“YOU’RE AN AMERICAN!” the young fellow sings out, his broad, freckled face three inches from my own, his brogue competing with the lesbian jazz band whose music fills this Temple Bar pub called The George. When I’ve heard these words in Turkey and certain other countries during the Bush administration, I have not had the pleasure of looking into a smiling face. But here, good will leaps at me often. I ask him how he can tell. He slaps my bare chest. “We Irish are too modest to dance without our shirts,” he explains, then lifts me off the dance floor, spins me around, and kisses me. “Are ya from California, friend? Take me home, and let’s you ’n’ me git married!”
I happen to be a Californian, but I haven’t checked my email in twenty-some hours, and this is the first I’ve heard about the state Supreme Court’s ruling on same-sex marriage. I attempt to swing him around, but he’s a good six inches taller than I, and the effort is aborted. He laughs, his own shirt flies off, and the Irish girl-band Zrazy plays until 3:00 a.m.
I’m in Ireland for the International Dublin Gay Theatre Festival, now in its fifth year—two weeks of plays, music, and dance from eight countries, including South Africa, Australia, Italy, and the Netherlands. The Irelanders I meet tell me that much of the country’s goodwill toward Americans derives from gratitude to Bill Clinton for his role in brokering an end to the Troubles in the north. “You helped us unload the British,” a gay physician named Liam tells me. “Unfortunately, in our struggle to wrench the Catholic Church out of our government,” he says, “we were on our own.” But free themselves they have, and Ireland’s gay rights legislation is moving just a half-step behind the rest of Europe’s, with civil unions in place and an active debate underway concerning marriage equality. What strikes me most forcefully here is the secular commitment of a We Americans have oppression of our own to overcome. I’ve met many locals who worked in the U.S. during Ireland’s economic struggles in the decades before the current technology boom, and virtually all convey the sense that my home country has been hijacked by a small but powerful gaggle of fanatics. When those fanatics discovered their political voice, during the intersecting regimes of Ronald Reagan and Jerry Falwell, it was clear to these guest workers that Americans’ liberty was in jeopardy. A taxi driver named Patrick tells me, “You Yanks have got Fred Phelps and the Christian Coalition to contend with.” I ask how he knows of such things, and he talks about the two years he spent working in a bank in Topeka, Kansas, headquarters of Phelps’s Westboro Baptist Church, which hosts the odious website GodHatesFags.com. “I’m not gay, but I feared for my life around those people.” I encourage Liam the physician, the cabbie Patrick, and everyone else I meet to visit the Festival and see Corpus Christi, Terrence McNally’s “gay Jesus play” that was sabotaged by the religious right when it premiered in 1998 and has since been resurrected by a passionate troupe from Los Angeles. Liam is in the front row the next night, with two friends. Later I run into him at a performance of Dalliances, produced by Artscape of South Africa. He tells me of the profound effect the play has had on him. “I’ve often wondered privately if Christ might have been gay.” He gives me a shy smile. “I didn’t tell you this when we met, but I’m a Roman Catholic priest.” Looking back, I remember opening the Festival Programme and being amazed to discover on page one a letter from the President of Ireland, Mary McAleese, sending her “warmest good wishes” to the Festival and noting its importance in establishing “bridges of cultural understanding across Irish society.” She then congratulated the organizers for offering “a fuller picture of cultural life on our island.” It would be hard to envision similar expressions from Mr. Bush in the program of any gay arts festival. In his opening speech, Festival Director Brian Merriman told the crowd: “It is essential that we do explain ourselves as we still struggle for our human rights in a modern pluralist society. Noël Coward said in 1969 that he didn’t want to offend people’s prejudice by coming out. Today politically it’s still the same … when it comes to human rights, like the right to love, marry, and raise a family.” Merriman made clear that he and his team designed the festival to challenge prejudice directly. “The quality and richness of the art presented, I hope, will help combat that barren homophobia while hugely entertaining and informing our diverse and growing audience.” At the Festival’s closing ceremony, drag performers kicked high and theatrical accomplishments were celebrated. The audience erupted when Tom Kirdahy promised: “Terrence and I will be here next year, when George Bush is gone from the White House!” Tom later told me the he didn’t anticipate the deep vein of global angst he tapped with this comment. Of the awards granted at the festival’s closing gala, all but one was given by Brian Merriman. For one special award, the Lord Mayor of Dublin, Paddy Bourke, mounted the stage. His presence here was a gesture of support as impressive as President McAleese’s welcoming letter. He bestowed the Intercultural Dialogue Award upon the Corpus Christi troupe for “bridging a cultural and spiritual chasm.” Accepting the award, director Nic Arnzen observed: “This play, which is all about love, was once sabotaged in the U.S. by the religious right. How heartening to see it embraced and appreciated by all of you.” He added that the play’s bomb-threatened première had occurred on the night that Matthew Shepard lay dying on a fence in the Wyoming outback. Steve Susoyev is the author of People Farm (2002) and co-editor of Return to the Caffe Cino (2006).
people who know what it is to live under the boot-heel of religious oppression. I am heartened to find myself strolling into the National Gallery, where I view Vermeers and Rembrandts, without paying—but being charged €6 to visit Church of Christ Cathedral.
