04/28/04

LC040428

Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --

The next step for gay marriage in California. Will the State
Supreme Court pull the plug forever or clear the way for more
couples to walk down the aisle?

Glenn Miya>> We never had this kind of discussion on this scale
in this nation before and people will be a lot more enlightened
because of it.

Val>> And then, Orange County's nationally known theatre
company offering big-city productions in the comfort of the
suburbs.

All that and more straight ahead on tonight's Life and Times.

Life and Times is made possible through the generous support of
the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality
of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of
medicine, health, science and education.

Val>> What's next? That's the question everyone is asking
about same-sex marriage in California. They've come to a
screeching halt in San Francisco by order of the State Supreme
Court, but scores of gay couples are keeping their wedding plans
alive and hoping for the best as the court plans for a final
ruling. We thought we would revisit one gay couple to see what
they're thinking. As Philip Bruce tells us, they are as
determined as ever to say "I do."

Philip Bruce>> They're just another small-town couple together
so long they can't imagine any other way. Glenn Miya is a
doctor. Steven Llanusa teaches at one of the local schools.
Their life here in Claremont is typical, no more or less
exciting than others and no different from most of their
straight neighbors. But Glenn and Steven know that, to those
who talk about defending marriage, they're perceived as the
enemy and that goes all the way to the White House and the
President's vow to change the Constitution if need be.

Glenn Miya>> President Bush has called this a crisis. This is
not really a crisis. The true crisis that we have right now are
issues about jobs, education, the education of our children and
healthcare for other people. This really pales in comparison in
terms of the importance of strengthening our country and I think
it is a political ploy.

Philip Bruce>> They never set out to be part of a cultural
divide. In fact, all Glenn and Steven ever wanted was a family
and they've got one. Three adopted sons. Alex and Aaron are
twins, Eric is their biological brother, but the thing that's
missing is a marriage license. Steven says he wants it mostly
for the kids.

Steven Llanusa>> Well, they're hearing gay and same-sex on the
radio and television a lot more and they know that it refers to
us. They know that we would like to get married. I know that
people talk about marriage being an institution to protect the
family and that, if gays and lesbians get married, it will hurt
children. But many gays and lesbians we know have children and
those children are being hurt because their parents who want to
are being forbidden to marry.

Philip Bruce>> A wedding ceremony was definitely in the cards
for Steven and Glenn before the State Supreme Court put
everything on hold and ordered San Francisco County to stop
issuing marriage licenses to gay couples. They were planning to
tie the knot this August on their eighteenth anniversary.
Today, in spite of the legal setback, they're still scanning the
internet looking for a deal on a San Francisco hotel just in
case the court goes their way and upholds same-sex marriages.

Glenn Miya>> I think that it's not just gay people who are
leading this discussion. There are people listening and people
realizing that gays and lesbians have been contributing citizens
of this country for a very long time, really throughout history,
and that they're realizing that justice is in the air and we're
moving in the right direction.

Philip Bruce>> Is it wishful thinking or is there a chance that
the California Supreme Court consisting mostly of Republican
appointees will rule on the side of gay marriage? Alison
Renteln, a Political Science Professor at USC, says it comes
down to what the court decides about California's defense of
marriage statute. Voters overwhelmingly passed the measure back
in 2000 and would again, according to polls. But the professor
says that doesn't mean the defense of marriage act will stand a
legal test.

Alison Renteln>> Sometimes when the majority wants to pass a
public policy that violates constitutional rights or human
rights, the courts have to step in to block that. So even if
there continues to be referenda on this, that doesn't really
stop courts from, you know, taking a position on this. I think
it will end up in the California Supreme Court as we expect
later this month, but it's likely also to reach the U.S. Supreme
Court at some point in the future.

Philip Bruce>> Professor Renteln is an expert on issues that
tend to divide the masses. She's written a book focusing on
that very thing, including the battle over same-sex marriages.
She says she wasn't surprised when the plug got pulled in San
Francisco, but when it comes to issuing a final ruling, Renteln
says the California Supreme Court will have to address specific
civil rights questions such as who gets damaged if gays are
allowed to wed.

Alison Renteln>> It's an interesting question, what we're
protecting marriage from. What's the harm to other marriages if
people have a different kind of marriage? I think that's been
difficult for the opponents of same-sex marriage to say exactly.
They seem to think it affects public morality in some way, but
that's partly the difficulty just in terms of standing. You
have to have suffered an injury to bring a lawsuit. It's
unclear really why these conservative groups should be allowed
to bring these suits except as a general policy matter.

Philip Bruce>> The courts have already sided with gay couples
on the question of adoption. California is one of eleven states
where it's legal. That's how Glenn and Steven were able to
adopt the three boys who've managed to leave behind the abusive
home they were born into. Together, they're the very picture of
today's non-traditional family and the two dads wonder what some
straight people are so afraid of.

