By Donald H. Harrison

SAN DIEGO— The Twilight of the Golds at the Diversionary Theatre poses a stark question: If, as a result of the human genome project you knew that your unborn son would be gay, would you abort him?

It's difficult to know how such an idea germinates.  Jonathan Tolins, the playwright, obviously loves Wagnerian opera: the name of his play is only one letter away from  "The Twilight of the Gods," the English translation for Ricard Wagner's Götterdämmerung.

We can imagine that's how the seed was planted,  that Tolins was thinking about Wagner's concept of how man could defy the gods, go through a test of fire, and set the world right.  And wouldn't it be a delicious little irony if those being tested were the antithesis of everything Wagner believed in—Jews, in other words.

Or, alternatively, we can imagine that Tolins was always interested in eugenics.  The Nazis in Germany  weren't the only ones fascinated by the concept of  racial superiority. The idea that we could breed better people by prohibiting "lower" classes  from reproducing was propagated by respected scientists at Cold Springs Harbor, N.Y.  Early into the 20th century, state after state adopted sterilization laws, with as respected a jurist as Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes opining, "three generations of imbeciles is enough."  With homophobia at its peak in the 1990s during the horrifying spread of the AIDS epidemic, maybe the despairing thought occurred to Tolins, "would people simply not have children if they knew this could happen to them?"

However the idea sprouted,  why did the playwright decide that the family wrestling with the issue should be Jewish?  Was it simply to make the people in the play more recognizable to New York City theatre crowds?  Did he need the comic relief offered by Jewish family situations to offset the heaviness of his theme?  Or did the Golds have to be Jewish because Tolins wanted to explore the idea of victims becoming victimizers? As a people once living and mostly dying at the caprice of the Nazis, now the decisions of a Jewish family would determine if a future brilliant homosexual would be born or destroyed.

I prefer to think that by uniting all these themes in his riveting work, Tolins was motivated by another dynamic— an understanding  that Jews, when presented with a moral  issue, would torment themselves to find the absolute  right answer.  "Justice, justice shalt thou pursue," we are commanded in Deuteronomy 16:20.  The issue was so pressing that the consciences of Jews simply had to be engaged. 

Now more than a decade old, The Twilight of the Golds seems to many to pose controversy where there is none.  "So what if your child will be born homosexual?  What's the big deal?" one might truly ask today. The level of acceptance for gays today could not be imagined when Tolins was at his typewriter.  As Diversionary Theatre director Rosina Reynolds notes in the program, "The early '90's was a frightening time.  An audience in 2006 must endeavor to remember those times and the world's attitudes towards, and fear of, AIDS/HIV."

With the help of the talented cast and the audience itself, we are swept up in the starkness of the question.  Suzanne Gold-Stein (Amanda Sitton) and Rob Stein (Joshua Harrell) learn that  she has become pregnant. Rob, who works for a human genome researcher, arranges to have Suzanne's fetus tested.  It is determined that the fetus has the gay gene.  Should they abort and try again?  Rob thinks so, but says he will abide by his wife's decision—a woman, they say, has the right to choose.   But Suzanne hates to make choices about anything. Multiple choice examinations make her hyperventilate.

Suzanne's parents, Phyllis and Walter (Glynn Bedington and Fred Moramarco), to whom she normally turns for advice on the important and unimportant decisions in her life, in this case are ambivalent. The father leans in favor of abortion, while the mother leans against.  Only Suzanne's brother, David (Matthew Weeden), the opera lover,  has a strong opinion.  He is gay man, a disappointment to his parents, who guiltily tell him they nevertheless love him—although they refuse to meet Steve, his life partner.  David, who has a strong, loving relationship with his sister, tearfully pleads for the unborn baby's life as a validation of his own. 

Perhaps the issue today is resolved, perhaps no one that we know would have an abortion simply because her child would be born gay, but in this Diversionary Theatre audience of mostly gay men and women, the drama unfolding on the stage is all-too-haunting, the attitudes expressed by the "straight" characters on stage all-too-familiar.  You could sense more than one member of the audience asking, "My God, is this how my own parents would have reacted?"  

Although the debate seems anachronistic when focused on potentially homosexual children, we cannot smugly believe that the issue raised by the play is what the lawyers call stare decisis, a matter already decided, one no longer worthy of taking the court's attention.  

The play's essential question could have been asked about other kinds of people.  Would you have an abortion if you knew that your child would be born with a disability?  Suppose you knew he would be autistic?   How about Down's Syndrome? Cerebral palsy?  Schizophrenia?  Bipolar disorder? Physical disabilities?  Suppose he or she would be just plain ugly?  Are we headed for an era of designer babies?  And what genius, what kindnesses, what joy, would we snuff out in the process? 

If as the Jewish sages said, to save one life is to save the world; how many universes are we prepared to sacrifice?

The Twilight of the Golds, a thought-provoking journey into what may become a cowardly new world, will run through April 9 at the Diversionary Theatre, 4545 Park Blvd., San Diego. Ticket information may be obtained from the Box Office at (619) 220-0097.