On November 30 and December 1, the Somerville Theater in Somerville, Massachusetts, will present Faith Soloway’s, “Jesus Has Two Mommies.” Called a “multi-media schlock opera,” the performance features Ms. Soloway, who plays herself, and Cathy Cannavo, who plays her pregnant Irish-Catholic girlfriend; the two women join in a “commitment ceremony.” Ms. Soloway meets Jesus who assuages her fears about her non-traditional relationship: he admits to having two mommies, Mary and Josephine. His mommies met at a dyke bar called “The Burnin’ Bush.”
Catholic League president William Donohue commented as follows:
“When Faith Soloway was asked why a Jewish lesbian is staging a play starring Jesus, she replied that Jesus ‘is the most absorbed, he’s like the icon of the Bible’ and that around Christmastime he is ‘sort of the star.’ She’s sort of right. But when she says of her own work that in a ‘lighthearted way’ she is ‘holding up [her] middle finger at some of our social constructions,’ she is sort of unnecessarily vague. It would be more accurate to say that she is holding up her middle finger at Christians and that few would see this as being lighthearted. Interestingly, nothing in her repertoire suggests that she has done anything to endear herself to her fellow Jews or to African Americans the way she has Christians. This is especially telling given that Hanukkah and Kwanzaa provide great opportunities for her in December.
“Daniel Gewertz of the Boston Herald can hardly contain his enthusiasm for the play saying it ‘Sounds like a lesbian revision of the nativity tale just in time for the Yule season!’ How observant. He is wrong, however, to dub the play ‘the most audacious show on the Somerville Theater schedule.’ It takes no courage to bash Christians in Somerville. We know this because the town sports a ‘cultural index’ (see its online site) that is nearly twice the national average. And it has been our experience that the more urbane the neighborhood, the more hospitable it is to anti-Catholicism.”
