Raul Esparza Interview in Sunday Times — Page 10

I love Raul. He can do anything and I will never ever say anything bad about him. However, I was not thrilled about the play. I also do not think it was Raul's strongest performance.

This could be do because of my age. I am 38. The people in the audience were older than me, my parents age. They loved it. I am hoping that I did not find this play wonderful because of a generation gap.

I will be very interested in the reviews.

Thanks for the link - just sent it to my wife, the big Raul fan.

Hoping to snag tickets to opening night!

The show--while it does focus on married couples--is not just about "marriage" but commitment. It's about choosing how to live your life and who to live it with. It's about choosing not to live it by other's wishes but by your own.

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I'm not Namo bwaysinger but I would answer your question "yes". If you choose to do so you would have the right and you would have to take the impact of whatever fallout comes your way. You would have to shoulder the responsibility of your actions but you would have the right.

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I guess I'm a bit more regimented in how I feel about it. As far as potentially, this guy's only hurting himself and, I guess, his wife (unless she knows. some people DO make those kinds of arrangements), so, unless he suddenly wins and Oscar and begins a Patricia Heaton-like anti-gay campaign, I think he's free to go home to his wife after nights hooking up with guys in bars.
If he were really campaigning against something which I knew to be ingrained in his heart, though, I'd be right up there against it.

Raithnet--are you gay?

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I think I see the issue here as being that the way bwaysinger puts it, people are going to have a hell of a hard time finding out who this person is. In Raúl's case, a minimal amount of research could probably yield a decent amount of information about the identity of the professor.

I still think that people brush off all too easily that while there's a communal notion to knowing what it's like to go through coming out of the closet, every case is different, and you do what -- based on your situation -- you think is right. And nothing's perfect. A lot of times, the "right" thing to do comparatively has a lot of things about it that are not good or "right" in some ideal objective sense. That's just the way it is. There's no way to really tap what goes into that unless you're in that person's head. Maybe that's naively sympathetic, but I think it gets glossed over. For the record, Raúl is very aware of the pain he's caused and certainly isn't displaying some lack of regard for the people this process is hurting. But at the same time, you do what you think is right, and he did what he thought he had to do.

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Updated On: 11/29/06 at 04:24 PM

Rathnait, I find it odd that you have so much sympathy for this instructor who was in a somewhat ethically sketchy relationship with Esparza and his family--who may not exist at all--and not so much with Esparza.

I suspect the reason that so many gay and lesbian people come out in the way you talk about is fear. They are afraid of rejection and so they adopt the take-it-or-leave-it stance as a defense mechanism. I can understand that even if I don't think it's productive or reasonable. Hopefully, though, with time and/or maturity they mellow out.

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What, what are you referring to with the "may not exist at all?" The professor?

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Daniel, Esparza made the choice to come out himself. The professor is DEAD - he had no say in what Esparza decided to state publically ABOUT him.

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Your point is clear, and it has been every time you brought it up. You don't think there's enough consideration for the fact that the professor's family and loved ones may not have wanted this published. I don't think it's really fair to pull the "well, what if it were YOU?" card, though, for many of the reasons I stated above, which are why, yes, I'm forgiving.

What would be preferable, though -- for him to have continued to suffer to keep damage from being done? I think you can stand by an argument that says he could have made major adjustments in his life perfectly well without putting it all in the press, but in a lot of cases, putting it in the press is a step in the process of digging through and taking responsibility for all of the lies you've told. I'm just sort of wondering if you really feel he should have not made this decision for the sake doing less damage to others? If you do, that's fine. I disagree, obviously, under the condition that it may have been a selfless decision, but he's the only one who could have -- and needed to -- deem is necessary, and to weigh the options knowing that people were inevitably going to be hurt.

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Updated On: 11/29/06 at 05:02 PM

Nothing Rath said paints homosexuality as shameful.

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