Huckabee: Gays Haven't Crossed 'Civil Rights' Violence Threshold

Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee was on The View today talking about same-sex marriage and declaring that gay rights are not civil rights because gays have not had violence inflicted upon them like Blacks have.

Said Huckabee: "People who are homosexuals should have every right in terms of their civil rights, to be employed, to do anything they want. But that’s not really the issue. I know you talked about it and I think you got into it a little bit early on. But when we’re talking about a redefinition of an institution, that’s different than individual civil rights. We’re never going to convince each other...But here is the difference. Bull Connor was hosing people down in the streets of Alabama. John Lewis got his skull cracked on the Selma bridge."

No doubt Harvey Milk, Matthew Shepard, Teish Cannon, and the thousands of other victims of anti-gay hate crimes would beg to differ, if they could. As Think Progress notes, "Huckabee’s lame violence threshold is nothing more than a shoddy attempt to conceal his deep and fundamental homophobia."

Watch it, AFTER THE JUMP...

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On the Stage: Streamers and The Language of Trees

Kevin Sessums recently reviewed All My Sons, Speed-The-Plow and A Man for All Seasons for Towleroad. You can also catch up with Kevin online at his own blog at MississippiSissy.com.

One of the great joys of attending off-Broadway productions is that one gets to discover amazing new actors and actresses and to rediscover others. Sometimes the plays even astound. But usually it’s the performances that remain longer in the memory than the plays, which, more often than not, are written by promising playwrights at the beginnings of their careers.

Recently I’ve caught a few productions that contain some of the best performances I’ve seen in a few seasons. Let’s start, however, with one that was not by a new playwright but by a veteran - David Rabe. His Streamers - the third play in his Vietnam trilogy which includes The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel and Sticks and Bones - is receiving a first-rate revival at the Roundabout Theatre’s off-Broadway redoubt on 46th Street, the Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre. I saw the original production back in 1976 at the Mitzi Newhouse Theatre at Lincoln Center when Joseph Papp was serving as its producer as well as at his Public Theatre. I had only recently moved to New York and was “blown away,” to use the vernacular of the day, by that production, which was the first time I had ever seen and heard homosexuality discussed and displayed with such openness on a stage. The impact of seeing that performance lingers still. That 1976 production was directed by Mike Nichols - it transferred with some cast changes from the Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven - and won the New York Drama Critics award for Best American Play that year, as well as a Drama Desk. It was nominated for a Tony in 1977 but lost to The Shadow Box.

It was, in fact, back in 1976, my first instance of seeing actors unknown to me who moved me beyond measure - especially the late Peter Evans, who later became a close friend of mine during his equally acclaimed performance in David Mamet’s two-hander A Life in the Theater which costarred the legendary Ellis Rabb, at the then Theatre de Lys on Christopher Street. I followed Peter home one night around the corner from the theatre where he lived in a walk-up on Hudson. The next night I waited outside a store next door to his brownstone and pretended to be looking into its window and struck up a conversation with him when he was returning home from that evening’s performance. We became instant friends and remained so for many years. Peter died of AIDS and his loss was not only a personal one, but an inestimable one to the theatrical community. One of the most moving moments I’ve ever spent in a theatre was his memorial service held at Playwrights Horizons, where he had scored another triumph in Jonathan Reynolds’s Geniuses - which would be, come to think of it, another great play to revive in one of New York’s off-Broadway theatres.

At that memorial service, another of his good friends, Victor Garber, sang one of the most beautiful renditions of “No One is Alone” from Into the Woods I still have ever heard. After the service, his lover, director Gerald Gutierrez and best girlfriend, playwright Wendy Wasserstein, and I hoisted our drinks at Chez Josephine - all of us red-eyed from crying - to our beloved Peter and now they too, sadly, tragically, are gone. Forgive me for going on about Peter, but for those of you out there who might have known him, you’ll understand. He was a gentle soul. And a giant talent. And deserves to be remembered.

