Political and social ideas are often used in theater, poetry and music for their peaceful ability to describe the underlying assumptions of their corresponding movements. George Orwell and Erwin Piscator presented opposing opinions on the individual consequences of adopting communism and totalitarianism. Sidney Poitier asked his audience to consider full social acceptance of black Americans by dramatizing a black-white engagement. One recent manifestation of artful, penetrating means of social change is the one-woman show “The Passion of Sister Dottie S. Dixon.”
Self-described gay activists and co-writers of the PYGmalion Theatre Company production, Troy Williams and Charles Lynn Frost, see what Williams called a “need for a subversive narrative in (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) recognition.” Their mutual decision to stray from the typical, suffering story of a persecuted, lonely LGBT individual to the comedy-based reaction of a Spanish Fork Mormon mother who has a gay son represents a new approach. It accomplishes one of Frost’s goals, which is to “let the audience leave with love at the core and abundance as a mindset.”
Williams wants to subliminally convince his audience that members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have shown what he calls a “faux compassion” in their “claim that they “understand’ you, that they pity you.” In the place of protesting with picket signs and angry rhetoric in front of the Legislature, Williams and Frost are trying to advance social change through art in front of everyday people.
Whether they admit it or not, their methods resemble those of Odetta Holmes, Ossie Davis and, to some extent, Miles Davis of the Civil Rights Movement. Their goal is not to push their audience to the polling and voting booths. They hope that by dramatizing a typical Utah mother caught in a conflict between culture and family, they will be able to show how she and anyone in her situation would reconcile both without asking someone else to intervene.
What many partisans have done to accomplish the same goal, on both sides of the issue of LGBT rights, is incorrect. Last year, opponents of gay marriage in Arkansas (Unmarried Couple Adoption Ban), Florida (Prop. 2), California (Prop. 8) and Arizona (Prop. 102) sought to extend the influence of their states in matters their governments should not be concerned with. Proponents have attempted similar measures. In Utah specifically, one piece that was considered friendly to the LGBT community, House Bill 288, sought to grant courts the power to approve of the “moral climate of the potential adoptive placement” before allowing adoption.
Why should the state be involved in the lives of sovereign adults to this extent in the first place? Who is better equipped to approve of the “moral climate” potential adoptive parents are able to provide better than the biological parents? Is a third-party judge the best intermediary for deciding the fate of our families? Local and federal governments should never enter matters of enforcing personal prejudices.
The success of “Milk,” “Brokeback Mountain” and other productions show that public opinion is changing, slowly and organically. Student and faculty advocates and opponents of the LGBT community at the U should represent their opinions in opposition or in support of LGBT issues with the goal of changing minds through thoughtful communication of their premises. Students and faculty should expose themselves to the ideas of people such as Williams and Frost, to let their ideas and words simmer in their minds before ever making underinfluenced decisions.
This will not necessarily prevent peaceful demonstration, as has been seen in the Salt Lake City area before, but it will prevent riots, violence and the creation of deeper prejudices. A healthy combination of waiting for a generation to fade out and allowing the general population’s opinion to change through individualized media is the best approach to giving powers in appropriate proportion to all people and in the correct methods. The same could never be said of appeals to governments, whose responses have demonstrated overreaction, inequality and legislation of personal predisposition.
Zack Oakley