More than the "right to be wrong". (Roundtable).

I COME FROM A (MOSTLY) IRISH CATHOLIC family where dissent among family members was not tolerated. This was on my mother's side, where Joe McCarthy was admired, where they voted for Nixon over Kennedy and where the best you could hope for was to be told, "you have a right to be wrong" (though the emphasis was not really on your supposed right, but on the judgment you were wrong).

I also grew up in the church of the 1950s and 1960s, where we had to stand and take pledges to follow the Legion of Decency ratings and avoid the "occasion of sin" apparently caused by movies as diverse as Some Like It Hot (morally objectionable in part) and Gigi (condemned). When I was seven, I was taught that the commandment, "Thou shalt not commit adultery," forbade all impure acts, alone or with others; and that indeed disobeying this commandment sent you to hell, just as murder did. It's intriguing how many meanings the word "adultery" had, according to the Baltimore catechism. Who knew it also meant masturbation, sex between unmarried adults, not to mention gay sex? But it was taught as fact to us children; and I accepted it as fact.

I was a very believing Catholic and a rather obedient child, to parents and church both. In late high school, I became a "liberal" Catholic and started to believe that Christ maybe meant "turn the other cheek" and "blessed are the peacemakers"--as opposed to just saying those words like a passing pleasantry. And I, like many in the church and the country, began to oppose the war in Vietnam. (Indeed this was the trigger to my uncle's "you have a right to be wrong." Thanks a lot.)

As life went on, I went through a deep depression. I "lost" my faith as the phrase goes, and I eventually came out the other side, mostly functional but no longer a believing member of the church.

I became a playwright. One of my plays, Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You, was an early success for me: critical acclaim, "xo Best" lists, Obie award and an off-Broadway run of over two years.

I wrote the play looking back at all the things I had been taught were fact. If you said a certain prayer, you were spared 467 days in purgatory. As a child, I thought, oh. As an adult, I thought--huh? Who came up with that? Who told them?

Also, in the early 20th century, masturbation was said to cause blindness and possibly drive you mad. By the late 1960s, psychologists were saying it was a normal part of development. The church still said it sent you to hell. (So deep is the church's revulsion to the body, I still don't think you can find any official church person willing to call masturbation normal. Can you?)

So I wrote the play out of those thoughts, looking back in amazement. The play came across to audiences funnier than I imagined..."explaining" the concept of limbo, or how eating meat on Friday used to send you to hell but didn't anymore--simply sounded crazy. Even critic Walter Kerr, a practicing Catholic and not a fan of mine, admitted I told the dogma fairly straightforwardly.

From 1982 until about 1989, the Catholic League protested my play. It claimed the play was anti-Catholic, and said things like, "if a similar play made fun of Jewish or black people, it wouldn't be tolerated." Hmmmm. Yes, but I'm a Catholic, writing about my own background. You can disagree, but...anti-Catholic? Try to shut it down?

The attack quickly moved to tax funding--almost all theatre in America has some sort of tax funding in it (except straight commercial plays on Broadway or off-Broadway). So when a small theatre in St. Louis announced their intention to do my play, all hell broke loose. The theatre lost its lease (papers hadn't been signed yet), but in deference to free speech, two universities offered space. Then pickets followed, the play became a hot ticket; but after it closed, the Catholic League got two Missouri state senators to try to withdraw state arts funding from any theatre that did any play that offended any religious or ethnic group.

They failed in St. Louis, but they came close to winning. This rigmarole was repeated in other cities; sometimes the productions were cancelled, sometimes they weren't. In Florida there was a bomb threat. You see how powerful my words apparently are? They must be stopped somehow!

I don't have space to tell you more. The Catholic League went on to protest and try to shut down other projects: the films Last Temptation of Christ and Priest, Terrence McNally's Corpus Christi. The last two also had bomb threats.

It's very hard to know what to do with speech with which you disagree. I became more politicized by the protests against my play; and came to believe in the ACLU's dictum that the remedy to speech you don't agree with is more speech. Now if only more people in America could come to believe that.

CHRISTOPHER DURANG is a playwright/ actor. His most recent works include Betty's Summer Vacation, Mrs. Bob Crathchit's Wild Christmas Binge and the musical (under option) Adrift in Macao.