San Francisco parish cancels teen-targeted homosexuality play

San Francisco, Calif., Mar 7, 2009 / 20:47 pm

Archbishop of San Francisco George Niederauer has ordered a parish to cancel the performance of a “gay-friendly” play directed at teens. The play was to be performed by students from a Catholic preparatory school.

Archdiocesan spokesman Maurice Healy told the California Catholic Daily that Most Holy Redeemer Church had canceled the play “Be Still and Know” at the request of the archbishop.

The parish bulletin said the play, based on the 2007 book “The God Box,” explores “the subject of homosexuality within a Christian, adolescent context.”

The book on which the play is based won an award from the homosexual advocacy organization the Lambda Literary Foundation. It was praised by the Episcopalian Presiding Bishop Katherine Jefferts Schori, who said it opens up “long-abused biblical passages often used as proof texts to denigrate homosexuality.”

The play was first performed on Jan. 30 at the Campbell Theatre for the Performing Arts on the campus of Sacred Heart Preparatory School in Atherton, California. According to a school press release about the play, it “explores the Bible’s view on homosexuality and the struggle adolescents have with their sexual identity and their identity as Christians.”

John Loschmann, drama director at the preparatory school, adapted the book for the stage.

The California Catholic Daily quoted the account of one teenage participant in the play. She said on a blog that the play “does a beautiful job of defending homosexuality with the Bible, the very thing most commonly used to condemn it.”

According to her report, the play links the condemnation of homosexual acts with the condemnation of shellfish, a common talking point used by advocates of homosexuality, which confuses the ritual purity codes with the moral condemnations conveyed in the book of Leviticus.

“The show is smart, and powerful, and will cause many people to reconsider their beliefs about homosexuality,” the teenage girl wrote.

Most Holy Redeemer, located in San Francisco’s Castro District, has repeatedly been in the news for its attendees’ homosexual advocacy. The parish once hosted the transvestite “Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence” fundraising bingo games and used to send a contingent to San Francisco’s “gay pride” parade.

Despite its friendliness to homosexual causes, the church was targeted by vandals suspected to be protesting the passage of Proposition 8, California’s same-sex “marriage” ban. In January, the vandals painted on the church building black swastikas and the words “Ratzinger” and “Niederauer,” the respective last names of the Pope and the Archbishop of San Francisco.