Glenn Miya>> Marriage is something that, if we were to do it,
would have a lot of value for our children and also for other
couples as well, but I'll still love Steven the same. We're
committed. He is the only one for me and we know that we'll be
together a lifetime.

Philip Bruce>> The kids know what it means to be gay, but
they're being raised with the notion that they'll all grow up
straight and get married to women someday without the barriers
their dads have faced. They are all true believers in marriage.
In fact, gays are the new champions of wedded bliss even as half
of all straight marriages end in divorce.

Steven Llanusa>> That is ironic. Almost as ironic is the fact
that people pushing for traditional marriage have often
themselves been divorced or the people who are saying they're
trying to secure and protect the thousands of years of
traditional marriage may not be clear. I'm not clear what
traditions they're talking about. Are they talking about
arranged marriage? Polygamy? The ban on interracial marriage?
The taboo of divorce? The time when people of different faiths
could not intermarry? I'm not sure which traditions they want
to protect, or if they're just saying tradition to mean that
with which I'm comfortable.

Philip Bruce>> No one knows how the legal battle will turn out
and how it will affect couples like them, but Glenn and Steven
say they can be certain of at least two things: that they and
their family will always be together, no matter what the court
says and, if they ever are married, it will be in California,
not in some other state.

Glenn Miya>> Because we love California. We always have, and
we have a lot of faith in our government here still. We've
never had this kind of discussion on this scale in this nation
before and people will be a lot more enlightened because of it.
I think in time the debate will come up again. Twenty years
from now, we'll look back at this whole issue and it will seem
trivial.

Steven Llanusa>> I don't have any regrets. It doesn't matter
if we're not the first to marry as long as we get married to
last, and I think we will.

Val>> Same-sex marriages are on hold across the country except
in Portland, Oregon. The County Board there is still issuing
licenses despite a ruling by the Attorney General that the
marriages are illegal.

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Toni Guinyard>> The debate over gay marriages has placed the
State of California right at the center of the media spotlight.
So much attention is being placed on it that other issues are
being ignored, including equal rights for unmarried people. We
spoke with the Executive Director of Unmarried America who
shared his thoughts and concerns with Life and Times.

Tom Coleman>> People, if they want to get married, that's
great. That's up to them. Marriage is good for many people,
not for everyone. There are many people who never get married,
some who get divorced, some who become unmarried because the
spouse dies. There are eighty-six million unmarried Americans
and it seems interesting to me that so many people feel that, in
order to get equal rights in this society, they have to get
married. So you have this huge push from the gay community to -
- not all, but a lot -- to get into the institution of marriage
because we want our rights. Our position is that equal rights
should not depend on marital status, that the promise of
equality applies to everyone regardless of marital status.

Toni Guinyard>> But is your argument being heard? I've heard a
lot and everyone has heard a lot about gay marriages taking
place, but I hear very little about this unmarried movement.

Tom Coleman>> Right. It's not as sexy an issue as gay
marriage. Gay marriage is a hot-button item. It's being used
in the presidential arena, the election, as a nice hot topic to
try and trap people into one position or another for political
advantage and so on. The media loves it. It's a darling of the
media because it's interesting and it's emotional. Whereas
Unmarried America, it's a long, slow, steady process of trying
to gain equal rights. The percentage of households, for
example, that are headed by unmarried people is increasing. It
used to be around the 1950's about seventy-eight percent of all
households were headed by married couples. That has changed and
changed and changed and now we're like fifty-fifty. Half of the
households in the nation are headed by unmarried people.

There's one other reason I think that gay marriage is in the
forefront and equal rights for unmarried people is not in the
forefront. That's the emotional part of it and the political
dimension on the part of those fighting for it. The gay
community is very politically organized and involved and have
been pushing the marriage issue politically for a long time.
Unmarried people are going about their everyday lives. In being
single or unmarried, most of them don't think of it as a
political issue. It's a way of life, a way of being, you know?
So we have to actually educate the single and unmarried people
that they're being denied equal rights in the various ways in
which they are because it's often so subtle or so ingrained in
the system that people take it for granted.

The gay community is educated and polarized and in favor of and
very politically charged. It's highly emotional and it's an
exciting thing to be involved in. Unmarried America is a slow,
ongoing, long process for gaining equality and it's not the sexy
issue of the moment. There are eighty-six million unmarried
Americans now, forty-two percent of the workforce is unmarried,
and people have been slowly complaining, fighting back little by
little, so that we see, for example, many employers are now
shifting their work-family programs and calling them work-life
programs and realizing that everyone has a life outside of work
regardless of whether you have the traditional family or you're
married or whatever. And more employers are going to cafeteria-
style benefits plans where they're giving equal credits to all
workers to be used for benefits, whatever they might need, and
pick and choose regardless of their marital status or family
configuration.

