Let The Sun Shine In: Marriage Equality Comes to Broadway

By Paul Gorrell, Religion Dispatches. Posted August 14, 2009.

The current revival of the Broadway show Hair, the late-1960s musical about hippie culture and the Vietnam War, demonstrates how a different context for a work of art creates new meaning for a new audience.

Today, the civil rights battle over marriage equality becomes the new backdrop for a protest musical peppered with religious imagery at every turn -- lesbian and gay folks are left hoping that we may finally be experiencing the dawning of the Age of Aquarius.

Hair, Circa 1968

The original production of Hair was a departure for the Broadway stage because of its radical political content and use of rock music. Hair was also the first Broadway production to embrace nudity as a dramatic device.

In the show, flower children unapologetically introduce their lifestyle to the audience with joy and power; but the Army draft upends their lives, and the audience is pulled into the characters' Vietnam-era ethical dilemmas and psychedelic trips.

While Vietnam is the dark cloud over the story, Hair was not simply an anti-war protest piece; the musical investigates the broader civil rights movement as a key element of social change in the United States. The characters address the issue of race in America by tracing aspects of racism's history and by fetishizing the differences between blacks and whites in a manner that mocks bigotry and discrimination.

The characters form a multiracial community that foreshadows the "multicultural" movement of the 1980s and later breakthroughs in race relations, all the way through to the election of a black president.

I Am the Son of God

Broadway's quintessential subversive musical includes religious parody resembling street theater; a form traditionally known for political content that mocks sacred symbols and those in power.

Ultimately, hypocrisy in establishmentarian religion is revealed, and an alternative community is offered. While it turns religion on its head, the story of Hair also has surprising resonances with the Christian story. Claude, the lead character, believes that he is the Son of God, he has his own John the Baptist to foretell his coming, and he eventually goes through a Gethsemane experience as he sings "Where Will I Go?"

Like Jesus, Claude will be sacrificed at the end of the story, but not for the sake of the salvation of others: his sacrifice is a consequence of his own indecision, his inability to take risks, and his confusion about his identity.

He becomes one of many nameless and faceless soldiers who die for a "dirty little war" void of meaning, pointless from its inception. His death has no meaning beyond loss; it's a quiet tragedy signaling the end of connection to community and intimacy. Claude's death does not save; it does not lead to new life or immortality. It leads to invisibility.

Hair and Marriage Equality

There are many risks in doing a production of Hair today because of the ways that society has changed; the play could easily come across now as camp or nostalgia.

Yes, we are a nation that continues to wage war, which still creates indescribable tragedy in our contemporary lives. But with Iraq and Afghanistan, we "sacrificed" by going shopping, the bodies of dead soldiers were hidden from our television sets, and we allowed our civil liberties to be threatened as we looked the other way.

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Paul Gorrell earned his doctorate in Christian social ethics at Drew University in 2004 and co-chairs the Gay Men’s Issues in Religion Group of the American Academy of Religion. His essays have been published in Theology and Sexuality and Gay Religion. A former Catholic priest, he provides leadership development coaching and programs to companies of all sizes.

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