(no subject)

[candyland]

Two nations under BUSH'S God...to the rest of the world, half of us are very, very sorry. 49% of us tried, guys. I seriously believe that some people would vote for a horse if their party announced that their candidate was Mr. Ed. God bless America...or maybe I should say SAVE America.

That's all I'll say on that.

It seems like I'm spending a lot of time talking about GLBT rights as of late, but it's really what's out there right now. Tonight drove that home, because I went to see my school's fall play.

First off, I've been trying to get my sister to come up and visit me since I started college last year. Well, she finally came up, to see the play and to spend the night with me here. She's going home again tomorrow because she has to work on Sunday. I've been excited about this all week. Arwen turned seventeen on Wednesday. Yes, I turned nineteen on Saturday, October 30th. We're two years and five days apart, so I took her out for dinner for her birthday, and then we went to the play.

This year's fall play is The Laramie Project. The premise of the play is that a theatre group went to Laramie, Wyoming, the site of the Matthew Shepherd murder, and interviewed a bunch of people about the tragedy and everything. They then took those interviews (there were over two hundred of them collected over more than a year), as well as various speeches and transcripts from the trials and announcements and whatnot, and wrote a play about it. The dialogue is all real, the characters are all real people...and it's centered on a real tragedy.

Maybe I'm an over-emotional sap, but I cried through most of it. Arwen really lost it at one point--there's a part dealing with the trial of one of the two men. The Reverend Fred Phelps (who I would like to hit over the head with a baseball bat) was outside preaching and waving signs that said things like, "God hates fags" and "AIDS cures fags" and such idiotic, close-minded bullshit things. The rest of the cast was singing Amazing Grace, and there was one character, portraying a friend of Matthew Shepherd's, who was the driving force behind the angels--a group of people who dressed up like angels with enormous wings and stood with their backs to the anti-gay protesters, blocking them. Arwen just lost it then.

I had been crying softly through the whole thing, but it wasn't until near the end that I really lost my cool. A friend of mine, named Mitch, at this point was portraying Dennis Shepherd, Matthew's father. Most of the people in the show played more than one role. The prosecution had said they would respect the Shepherd families wishes as to whether or not they would seek the death penalty for the second killer, the one who had entered a 'not guilty' plea and stuck with it.

Mitch recited the speech that Dennis Shepherd made to his son's killer. I was sobbing, Arwen was sobbing, and most of the cast on stage was sobbing. Mitch was even crying while he made the speech, telling this killer (for the life of me, I can't remember which one it is) that he was giving him his life, and he should thank Matt for it. I don't think anyone was unaffected by this at all.

Coming right on the heels of Judy Shepherd two weeks ago (and I cried through that as well), it's definitely a topic that's hot on campus. Truthfully, there were a few of us that were kind of hoping that Reverend Fred Phelps would show up when Judy Shepherd spoke here--because we would take no small pleasure in chasing him off our campus.

If you have the chance to see The Laramie Project, I would advise it. See it. See what happens when people learn how to hate. You might not have your opinion changed, but I think you will walk out of there with a different perspective on what happens when hatred rages out of control.

Thank you, and goodnight.

~ Candy-chan ^_^

Comments

[kaitodoushi.livejournal.com]

Mr. Ed would make a much better president than Bush would!!!