Having a lot of thoughts lately about what this blog is for, and what I want it to be. I fell in love with the URL when I found out it was available and jumped on it, but am thinking it might make a nice gift to some worthy young person with more content discipline than I possess.

As you can see from the most recent post, my thoughts and energies are more and more turning toward my work as an actor and writer, and that work is not really well described by the words “Queer for Christ,” even though they still describe me pretty well. And it is fun and provocative, sure, but is it reaching people who might be looking for reasoned discourse on matters of faith and sexuality, or is it a turn-off to those folks?

I’m just thinking out loud, here. Comment if you like.

In a way, I am a student of David Mamet.

When I returned to New York last year and began dusting off the cobwebs of my theatrical career, my best instincts told me to get back into training before I started looking for work. It had been years - decades, in fact - since I had been to an acting class, and the training I had was mostly squishy and vague. So I was determined to send myself to boot camp - to find a training program that would help me become a more disciplined, more intentional, more muscular artist.

Because of its reputation, name recognition, and geographic convenience (it being five blocks from where we live), I gravitated to the Atlantic Theatre Company’s Acting School, which purports to teach the acting technique developed by founders David Mamet and William H. Macy. Muscular artists, indeed. At its core, the technique exhorts actors to stop trying to pretend to be people (characters) they are not, but rather to walk onstage or in front of the camera with no other intention than to accomplish the objectives of the character in the story, using the words of the playwright. No displays of false emotion. Less “acting,” more “action,” with the belief that what an audience really wants when they pay their money is the experience of watching the actor’s dynamic striving to accomplish something important, something difficult. And in so doing, the audience and the artists collaborate in accomplishing the most heroic goal of all: to contribute to the increase of human understanding.

The classes were agonizing the way your first few trips to the gym after years of sloth can be agonizing. One of my teachers there last fall, Jordan Lage, fairly personified the stoic, no-nonsense approach to acting and dramaturgy Mamet preaches, and a tougher drill sergeant you could not find in a New York acting studio. Meaner, less intelligent, and less talented, maybe, but none tougher. And the first chance I had to put these new techniques to the test in an audition situation, I got the part. Boom. Wow. Thanks, Mr. Mamet. And thank you, Jordan and Tamara.

When you take class at Atlantic, you are invited to read some of the essays on drama, acting and philosophy Mamet has authored over the years, and I ate most of it up with a spoon. I loved what he said in True and False, for example, about the pretension and disingenuousness of many theatre academics. I knew from experience the terrible results of hack drama teachers (and directors) inflicting their half-baked pseudo-psychological oversimplifications of Stanislavsky, or Strasberg, or you-name-who, on fragile and impressionable young hearts and minds. I shared his disdain for these people.

I had just begun reading his Three Uses of the Knife when Mamet published his recent essay in the Village Voice, titled “Why I Am No Longer a ‘Brain-Dead Liberal.’” I became aware of the piece only after reading Charles Isherwood’s piece in last Sunday’s New York Times, awarding Mamet’s current Broadway offering, November, the title of “Most Irritating Play of the Season.” In his column, Brantley could not resist a reference to Mamet’s previous piece in the Voice, in which (he said) Mamet had come out as a conservative.

When I read the title of the piece, my first reaction was to ask whether Mamet ever a “brain dead liberal?” I had never thought so, and I’ve read a lot of his essays and plays, and seen many interviews with him as well. He always seemed to be too intellectually rigorous and logical a thinker to be a brain-dead anything. I also found him to be a person of some faith, and was happy to hear he walked a spiritual path, something I could relate to in his life. It also gave some human warmth to his otherwise cold, logical, utterly unsentimental Spockish affect (is it just me, or does he look more like Leonard Nimoy with every photograph?). And as he says himself in the Voice, he never followed liberal orthodoxy or wrote about people who did.

I agree with one point Mamet makes in his essay, or at least one I think he makes, namely that most ideology is really prejudice masquerading as reason. To be a reactionary ideologue, no matter what your stripe, is to be brain-dead indeed - and there are plenty of those around.

A great thesis, but unfortunately almost no synthesis ever followed. The promise of an “election season essay” worthy of David Mamet went utterly unfulfilled, and I am sorely disappointed. What we got instead sounded irritatingly like a caller on a right-wing talk show complaining about his property being rezoned, his taxes raised and his money being confiscated by a meddling and intrusive government. Mamet could have made a groundbreaking argument for a kind of postmodern, post-conservative libertarianism I suspect he really espouses, but instead he just sounds like a guy who always pretended to be a liberal because all his intellectual, artistic friends were, but who simply got too tired of thinking too hard and gave up (or, in the words of a close friend of mine, he simply accumulated enough “fuck-you money” that he no longer needs to care). After all, it’s a lot easier to give in to the greed and self-interest Mamet has now embraced as natural and “human” than to continue to work for something better. Some of us think of that effort as building the dominion of a loving and just God on Earth, but regardless of how you look at it, the arc of the moral universe is long, and it is our duty as human beings to traverse it as best we can, rather than giving up and grabbing every individual advantage in the process.

