay puppets, transvestites, assassins and a pedophile child killer piled up Tony honors on Sunday but those shows will be shunned by Republican delegates at the political party's convention in New York this summer.

With thousands of Republicans set to descend on the Big Apple to nominate President Bush (news - web sites) for re-election, convention organizers decided to treat delegates to the glitz of Broadway before they knuckled down to the business of politics.

But Republican organizers, selling themselves as the family-values party, decided to buy tickets to tame shows like "42nd Street" and Disney productions like "Aida" and "The Lion King," avoiding more offbeat fare.

Besides Tony winners such as the naughty puppet musical "Avenue Q" and best play "I Am My Own Wife," about a German transvestite, other hits including Mel Brooks (news)' "The Producers," were vetoed by those arranging Broadway outings.

Theater Review: the Normal Heart

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20040513/review_nm/review_stage_normal_dc_1

Thu May 13, 4:11 AM ET

By Frank Scheck

NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) - Arriving nearly 20 years after its original production, this revival of Larry Kramer's groundbreaking play about the rise of the AIDS (news - web sites) epidemic threatened to be a theatrical museum piece.

Sadly, however, the disease is very much among us, and the play's themes are still all too relevant. The Worth Street Theater Company's revival, being presented at the same venue where the work originated, compellingly makes the case for its status as a modern theatrical classic.

Set in the years 1981-84, the play chronicles the efforts of Ned Weeks (Raul Esparza) -- a character clearly modeled after the author -- to raise a fire under the media, the city government and the gay community to recognize the extent of the crisis facing them. Constructed in numerous short and explosive scenes, it is a strongly didactic and preachy work, awkwardly constructed and sketchy in its characterizations, but it burns with a fierceness and moral outrage that was clearly born of experience. A roman a clef that nonetheless wasn't afraid to name its targets -- Ronald Reagan (news), Ed Koch and the New York Times among them -- it is a tremendously powerful piece of agitprop that is all the more powerful for its specificity.

Film about man-boy love refused public money

Canadian Broadcasting Corporation - http://www.cbc.ca/arts/stories/takahashi20040331 -
OTTAWA - A taxpayer-funded grant for a film depicting a sexual relationship between an adolescent boy and an older man has been pulled.

Pedophilia Film's Maker Expects Funding from Ottawa Arts Group

LifeSite - http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2004/mar/04033008.html -
The Ottawa Independent Film Makers Co-operative of Ottawa, IFCO, a taxpayer-funded group, hands down a decision today as to whether it will fund the pedophilia-themed film Last Night with Jesse.

Drivers Screen X-Rated Videos on the Road

DETROIT — Andrea Carlton hadn't planned on telling her daughter about the birds and bees until she was 8 or 9. But that changed the night 4-year-old Catherine spotted a porno movie flickering on a screen in a minivan nearby.

Porn Director, Church Make PSA for Kids

Just because he makes his living directing pornographic films doesn't mean James DiGiorgio wants children watching them. [Registration required]

Priests and Sexual Abuse Ignite a Stage in Chicago

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/10/theater/10CARD.html?th

By STEPHEN KINZER

Published: March 10, 2004

CHICAGO, March 9 — A searing new play that opened here last week offers a vivid look at how Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston reacted to the sex abuse scandal in his archdiocese.

Most of the dialogue in this play, "Sin: A Cardinal Deposed," is taken from testimony that Cardinal Law gave in pretrial depositions in 2002 and 2003. The rest is from letters and public statements by Roman Catholic priests, doctors, victims of abuse and their parents.

Stolen Kisses

New York Times, March 1, 2004
229 W. 43rd Street, New York, NY, 10036
(Fax: 212-556-3622 ) (E-Mail: [email protected] )
( http://www.nytimes.com )
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/01/opinion/01HERB.html

By Bob Herbert
In the film "Cinema Paradiso" a priest previews each movie that is to be shown in a small Italian town and orders the removal of all kissing scenes. Near the end of the film, the main character, a man named Salvatore who had been a small boy at the time the priest exercised his powers of censorship, is given a film reel in which all the deleted kisses have been restored. He watches, profoundly moved, as one couple after another gives physical expression to their mutual love.

Love! Valour! Survival! High Drama!

New York Times, February 15, 2004
229 W. 43rd Street, New York, NY, 10036
(Fax: 212-556-3622 ) (E-Mail: [email protected] )
( http://www.nytimes.com )
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/15/arts/theater/15WITC.html

By Alex Witchel
At 62, it had never occurred to me to date," Terrence McNally said,
"but God had other plans."
And that was only one of them....