Many of the companies and municipalities that offer domestic
partnership benefits limit them to same-sex couples. You know,
that's great to give them to same-sex couples, but to say to
heterosexual individuals that you must marry in order to gain
equal pay at work or to gain equal rights or to gain fair
taxation or to have fairness in your insurance premiums for
automobile or other insurance, it's wrong to say that to people.
Whereas, you know, giving domestic partnership benefits, if
you're going to do it, it should be open to heterosexual and gay
domestic partners.

We actually do see more of a trend now toward gender-neutral
inclusive domestic partnerships, but we're talking not just
about couples here and not just about romantic relationships.
Our movement in Unmarried America is designed to help the
individuals, the couples and the families. People who live
alone should be getting equal pay at work, not just those who
are couples. A single parent, for example, who has an adult
child living at home, should be able to put that adult child on
her health benefits plan at work. The fact that they're not a
gay couple or they're not in a romantic relationship should have
no bearing on it.

Toni Guinyard>> Are you married?

Tom Coleman>> No, I'm not.

Toni Guinyard>> Have you ever been married?

Tom Coleman>> No, I haven't been married.

Toni Guinyard>> Why?

Tom Coleman>> Well, I have a domestic partner. We had a
commitment ceremony and all of that, but as far as marriage, you
know, I think it's too overrated in terms of --

Toni Guinyard>> -- I've heard that before.

Tom Coleman>> Yeah, it is. I think it does not convey a notion
of equality. Domestic partnership, which is what we are,
registered domestic partners, -- the term partnership even in
the terminology conveys equality. Partners. We're partners in
life. You start using old-fashioned terms that sound nice and,
you know, frilly and lovely and all of that, but there is some
type of connotation that's been built into it of inequality and
I say, you know, in the vanguard, let's do domestic partnership
and someday it will all be domestic partnership.

We've heard people saying, gee, maybe marriage should be left to
the churches and that the government should only be dealing with
domestic partnerships or civil unions, something secular. I
think that's something that we may be heading in that direction.
We're gaining momentum, but it's a slow, steady battle. That's
okay. You know, someday you or somebody else will be
interviewing me when I'm older and grayer and I'm barely able to
get out of my rocking chair and I'll probably still be in it and
we may still be fighting for equality, but I'm in it for the
long haul.

Toni Guinyard>> Tom Coleman, I will be there to do that
interview with you, and thank you so much for spending a little
time with Life and Times.

Tom Coleman>> Thank you very much.

To send a comment or a question to our program, you can reach us
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Val>> If you think Los Angeles is the only place for great live
theater in Southern California, stick around. We've got a story
that will change your mind. It's about a regional theater in
Costa Mesa that Time Magazine has called one of the best in the
country. Vicki Curry takes us to South Coast Repertory. It's
forty years old and still going strong.

Vicki Curry>> Orange County, better known for sand and surf
than for art and culture. But for forty years, South Coast
Repertory has been establishing itself as a major force not only
in Southern California, but in American theatre.

David Emmes>> It was really a calling that we wanted to be able
to produce in Orange County a theatre that could enrich the
community and that could advance the art of the American
theatre.

Martin Benson>> We started with basically nothing and have just
worked our way up solving one problem at a time.

Vicki Curry>> South Coast Repertory, or SCR, may be one of the
best today, a quantum leap from the company's early days. It
all began when David Emmes and Martin Benson met at San
Francisco State College. They decided to start a theatre and
went to their mentor, Jules Irving of the Actors Workshop, for
advice.

Martin Benson>> And Jules said, hey, you want to go to a
metropolitan area that is growing and become the theatre for
that particular part of the world.

David Emmes>> Orange County was something that we got into
because actually I had kind of grown up here and had gone to
Harbor High and had some sense about what was happening.

Vicki Curry>> What was happening was a population and business
boom. UC Irvine was being built and the Anaheim Angels were
coming to town.

Martin Benson>> We were doing the demographics before we knew
what demographic meant (laughter). We came down here and
targeted Orange County as the community that we wanted to grow
up with.

Vicki Curry>> It was the early 1960's and the resident theatre
movement was taking off.

David Emmes>> There was a feeling in the country that, yes,
it's time for a professional resident theatre, that great
theatres should exist throughout a great country, not just in
eleven square blocks in New York City.

Martin Benson>> Right from the beginning, we wanted to be a
fully professional company and, in particular, we wanted to do
plays of great literary merit, new plays and great classics.

Vicki Curry>> They gathered up some classmates from college
and, in 1964, South Coast Repertory took their first step.

