A National Example
Fredonia NY – California’s Proposition 8 concerning gay marriage has been a hot-button issue since its passage. Broadly speaking, liberals opposed the measure, conservatives supported it. The artistic director of the California Musical Theatre in Sacramento has resigned his position because it was discovered he exercised his constitutional right to financially support the causes that he believes in, one of which being that, as a Mormon, he believes that marriage should be one man, one woman. You can read the New York Time article on the issue.
The reaction from the theatre community, and the gay community within the theatre community, is interesting and instructive. Some reactions demonstrate the intolerant liberalism of which I wrote; others, while disagreeing with Mr. Eckern’s position on the issue, demonstrate, to varying degrees of strength, at least a recognition that he has been improperly forced to resign.
In my opinion, this is the heart of the matter – we cannot consider ourselves to be culturally diverse and open-minded if we continually seek to punish those who disagree with us or in other ways try to suppress the constitutional rights of conservatives. Failing to understand this point will only serve to turn “liberalism” into another lock-step, groupthink constituency. As someone who attempts to be liberal-minded, it may be that I will have to stop identifying myself as a “liberal,” and more so as an “independent.” Since I am not registered with either party, perhaps that’s a better way for me to self-identify anyway. -twl
Sorry, I don’t see why I should shed any tears for Eckern. Ironically, he doesn’t seem to have shed any for the hundreds – no, thousands – of gay men and women who’ve lost their jobs or suffered discrimination because of the politics he supports. And this isn’t exactly your “normal” difference in political opinion – his position was that I am a second-class citizen, and that he can dictate to me what my civil rights are. I’m afraid the word for that isn’t “conservative,” it’s “un-American.” And at the same time, he thought he could make his living off the very people he was disenfranchising! I think it’s pretty obvious that you can’t have a Ku Klux Klansman running the Martin Luther King Center, or a Nazi cantoring at Temple Beth Shalom. Likewise, you can’t have a Mormon homophobe managing show queens; they’re not going to stand for it. Nor should they.