Mamet say he is no longer a liberal because he has given up on the notion that human beings are basically good at heart. What a bizarre statement. Since when did anyone become a liberal or a progressive (or what have you) because they thought that? Speaking for myself, I believe in teaching and preaching a social gospel, and electing a progressive, active, enlightened government precisely because I know human beings are prone to greed, lust for power, and all the other evils Mamet seems to think a good conservative should embrace as part of the natural order.

Mamet also attacks liberals for being anti-military and anti-corporations. It is truly a brain-dead liberal that sees things in such absolutes, I will concede. But Mamet is equally brain-dead in his critique, since most “liberals” I know would never advocate dismantling the military or dissolving all corporations. It is the power that these institutions have amassed in this country that we progressives work to curtail. Not the use of military power to bring about lasting peace (as in Central Europe, for example) nor the promotion of healthy economic competition and fair dealing (as shown by the long-term peace and prosperity we enjoyed when Democrats held the White House). To say that you are no longer a liberal because you’ve learned to love the military and the corporation is to deny a self-evident truth: that these institutions must be carefully monitored, managed and regulated because history tells us they tend toward absolute power, oligarchy, feudalism and fascism - products of the greed and self-interest that is, yes, unfortunately part of our broken humanity.

My friend Les is fond of saying that the difference between a liberal and a progressive is that a liberal sits in his living room grieving for an imperfect world, while a progressive goes out and tries to change it. Some see this dichotomy writ large in the current Democratic Presidential primary. Whatever the case, Mamet doesn’t seem to have ever been either one, really. He claims to have had a change of mind, but goes on to admit that anyone who has read his plays probably knows he was pretending all along.

I applaud anyone who points out the shortcomings of the self-righteous and the hypocritical, especially their own, and in his critique of liberalism Mamet does make some valid points. But when he includes a reference to his nickname for National Public Radio (”National Palestinian Radio”), he betrays not a philosophy, but a prejudice. Not a change of mind, but an admission of guilt.

And that is very disappointing.

So the Church of Nigeria changed the “no comment” of Archbishop Akinola (regarding his alleged association with the perpetrators of anti-Muslim retributive violence) to a denial; he now says he had nothing to do with the massacre of Muslims in 2004.

Well, I actually have no idea if he did or not. But if not, what in the name of David Livingstone does THIS statement by Akinola mean:

“I’m not out to combat anybody. I’m only doing what the Holy Spirit tells me to do. I’m living my faith, practicing and preaching that Jesus Christ is the one and only way to God, and they respect me for it. They know where we stand. I’ve said before: let no Muslim think they have the monopoly on violence.”

Now I understand the Nigerian Church’s moral position so much better! It seems to go like this: “Christianity has a monopoly on the truth. If you are not a Christian you are going to hell. Muslims say the same thing about their faith, so we both understand and respect each another’s desire to kill one another. You Northerners just don’t get it.”

It gets better. Akinola’s spokesman later said that Akinola’s reference to violence quoted above involved a time in 2006 “when Nigerian Christians were being slaughtered because of some cartoons published in Denmark.”

“The Western press should learn from the Danish cartoons saga that articles they publish, whatever the motive might be, can be responsible for the death of many innocent lives hundred of miles away,” he said in conclusion.

So now, not only does Akinola bear no responsibility for the violence in 2004, apparently no one else in Nigeria is, either! It’s the Danes! Now I get it.

Listen, I realize it’s easy for me to write about this from the relative safety of my New York apartment. I have no idea what it is like to live in Nigeria and face death for my religious beliefs. But I do know this: the root of all religious violence is the claim of exclusivity, that your tradition has a monopoly on truth. If Peter Akinola, and all the other Anglican separatists in the world fear the Northern liberals because we have departed from this theology, one that invariably breeds violence, then we are well rid of one another. Well rid, indeed.

Friends, please head over to the Save Mahdi Kazemi website to find out what you can do to help save the life of this young, gay Iranian. Please. And please urge anyone you know in the UK (including Archbishops, MadPriests and Doormen!) to do the same.

Terry

Please jump right over to Father Jake Stops the World to read about the latest hate crimes perpetrated by Akinola sympathizers in Nigeria against anyone associated with LGBT Christ followers. This one has all the lovely qualities of a Fred Phelps demonstration, Nigeria-style: earlier this month, during the funeral for the late sister of Davis Mac-Iyalla, Director of Changing Attitude Nigeria (CAN), the leader of the Port Harcourt members of CAN was taken out and beaten by a gang yelling anti-gay epithets while they slapped, punched, kicked and spat on him.

One of the most precious images of Christ in the tomb I possess is the icon made by dear friend Miranda Hassett for the Episcopal Church of the Advocate in Carrboro, NC, our home parish. For me, this is the face of Christ today, holy Saturday.

