Much ado About a Temple Play

Much ado about a Temple play A student who protested “Corpus Christi,” which portrays Jesus as gay, has filed suit. He claims ill treatment.

By David O’Reilly
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER

A Temple University student who says school officials ordered him to a psychiatric ward in handcuffs for protesting a “blasphemous” campus play about a homosexual Jesus-figure has become a hero to conservative Christians across the nation.

“What happened to Michael Marcavage should shock all Americans,” the American Family Association of Tupelo, Miss., declared in its February newsletter.

“It is nothing less than an outrageous attempt to intimidate, silence and belittle Christians,” said the organization’s president, Don Wildmon, who has called on members to protest “the persecution of Christians” – and to send money to the group for Marcavage’s defense.

Temple officials, swamped last week with postcards and e-mail messages accusing them of suppressing biblical Christianity and “promoting the homosexual agenda,” emphatically deny having had such motives when, on Nov. 2, 1999, they sent 19-year-old Marcavage to Temple University Hospital for observation.

They say Marcavage, now 21, had become so distraught in a meeting with a university vice president that they feared he might injure himself.

Marcavage countered in an interview last week that he had “remained calm throughout,” although he said he had “tears in my eyes” when William Bergman, Temple vice president for operations, told him the university would not build him an outdoor stage to mount a traditional play about Jesus.

Marcavage had been organizing a campus protest against a two-day student performance of Corpus Christi by Tony Award-winning playwright Terrance McNally.

The play, which made its debut in Manhattan in 1998 to angry protests and tepid reviews, uses graphic language and sex scenes to tell the story of Joshua, a young American who discovers that he is gay during his high school prom when a friend, Judas, kisses him.

After admitting that he is “the son of God,” Joshua performs miracles and falls in love with Philip, an HIV-positive hustler. At his trial, Pontius Pilate asks: “Art thou the King of the Queers?”

McNally, who is gay, has said the play and the Joshua character were inspired by Matthew Shepard, a gay college student who was murdered in Wyoming in 1998.

“I can’t imagine why anyone would write such a thing,” Marcavage – a Baptist from Simpson, Lackawanna County – said in an interview at his Manayunk apartment last week. The play is filled with “hate speech” toward Bible-believing Christians, he said.

Rather than give Corpus Christi publicity with protest demonstrations in 1999, he said, he had decided a better alternative would be to show students “the real Jesus” in a play titled Final Destiny.

Bergman had promised him a stage at the bell tower “several weeks” before withdrawing the promise Nov. 2, Marcavage said. Feeling “betrayed” by the news, he locked himself in a bathroom outside Bergman’s office for about five minutes “just to pray and collect my thoughts.”

After he emerged, however, Bergman and the campus security director, Carl Bittenbender, escorted him back to Bergman’s office, where, Marcavage alleges, they tripped him, held him on a couch, and called a campus psychologist and campus police.

When the psychologist, Denise Walton, concluded that Marcavage might be a danger to himself, Bittenbender signed a form requesting Marcavage’s involuntary commitment for observation.

Temple officials deny Marcavage’s account of the incident but refuse to talk openly because Marcavage has filed a federal lawsuit against the university, charging assault and violation of his civil rights. Marcavage’s version has generated such ill will toward Temple, however, that university officials agreed to explain their side last week.

They said Marcavage had asked for a 70-foot stage only the day before the incident, and that they had made no promises because of concerns about cost and weather. Bittenbender called him later that day to say there would be no stage, and invited him to Bergman’s office the next morning to discuss the matter.

Marcavage arrived in an “agitated state,” they said. After Bergman explained that an outdoor stage was impractical, Marcavage began crying and shouting, “It’s over!” and fled to the bathroom, they said. He stayed for 15 minutes; they sent for a locksmith.

They deny that they tripped Marcavage but agree that they restrained him until Walton arrived.

“He came out [of the bathroom] sort of staggering,” one university official said. “We didn’t know if he had taken something.” Police then drove him to the psychiatric unit.

According to photocopies of the admitting doctor’s handwritten report provided by Marcavage, the psychiatric staff found him “calm and cooperative,” and released him 31/2 hours later, recommending counseling.

He said he had never been treated for any emotional or mental illness.

The American Family Association Center for Law and Policy, which champions conservative Christian causes, is defending him at no charge. The association, which calls itself “a Christian organization promoting Christian ethics,” opposes gambling, pornography, abortion and homosexuality, and has led boycotts against, among others, the Disney Corp. and Howard Stern’s show.

Marcavage’s lawyer, Brian Fahling, said last week that he expected to seek damages of $750,000, possibly more, if he found a conspiracy at Temple to suppress biblical Christianity on campus.

University officials call the anti-Christian charges “ludicrous,” and insist they acted solely out of concern for Marcavage’s safety.

They also rebut the allegations that they “muzzled” Marcavage, noting that on Nov. 8, 1999, he mounted a two-hour demonstration, with preaching and gospel singers, outside the Student Activities Center with loudspeakers provided by the university, led smaller protests during both nights of the play, and led a campus Christian rally in April.

Nonetheless, university president David Adamany still receives thousands of preprinted postcards from the association accusing Temple of having “persecuted” Marcavage “merely because of his religious beliefs.” Temple has also received hundreds of hostile e-mail messages. One reads, “You want to go to hell with the rest of the gays you are promoting?”

Marcavage now is basking in the admiration of thousands of conservative Christians. “I admire your perseverance and courage to stand up for the Lord,” reads a letter from a woman in Opelika, Ala. It is one of perhaps 2,000 letters and postcards stacked on an air-hockey table in Marcavage’s living room.

Asked whether he believed that Bergman and Bittenbender had an anti-Christian or pro-gay agenda, he replied, “That’s very difficult to say. . . . In my view, the university allowed students to mock Jesus, who I love.”