Angels in America

North suburban Deerfield High School has given Culture Campaign another play to target with homophobia.

"What Do a Black, Homosexual Drag Queen, a Gay Couple and an Angel with 8 V****as Have in Common?

Answer: They are all characters from a play studied by students at Deerfield High School last year...

From "Laurie Higgins Summarizes Kuschner's Debauched 'Angels in America'" by Laurie Higgins, posted 8/23/07 at Americans for Truth

Angels in America is filled with obscenity, primarily forms of f**k."

It is unfortunately true that angry alienated people sometimes don’t use nice language. In the Culture Campaign's vision of education, students only read literature in which the characters are polite and happy to be Americans. Perhaps they would prefer "Gone with the Wind" in which all the Blacks are happy to be slaves and wouldn't say shit if they had a mouthful.

Personally, I think it is important that young people learn about people who feel alienated from American society.

"And although it addresses forgiveness (albeit not in a Christian sense, but rather, interpersonal forgiveness),"

I was not aware that interpersonal forgiveness is some sort of pagan forgiveness. I guess the Christian sense is where an agonizing bloody sacrifice is required before forgiveness can be granted.

"compassion, community, and AIDS,"

That sounds suspicious.

"it is primarily a pro-'gay' treatise"


I love the use of the term "pro-gay" to describe a work that empathizes with the pain and sufferings of the victims of aids. I wonder whether the Campaign would describe "Schindler's List" as a "pro-Jew" movie or "To Kill a Mockingbird" as a "pro-Black" book.


"with heavy-handed leftist politicking (e.g., explicit criticism of the Reagan administration) and sacrilege."

Oh my God!!! They criticize Reagan!!! Angels in America clearly suggests that it was not "Morning in America" for everyone during the 1980's.

"The plot revolves around two couples: married Mormon couple Harper and Joe whose marriage is disintegrating in large measure due to Joe’s repressed homosexuality, which he eventually acts upon: and a homosexual couple, Louis and Prior, who has AIDS. Louis leaves Prior due to his AIDS and has a month-long affair with Harper’s husband Joe. Roy Cohn — the infamous, unscrupulous, foul-mouthed, closeted, Republican lawyer — is also a central character who dies of AIDS. "

I wonder how the Campaign would feel if one of the characters was a leading evangelical minister who preached against homosexuality while secretly frequenting gay prostitutes.

"Then there is the black, homosexual, drag queen nurse with the heart of gold, Belize, and the Angel with eight vaginae whose visits prompt sexual arousal and orgasm. Heaven is a dreary place that looks like San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake and people sit around on crates playing cards. The Angels say that God has abandoned man."

If feeling abandoned by God is sacrilege, then Jesus was guilty on the cross.

"....Now isn’t that edifying for students?"

It could be. The Campaign certainly has not provided enough information for any thinking person to reach a conclusion about the value of studying the play as a work of literature.

I suppose I could summarize the Old Testament as a book about a violent vengeful desert god who periodically orders wholesale slaughter of people who have the temerity to live in the lands where he wants his followers to live, who demands that his followers be willing to slaughter their own children, whose misogyny leads one of his righteous followers to offers his young daughters to be gang-raped. However, I would still think it a work worth studying.