Cambridge Chronicle: May 6, 1999, page 1
Cambridge Staff
There is a fine line between censorship and public protection.
A performance by a comedy group called Church of the SubGenius was canceled twice last week, at two different Cambridge venues, after it falsely was linked with the now infamous Trenchcoat Mafia.
A Friday "revival," as their performances are called, was canceled first at the Middle East restaurant in Central Square and then at Old Cambridge Baptist Church.
It all started when City Councilor Ken Reeves got a phone call directing him to an Internet site, purportedly belonging to a group connected to the Trenchcoat Mafia and scheduled to perform at the Middle East. He passed the information along to the Central Square club.
"I guess what we try to do is point out the logic inconsistencies in extremists and crackpots and the intolerant in general," said Rev. Ivan Stang, president of the SubGenius Foundation and a Dallas resident in town for the performance.
"I found it pretty ironic to be faced with this in Cambridge," he said. "Dallas got over it a few years ago."
The group's business manager, Rev. Steve Bevilacqua, described a performance as a "fanatical attack on fanaticism."
"The Church of the SubGenius promises eternal salvation or your money back," he said.
Bevilacqua said he understood Reeves' confusion.
"I feel Ken Reeves did his job of informing the clubs and the police and everybody involved of a potential problem," he said.
So how did a comedy troupe making fun of hate groups become linked with the Littleton shootings? The Web site that Reeves was referred to is called the "Holocaustal Home Page" and belongs to a SubGenius performer, not the group itself.
It's a joke, but out of context, it's just confusing.
So when Reeves read in the mission statement, "The extermination of the normals with extreme prejudice" he decided it was worth a closer look.
"I know well that there is something called free speech and I know well that there is something called public safety," he said Monday at the City Council meeting.
Reeves informed the police commissioner and city officials so they could investigate, he said.
"Extra salvation" is promised on the Web site to anyone who comes to a show wearing a black trenchcoat.
"You'd have to be sick to take the Church of the SubGenius seriously," said Stang.
He was frustrated, he said, when Reeves, after meeting with SubGenius members, read to the City Council from the Web pages "out of context."
Stang pointed out that Reeves read "nitrous oxide gas chambers" but left out the text immediately following in parentheses "where inhabitants literally laugh to death."
Ann Pastreich, church administrator at the Old Cambridge Baptist Church, canceled the SubGenius show after receiving five complaints.
The decision was made Friday about three hours before showtime because she said she could not inform church members of the controversial nature of the performance and could not find appropriate security on such short notice.
"The church's policy in renting to groups is we will give priority to requests from persons or groups who are excluded from other space at any price," said Pastreich.
The policy still stands and she offered to book SubGenius at a later date, she said, when there would be more time to inform church members.
SubGenius gave a truncated performance outside the church Friday with help from the Cambridge Police, who shined their headlights on the performance.
"The police were really friendly," said Stang.
The group has performed in Cambridge twice before Friday's abbreviated performance and Bevilacqua said he thinks they will try again.
"I think the hysteria of us being a potential hate group has been eradicated," he said.
SubGenius has been around since 1980 and has had 10,000 members over the years, according to Stang.
Letters to the Editor
Cambridge Chronicle, Page 14
May 13, 1999
Censorship no laughing matter
I am writing in response to your article, "'Trenchcoat' comedy shows canceled in mix-up" from the May 6 issue.
As the organizer of the SubGenius Foundation Revival in question, I spent a lot of time and money on setting up this event, only to have it shut down at the last minute under the guise of "protecting free speech" and "publci safety." I was distraught to see this sort of knee-jerk censorship here in Cambridge, a city that has always symbolized what is best about freedom of expression in America.
The performers traveled from as far away as Dallas to speak, and some attendees drove two and three hours to hear them. I felt particularly bad for the couple who had driven three-and-a-half hours from Vermont to see the show, only to arrive to find the show canceled and the performers leaving.
The SubGenius Foundation has books in Cambridge bookstores; it has videos and CDs on the market; and it has a massive Web site at www.subgenius.com. The most basic research would have revealed that far from being a hate group, the foundation is devoted to exposing and parodying the philosophies of hate groups -- much to the hate groups' distress. But instead, a fan of the SubGenius foundation is quoted out of context in the City Council meeting, and his Internet material is used as an all-inclusive excuse to stop our performance.
If you took the Bible and edited out all of the uplifting and inspirational material, and left in only the parts about wrath and destruction, anyone reading it might well assume that Christians are all bloodthirsty monsters. But to read and pay attention only to that material, when the unedited Bible lies at your hand, is to let someone else pull the wool over your eyes.
While the elected officials of Cambridge certainly have a duty to public safety, I think they also have a duty to question material given to them by individuals who may be using those officials to further their own ends.
Is free speech so weak that jokes can kill it?
FRIDAY JONES
Waltham