No. That show sucks. Change it to The Cosby Show and we’ve got a deal.
There were a lot of religious hypocrites back then.
And while the Jesus of the Gospels is an infinitely nicer guy than most people in the Old Testament, he did his own share of condemning.
“But whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven, but is guilty of an eternal sin.” (Mark 3, 29)
All other sins are repeatedly stated to be forgivable, but that forgiveness seems to be conditional on repentance. And there are plenty of verses saying that you need to be a follower of Jesus Christ and leave all else behind in order to be spared eternal damnation, so… let me just say I feel pretty actively condemned by the Jesus of the gospels as well, but at least he does it while generally being a nice guy.
Well, but “balance” is not a natural state regarding homosexuality. I don’t think the exact numbers are known, but I’d guess it’s natural for about 5% of a given population to be homosexual. Maybe 10%, or maybe just 1%, that also depends on how the question is asked.
Going with the 5% number, if a theatre production employs 20 people at random, there is a 35% chance that they are all heterosexual.
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Me too, but I’m not particularly bothered by that. The Christian Heaven sounds like a pretty boring place.
I think the numbers skew a bit higher than 5% in the arts. Male drama teachers, in particular.
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You might want to read that again. Very British dryness in the satire realm.
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Your baseline supposition is wrong, ergo…
I get your point about statistics, but really, the average straight Joe on the street is not going to be interested in seeking employment in theatre. You have to go actively out of your way to magically have 0% gay people in a theatre production.
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So it’s all about the pipeline, isn’t it? 
This might be different in different cultures, I’ll have to ask a certain (straight) dramaturgist I happen to know.
Ballet dancers, on the other hand… no idea, actually. My personal gaydar triggers on 95% percent of male ballet dancers, but only on about 50% of actual gay people. Something’s clearly wrong.
So, it really becomes a hard problem:
- What percentage of theatre people is gay?
- What is a representative size for a theatre production? There are tiny productions, and there are huge productions.
- What confidence level do you need before you can legitimately accuse someone of being a homophobe?
(With 14% homosexual, the probability of randomly choosing 20 straight people is 5%).
Once you label somebody as an average straight Joe you’ve basically defined him as a person who’s not interested in anything interesting…
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No, just that the odds are against him being interested in WORKING in theatre.
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[quote=“chgoliz, post:66, topic:69697”]
really, the average straight Joe on the street is not going to be interested in seeking employment in theatre. [/quote]
So the stereotypes say, and who are we to doubt stereotypes?
But you’d probably have to go actively out of your way to magically have 0% gay people in any activity of comparable size.
This gets to the heart of the issue. Having worked in the dance world for many years, I can tell you that the percentage of gay male dancers is higher than in the general population but significantly lower than your joking estimate of 95%. We have all been socialized to think that the movements and body-exposing costumes of most established forms of dance feminizes men: e.g., makes them seem gay. It’s an underlying prejudice against non-macho behavior. Dance with more aggressive moves and heavy clothing, like hip-hop, fulfills our expectation of how men are supposed to act, so those dancers aren’t labeled gay.
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Back when I toured with the ballet company, oh, about LARGE_INTEGER_ERROR years ago, we had a corps of 28 or so; one was gay. When he left, the company was totally straight for about a year or so. That caused some comment at the time.
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“…but don’t worry, your deposit has been donated to StoneWall, an LGBT charity” - I kinda wish he’d added: “, in your name”
B
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You’ve never been to Branson, MO, have you?
I consider myself a fairly average, straight guy, and I’d work in theatre if I thought I could make a living at it.
Alas, IT is a much more stable career.
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OMG - that can’t be true, can it? I mean, who the hell signs up their kids for something like that not knowing WTF it is about?
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I consider myself a fairly average, straight guy, and I’ve had effectively the same job in theatre for I don’t know how many years. Stable? Yes. Ambitious? Ahh, not so much.
(Years ago, a lighting designer apologised for missing the start of a lighting session:
“I was at the Royal Opera House, for the retirement party of the downstage left boom technician.”
“Did he ever have ambitions to become the upstage left boom technician?”
“No… he knew his limitations.”)
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I didn’t say it was impossible, just pointing out the average likelihood.
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You gotta just find a nice stable job in consulting. Theatre and stability in one sweet package…
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This might tread into accusations of a form of blackface that a lot of people are going to have issues with for several reasons. Can we compromise on Seinfeld? Plus, who wants to knit all those tiny armless sweaters?
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It spoke directly to my cold, shriveled heart, which shrank three sizes. I want to read more from Dominic_Connor.
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Yeah. Plus someone’s penis can play the part of Little Jerry the cockfighting rooster.
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