Peter played Richie in that 1976 production of Streamers, which is the role of the urbane Manhattanite who is quite open about his homosexuality - especially for 1965 when the play is set and even more especially inside a Virginia army barracks where the action of the play takes place. The inchoate chaos of the Vietnam war hangs over the social chaos that is happening outside those barracks in the racially charged America of the time. The relationships of the soldiers in the close confines of the barracks highlight the chaotic tensions that were gripping the nation. Rabe, moreover, uses Richie’s homosexuality to highlight the other social tensions that were straining society until there is a tragic eruption that is, indeed, warlike in its severity and shocking suddenness.

Richie is obviously in love with a fellow soldier, Billy, a mild-mannered midwesterner, who seems so confused by such affection that he can’t completely rebuff it until it’s too late. The other two main characters are African Americans - the go-along-to-get-along Roger and the temptestuous Carlyle, who understands Richie’s carnal needs but cannot control his own more base ones. The performances in the Roundabout revival are all first-rate. Hale Appleman is making a stunning New York debut as Richie. There is a sly simplicity to his portrayal of the anything-but-simple Richie. And he is able to imbue Richie with a kind of tortured grace. It is a brave performance because it seems so lacking in bravery.

J.D. Williams as Roger is the most professionally adept of the actors in this production. There is a smoothness to him he is able to translate into the role itself. Brad Fleischer as Billy sometimes lets the character’s own tentativeness spill over into his own talent. But Ato Essandoh as Carlyle - in a role that originally forever seared Dorian Harewood into my theatre-going mind - shows no tentativeness at all in delving deeply - and could it be? - heartbreakingly into his character’s deepseated and appalling danger. Appleman and Essandoh are giving the kinds of performances that more than anchor this melodramatic play; they are giving ones that will be remembered by new theatregoers of 2008 as they watch them over the next few years mature into their stature as truly gifted stage actors.

The title of the play comes from the soliloquy of one of the drunk sergeants who end each of the play’s acts with their gruff and touching bluster. (In the original they were memorably played by Dolph Sweet and Kenneth McMillan and now are just as memorably played by John Sharian and Larry Clarke.) The title involves the term for parachutes that do not open but stream downward above the condemned man attached to them. And here’s another detail, proof of what great roles Rabe has written in this play. The film version was directed by Robert Altman. Richie was played by artist Roy Lichtenstein’s son, Mitchell; Billy by Matthew Modine; Carlyle by Michael Wright; and Roger by a very young David Allan Grier. At the Venice Film Festival, where the film premiered, the whole cast was awarded with the Best Actor award. Maybe the Obies or New York Drama Critics could give this cast - masterully directed by Scott Ellis - the same kind of honor this year.

T T T 1/2 (out of 4 possible T's)

Streamers, Roundabout Theatre Co., Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre, 111 West 46th St., New York. Ticket information here.

***
THE LANGUAGE OF TREES

Downstairs at the Roundabout’s Steinberg Theatre, in the center’s blackbox, is another play about war, The Language of Trees, written by recent Brown graduate Steven Levenson. The play is about the early years of the Iraqi conflict when a father and husband, played admirably by Michael Hayden, goes over to the Middle East to serve as a translator and is captured and tortured. There is a disjunctive quality to the play as it goes back and forth between where he is held captive and the life of his wife and child and their busybody neighbor back home. But perhaps such jarring disjunctiveness is the playwright’s point. But it becomes even more pronounced when a kind of magical realism takes over in the war scenes as Bill Clinton joins the cell in which the translator is kept.

Continued, AFTER THE JUMP...

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Towleroad Guide to the Tube #393

JOE LIEBERMAN: Harry Reid press conference on decision to allow Joe Lieberman to keep his chairmanship of the Senate Homeland Security Committee despite his attacks on Barack Obama during the campaign season.

CATHOLIC CARDINAL STAFFORD: Criticizes Obama as "aggressive, disruptive and apocalyptic."

PACKERS FAN: A bear who's a big Packers fan.

HABANERA: David Schmader at Slog says this old Sesame Street clip is maybe his earliest childhood memory. We must be the same age.

Check out our previous guides to the Tube here.