Martin Benson>> We started as a touring company where we
rehearsed a production of Moliere's "Tartuffe" in David's garage
without any knowledge of an opening date or where we would be
playing it. Then we set about renting halls and, in any space
that would have us, we would put on this particular play.

Vicki Curry>> The company got a lot of attention with their
off-the-wall production. Within a few months, they took their
second step and found a place to call their own.

Martin Benson>> We then acquired a building, our first
permanent home, which was a marine junk store that had an
apartment above it. So the fourteen of us lived upstairs, which
I paid the rent on the building which we then produced theatre
in downstairs.

Vicki Curry>> It took only two years for SCR to take the third
step. In 1967, they moved up from their seventy-seat theatre to
a converted dime store that seated 217. For the next ten years,
South Coast Repertory flourished both artistically and
financially.

David Emmes>> I think early on we probably thought that we
could do all plays equally well regardless of whether they were
the Greek or contemporary. We felt that we had really
distinguished ourselves in doing new and contemporary work.

Martin Benson>> A whole new wave of theatre was coming in.
Harold Pinter, Samuel Beckett. We were producing the works of
playwrights like these guys well before anyone else in Southern
California was doing them, so we sort of had a corner on that
market.

Vicki Curry>> As the company grew, they turned to the community
leaders of Orange County for support. They put together a Board
of Trustees, attendance exploded and a full-time staff took
shape.

David Emmes>> Every time that we have suggested that there was
more to do, we've found interest on the part of our audience and
excitement on the part of our Trustees and the leadership.

Vicki Curry>> That support helped South Coast Repertory take
their fourth step. The Segerstrom family gave them a plot of
land in Costa Mesa for a new facility and, in 1978, the company
moved into its current home, a 507-seat theatre.

Martin Benson>> It was the success of our fund drive to build
this theatre originally in 1978 that led leaders in Orange
County to realize that Orange County is no longer a bedroom to
Los Angeles. It now can stand on its own. It's truly become an
art center whereas it was lima beans, and nothing but lima
beans, when we set out to start bulldozing some space here for
our current theatre.

Vicki Curry>> The company turned their attention next to
fostering new playwrights.

[Film Clip]

David Emmes>> We made a conscious effort to create a program to
support the creation and development of new American plays.

Martin Benson>> We started commissioning writers and what we'd
look for is a talented young writer who really needed a
commission. Most of the plays that we do start here and then
find their way to New York rather than starting in New York and
finding their way to us. We're very proud of that.

[Film Clip]

Vicki Curry>> South Coast Repertory not only commissions new
plays, but also advocates for young playwrights. Every year
they hold the Pacific Playwrights Festival to expose other
theatres to new plays. Hopefully, that leads to multiple
productions of a play across the country.

David Emmes>> The goal of, let's say, having a playwright
receive multiple productions, we believe it reinforces in them a
belief that writing for the theatre is a viable career option.
Writing for the theatre is not something you do before you
inevitably take a screenplay job or writing for television. We
want to keep the most talented people that we possibly can
writing for the theatre. The result, we will, at some point if
not from us, but for other theatres, we'll get another "Long
Day's Journey Into Night". There will be another "Streetcar
Named Desire", another "Death of a Salesman".

Vicki Curry>> As their various programs have expanded, South
Coast Repertory has expanded their facilities. In 2002, they
added a new complex to their main stage that includes a 336-seat
theatre, a 95-seat studio, rehearsal hall and state-of-the-art
production shots.

[Film Clip]

Martin Benson>> This theatre we're in now and in our other
theatre are so well-equipped that we can indeed take on any
theatrical challenge.

[Film Clip]

David Emmes>> We say to playwrights, don't think about the
small cast in a domestic play. Think about painting on a big
canvas. Think about taking up big ideas and epic thoughts.
And, whatever you do, we have the creative resources to realize
your vision.

Vicki Curry>> After forty years, South Coast Repertory has
proven that visions can be realized. Their story shows how a
community and the arts can grow together.

Martin Benson>> It was a wise decision, and I thank Jules
Irving for that, to situate ourselves here in Orange County and
become the theatre for this part of the world, which was always
the dream of what the original theatre was about.

David Emmes>> I hope that what we created here will carry
forward in continuing to contribute to the advancement of the
American theatre.

Val>> Happy anniversary to the South Coast Rep. And that's our
program. I'm Val Zavala. For everyone at Life and Times,
thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.

Life and Times was made possible through the generous support of
the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality
of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of
medicine, health, science and education.

Val>> Next time on Life and Times, he's the only Persian
politician in 90210 and he's breaking down ethnic stereotypes.

>> They were telling me that it's not the time, you're not
ready, the city's not ready, the community is not ready. Others
have done it, what makes you think you can?

Val>> That's next time on Life and Times.