On Good Friday, we laid him to rest, and instead of venerating the cross as many do on that day, we venerated the icon with our flowers and prayers.

This post deemed “too silly for Good Friday” by yours truly, and has thus been deleted. Will consider reposting sometime after Eastertide.

Maundy Thursday gets me every time.

These days I cannot think of Iran without seeing this image in my mind, an image I will never, ever shake. It shows two of the estimated 4000 gay men and lesbians the government of Iran has executed since the Islamic Revolution of 1979. Yes, the Iranian government claimed the two individuals in the photo had raped a young teenager, and that was the crime for which they were being hanged. That is disputed and is ultimately irrelevant: the fact remains that the Iranians regularly execute gay and lesbian human beings for being gay and lesbian.

[please note that I had posted a photo of Mehdi here, but his family has asked that it not be displayed on the web]

Last week, the British Labour government (aren’t they supposed to be on our side!?) was set to send yet another young Iranian man to the gallows until 80 members of the House of Lords intervened, writing a letter that seems to have made a strong impression on Ms. Smith. Mehdi Kazemi is a 19 year-old student who had been studying in the UK when his boyfriend named him to authorities in Iran prior to his own hanging. The British Home Office initially denied Kazemi’s asylum request, based on his belief that he would be immediately executed upon his return to Iran.

So anyway, thanks be to God and some members of the House of Lords, last week the Home Secretary announced she would review her decision denying the young Iranian asylum in the UK. Her earlier decision, for which no rational explanation is immediately apparent, led Mehdi to head to the Netherlands, which ruled against him in legal deference to the UK - a fellow EU country - which had already ruled on the matter. Again, aren’t these people (the Dutch) supposed to be on our side!?!?

Here’s a fact many of us on the Western side of the Atlantic don’t know: the Archbishop of Canterbury sits in the House of Lords. I have sought in vain on the internet for the list of the 80 members of the Upper House of Parliament who signed the letter urging the Home Office to review this asylum claim, to no avail. As an Episcopalian and (for now) an Anglican, I am sending out a call to any and all in the UK or wherever who may know the answer to this question: did Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury and the spiritual leader of 80 million Anglicans worldwide, sign this letter? Has he spoken out on this matter at all? In light of his recent comments on Sharia law in the UK (for which he got something of a bum rap, I will concede), one would think he would seize on the opportunity to show Christian leadership on this issue, and exercise his leadership, if any, on this most compelling of humanitarian emergencies. If he did not sign this letter, I will have more to say. If he did, I will likewise be back, praising his name and thanking God. But right now, the evidence is that he has remained silent.

Here’s something else you may not have known: the Iranian government, in its misguided, pre-modern ignorance of human sexuality, offers gay and lesbian Iranians a “humane” alternative to death by hanging or stoning: forced - even subsidized - sexual reassignment surgery. Now, Willie Nelson has recently recorded a song that might indicate he shares this unsophisticated understanding of queerness, but I can forgive Willie, ’cause he’s trying to do the right thing - I think.

Can we at least expect this much from Rowan Williams?

This post started out as a mild mannered survey of what the Better Bloggers than Me of the world were writing about. However, it seems that hatemonger and Christ betrayer Peter Akinola’s real motives and beliefs about Christianity are finally coming to hideous light with the story of his complicity, before or after the fact, in the massacre of Muslims in Nigeria. He is a militant Christian exclusivist and fundamentalist, and he must, at long last, be denounced, rather than hailed as the savior of the Anglican communion many have made him out to be.

This month’s Atlantic Monthly features an article by Eliza Griswold that should leave no doubt in the minds of those who foolishly hold him as their spiritual leader that their allegiance to - and faith in - Falsebishop Peter Akinola has at long last been shown to be tragically misplaced. His role in the retributive religious violence that has marred his country is no longer in doubt - he condemns himself by his own words, and more so by his silence, regarding attacks by “Christians” against “Muslims” in his country.

Father Jake Stops the World continues to attempt to hold Archbishop Akinola accountable for, and demands an accounting of, his possible role in the alleged massacre of Muslims in Nigeria. He also calls on us all to get off our butts and do something about this. I have written the proper authorities, and hope you do the same.

Episcopal Cafe has the story in full as well, excerpting heavily from Griswold’s article and calling on Akinola and all his supporters to answer fully the questions raised about his involvement in inciting murder and rape of Muslims in Nigeria.

It is past time for reasonable Anglicans around the world to stop and take stock of the morals and values of this man, and at long last to admit that they have hitched their wagon to a false prophet, whose motivations are power and whose refusal to obey the command of the Lord he purports to confess - to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God - should shame all who ever walked with him.

“…if there is a God in heaven it will do neither you nor your cause any good.”
- Joe Welch, Counsel to the United States Army, denouncing Senator Joseph McCarthy’s brutal witch hunts for alleged communists in the 1950’s.