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Puerto Rico Bans Discrimination Against Same Sex Couples

Via the New York Daily News:

"Puerto Rico's outgoing governor said Monday he has prohibited government agencies from discriminating against same-sex couples, but the governor-elect indicated he will reverse the measure to avoid higher expenses for health care. The executive order by Gov. Anibal Acevedo Vila allows unmarried couples who work for the government to apply health benefits to their partners, whether they are gay or heterosexual. 'What I have done is simply broaden these definitions so more people are covered, and it doesn't cost the government of Puerto Rico anything because if the person wants to include somebody they have to pay more,' Acevedo said...The governor's order also forbids government agencies from discriminating generally against people based on sexual preference, gender identity, and other factors."

Said Governor-elect Luis Fortuño: "We are not going to introduce anything that there isn't money to implement."

More here.

In June, a measure defining marriage between a man and a woman in Puerto Rico failed when it did not make it to the House floor for a vote.

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News: Subway Deli, California, Cheyenne Jackson, India Adoption

Subway restaurant chain takes action after franchisee's donation to "Yes on 8" campaign revealed.

Wingnut blames California fires on Proposition 8 protestors.

Elisabeth Hasselbeck and Sherri Shepard again demonstrate their supreme lack of decency and brain power.

Return of the crackhive.

Sacha Baron Cohen's 'Bruno' crashes the set of NBC's Medium: "No one had a clue it was Sacha playing Bruno. It’s amazing he was able to infiltrate the set and pull this off."

Marriage Equality foes attempting to get anti-gay referendum on next ballot in Illinois: "Proponents of an Illinois constitutional amendment to restrict marriage to heterosexuals, buoyed by voter approval in three states on Nov. 4, say they’re gearing up to try again in 2010."

Cheyenne Jackson to star in musical about Mormons from the creators of South Park?

Gay rapper Deadlee responds to homophobic Trick Trick album: "My first thought is to get crazy and warn him that this f**got will kick his ass — but I am so on Cloud 9 with Obama winning, and the way he did it. Obama was called a terrorist, unpatriotic, and the entire time kept his cool, I so wish I was like that. I know who I am and my self worth that I really don’t give a f**k who or what a Trick Trick has to say. There is still a lot of hate against gays, and a Trick Trick just perpetuates the hate…so if Trick Trick really does plan on putting an AK to my head. I ain’t going out like that! Trick Trick will be the only b***h that ends up dead!"

Ryan Phillippe pumps up.

Gay Israeli couple conceive baby in Mumbai: " Yonatan and Omer Gher came to the city in January and the in-vitro fertilisation was successful through an unknown egg donor and sperms from Yonatan in the first attempt itself, infertility specialist Dr Gautam Allahbadia told PTI. The embryo was then successfully implanted in a surrogate mother selected by the couple and Evyatar (meaning more fathers in Hebrew) was born on October 12, Allahbadia said. Since the couple had to submit proof of their paternity (through DNA test) to the Israeli government, after completing all the necessary paper work, they left for Israel last night, the doctor said." More...

More for you Trekkies.

More layoffs at 'Focus on the Family': "Focus on the Family announced this afternoon that 202 jobs will be cut companywide — an estimated 20 percent of its workforce. Initial reports bring the total number of remaining employees to around 950. The cutbacks come just weeks after the group pumped more than half a million dollars into the successful effort to pass a gay-marriage ban in California. Critics are holding up the layoffs, which come just two months after the organization’s last round of dismissals, as a sad commentary on the true priorities of the ministry.

Twilight: Vampire brat pack film premieres in London.

Football players develop new tactic - the dropping of the pants.

Trans-national group of gay activists agrees on Slavic Gay Pride alternating every year between Moscow and Minsk: " The agreement came at the weekend when activists from GayRussia.ru and the Moscow Pride organising committee met for the first time with Belarusian groups Gay.by and Gayby.by, the Belarusian Initiative for Sexual and Gender Equality and the LGBT Rights Committee of the Belarusian Green Party. 'We were looking to cooperate with Belarusian gay activists this year, but until recently we believed that local activists were not yet ready for public events,' said Moscow Pride chief organiser Nikolai Alekseev."

Project to track LGBT hate crimes receives $80,000 in funding from Australian government.

Young X-Men character revealed to be gay.

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Dan Savage Talks Race and Prop 8 with D.L. Hughley

Dan Savage appeared on D.L. Hughley's show over the weekend to discuss race, the Prop 8 vote, and the civil rights movement. Watch it, AFTER THE JUMP...

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