Villanova University cancels appearance by gay performance artist

Villanova University has abruptly canceled a weeklong workshop by a gay performance artist whose stage shows are often laced with nudity and simulated sex but who has taught and lectured at numerous colleges, including the nation's largest Catholic university, DePaul, in Chicago.

Tim Miller, whom the Los Angeles Times once called the "patron saint of the gay performance world" and who was one of four envelope-pushing artists whose funding the National Endowment for the Arts revoked in 1990, said he was told Sunday night by the professor who booked the workshop that Villanova's president, the Rev. Peter M. Donohue, had canceled the event without giving a reason.

Miller said he was not totally surprised since Catholic blogs had picked up on his appearances and were spreading "this bizarre lie that I'm anti-Catholic. . . . People tell these lies, and it gets people who read these blogs worked up."

While the cancellation was not "unimaginable," he noted that Villanova once staged Angels in America, a groundbreaking, Pulitzer Prize-winning play about the AIDS epidemic.

"Times have changed," he said. "We're in a much more coercive, censorious time."

Heidi Rose, the assistant professor of communications who booked the residency months ago and is a member of the university's Gay Straight Coalition, said Monday morning that she had been told by university officials not to talk about the event and to refer inquiries to the communications office. Miller said it was Rose who told him the workshop had been canceled.

Rose was quoted by CatholicCulture.org as saying the April 16 to 21 workshop would "take you through an intimate process of self-discovery and exploration, focusing on identity and culture, questions of diversity and difference, knowledge of self and others, etc."

By yesterday afternoon, the university put out a statement that read:

"Villanova University embraces intellectual freedom and academic discourse. Indeed, it is at the very heart of our University and our Augustinian Catholic intellectual tradition. With regard to the upcoming residency and performance workshops by Tim Miller, we had concerns that his performances were not in keeping with our Catholic and Augustinian values and mission.

"Therefore, Villanova has decided not to host Mr. Miller on our campus. Villanova University is an open and inclusive community and in no way does this singular decision change that."