pantoum's Diaryland Diary

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CAFÉ VENUS

Just returned home from the chorus's awesome Love and Marriage concert. Sat in the audience for the first time since Tree and I broke up in 1995 and was struck then, as now, by how incredibly good we are, what a great community event we throw.

I had no idea we were this good before I sat in the audience, since I mostly heard my one little section and not a complete arrangement of the song.

When you're onstage, you really feel the audience's energy and especially the director's energy—that's one of the things I love so much about Musicgrrl. She gives the chorus such incredible energy; it just beams off her face when she's directing us.

Tonight's production was solid, well-written, well-acted, well-performed. We spent months putting the thing together, selecting the music, writing and revising the script, deciding how best to involve the community, how to showcase the importance of supporting equal marriage rights, what props to use, and making them. And the show really did incorporate the right amount of camp and seriousness and good acting.

Sandiva and Eli, both professional singers/actors, played the leading roles—dykes who, in the course of the evening, fall in love at a fictitious place called Café Venus.

Our set was a take-off on the café featured in The L Word and included colorful mugs with Café Venus written on them. (DeeDee made them and also made a turquoise V-neck shirt for me with my café logo on it, which I wore last night. Very cool.)

My friend Coolio played Shane, the cool dyke who gets around—played herself really, and to the hilt. She was a big hit. And the flat I painted was a hit too.

Three people asked if they could have it after the show and two dykes asked if I would paint it as a mural on their bedroom wall. I said "not if you're in a hurry because I'm booked solid right now, but if there's no rush. . . ."

The repertoire was a mix of fun and romance. When Sandiva broke up with her new fictitious lover, a small group came out in red boots and sang These Boots Are Made for Walking, which had the audience in stitches. Then Sandiva and Eli met, courted, fell in love, and got married at the café—white tablecloths over the tables, a huge silver and white balloon arch in front of the Venus flat, and Pastor Wilma from our local Imani MCC church officiated the ceremony.

The brides sang Sonny and Cher's I Got You Babe as their vows, which had the audience rolling again. And goddamn that Sandiva can belt out a song!

Then the chorus serenaded the brides with When I'm 64.

I loved watching bouncy BeBop dance on those risers and see now why some people say they come to our performances just to watch her.

Had trouble not singing along to Cole Porter's Night and Day or to Fred Small's Everything Possible, which I've always wanted to sing to my nieces and nephews.

Everything Possible is a lullaby that goes

Some women love women, some men love men. Some raise children; some never do. O you can dream all the day, never reaching the end of everything possible for you

O you can be anybody that you want to be. You can love whomever you will. You can travel any country where your heart leads and know that I will love you still.

You can live by yourself; you can gather friends around. You can choose one special one. And the only measure of your words and your deeds will be the love you leave behind when you're gone.

Beautiful.

A group of mostly heterosexual religious leaders who object to the way some people use the Bible to promote inequality formed the Religious Coalition for Marriage Equality and read their Declaration of Religious Leaders—a document they presented to the state's General Assembly—aloud. We gave them a long standing ovation when they walked onstage and one rabbi was visibly moved by this, almost choked up reading her words. Here's the statement, which I incorporated into the program insert:

The most fundamental human right, after the necessities of food, clothing and shelter, is the right to affection and the supportive love of other human beings. We become most fully human when we love another person. We can grow in our capacity to be human—to be loving—in a family unit. This right to love and form a family is so fundamental that our United States Constitution takes it for granted in its dedication to "secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity." The state Constitution likewise affirms the "inalienable rights" of human beings to "life, liberty, the enjoyment of the fruits of their own labor, and the pursuit of happiness."

Throughout history, tyrants have known that by denying the right of oppressed peoples to form and nurture families, they can kill the spirit of those peoples. From the shameful history of slavery in America, the injustice of forbidding people to marry is evident as a denial of a basic human right. The American laws forbidding interracial marriage, now struck down, were clearly discriminatory. Denial of the status of marriage to those who would freely accept its responsibilities creates legal and economic inequities and social injustice. We feel called to protest and oppose this injustice.

As religious people, clergy and lay leaders, we are mandated by faith to stand for justice in our common civic life. We oppose the use of sacred texts and religious traditions to deny legal equity to same-gender couples. As concerned citizens we affirm the liberty of adults of the same gender to love and marry. We insist that no one, especially the state, is allowed to coerce people into marriage or bar two consenting adults, whether of the same or differing genders, from forming the family unit that lets them be more fully loving, thus more fully human. We respect the fact that debate and discussion continue in many of our religious communities as to the scriptural, theological and liturgical issues involved. However, we draw on our many faith traditions to arrive at a common conviction. We are resolved that the State should not interfere with same-gender couples who choose to marry and share fully and equally in the rights, responsibilities, and commitments of civil marriage.

We affirm freedom of conscience in this matter. We recognize that the state may not require religious groups to officiate at, or bless, same-gender marriages. Likewise, a denial of state civil recognition dishonors the religious convictions of those communities and clergy who officiate at, and bless, same-gender marriages. The state may not favor the convictions of one religious group over another by denying individuals their fundamental right to marry and to have those marriages recognized by civil law.

As faith leaders, we commit ourselves to public action, visibility, education, and mutual support in the service of the right and freedom to marry.

During the following and final song ("Everything Possible"), the chorus showed a slideshow of local couples' commitment ceremonies, with "25 years" or whatever added to them.

A little hard for me to watch, since the day I married the Ginger really was the happiest day of my life.

I was not prepared to feel so loved that day but, with all the people I love best and the Ginger beaming at me, that's exactly what I felt: loved in a way I had not experienced before. BEST OF SPAM: Can I be your friend? (No) • WOW this works for me!! (Happy for your ass)

12:09 p.m. - 2005-06-05

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