...THE MEADOWS.  (Renee, Bo)
  
Bo:	Look at that.  Will you just look at those?

Renee:	Parishioners?

Bo:	Parishioners?  It's more like Walter Douglas and his 
	spiritual lynch mob.  They're here to protest the quilt
	being here.  You know, if they'd just get off their high
	horses and get down here and take a look at this and read
	it ... then maybe they could find out what this is really
	all about.

Renee:	Remembrance and loss.

Bo:	Maybe they could talk to that lady right over there - her
	only son died of AIDS.  Or talk to that young couple - 
	they lost a one-year-old baby . But no, they've got to 	stay up 
	there on the steps and try to keep Andrew from 
	going into the church?  I mean, how petty can you get?


...THE CHURCH STEPS  (Andrew, Cassie, Walter & Virginia Douglas,
Elizabeth MacNamara & a crowd of onlookers)

Andrew:	[to Cassie]  Looks like it's time to face our public.
	Excuse me.

[Andrew mounts the steps where a defiant Walter Douglas is barring the
 church door]

Walter:	Sorry, Reverend.  You are never going to set foot in this
	church again.

Andrew:	I want to thank you all for coming here on this special 	day.

Walter:	Huh ... that's great.  That's vintage Carpenter!  Come on,
	Reverend, spare us the noble equanimity.  I think I'd 	respect 
	you more if you got a little mad.

Andrew:	I'm not mad.  I'm saddened.

Walter:	Yeah, why is that?  Because you're finally being prevented
	from riding rough-shod over everything that's decent?

Andrew:	Church is for everyone, Mr. Douglas.  You have no right to
	keep anyone out.  Please let me pass.

Walter:	One condition ... your resignation right now.

Andrew:	Mr. Douglas, there is something more important at hand.
	That. (Points to quilt)  This is not about me or about 	you, or 
	about my job or your opinion of it.  It's about the quilt.

Walter:	That's right and that's one more reason you should resign!
	Because you are responsible for bringing that ... thing 	
	... here!

Andrew:	That 'thing' is the Names Project AIDS Memorial Quilt and
	I will not have you refer to it as if it is some rag that
	was dragged out of the gutter!

Walter:	Well, why not?  Isn't that where most of the people you
	glorify spent their lives?

Andrew:	You want to see me get angry?  Fine!  I am angry! ... I
	am angry!  I am angry!  Can not you people understand or
	appreciate where this quilt came from, how it came to be
	made?  People are dying of AIDS!  All kinds of people!
	Babies ... and children.  Teenagers.  Women.  Old people.
	Unlike you, AIDS is not prejudiced and not enough is being
	done to stop this disease.  And one man saw the names of 
	the victims of AIDS taped to the wall of a building and 
	one year later ... One year later, the first panel was
	made - a panel not unlike this one.  Now, there are over
	15,000 of them!

Walter:	Well, we don't care if there are a million of them on a 
	lazy-susan!  Because you had no authority to bring this
	circus to town, park in on the church lawn, without 	getting 
	permission from the vestry.  This time, Reverend,
	you have gone too far!

Andrew:	As have you, sir.

Walter:	You know, your beloved quilt represents everything that is
	unacceptable about you!  Sexual perversion.  Subversive
	behavior.  Trying to turn our faith into some kind of a
	statement!  Well any man who preaches that, is nothing but
	a menace - for us and for our children!

[The crowd applauds]

Andrew:	I am not that man!  And that quilt is nothing of the sort!

Walter:	Well, yes you are and we are going to do anything we can 	
	to keep you from preaching here ever again!

Cassie:	How dare you deny this man access to the house of God!
	You call yourself Christians?
Andrew:	Cassie...

Cassie:	Andrew, I just can't stay silent anymore.  You people say
	Andrew's a bad influence on your kids?  Then you obviously
	haven't take the time to visit the community center he's
	built with his own hands and his heart!  Go there ... and
	see the very kids you're concerned about saving lives,
	building hope, giving people back their neighborhood.  In
	fact, that's probably who's getting the most out of Andrew
	being here.  Your kids!

...BREAK
...INSIDE ST. JAMES... (The entire congregation is gathered, including
	Viki, Billy Douglas and Joey Buchanan)

[Andrew unfurls the quilt on the altar]

Elizabeth:	Sacrilige!

Walter:	Resign!  You resign right now and you take that filth out
	of our sanctuary!

Andrew:	(Holding up a rock)  Do you know where I got this rock?  I
	got this rock at our community center.  It had been thrown
	through a window.  A note was tied around it - said "Drop
	dead, Father faggot"  Was the note signed?  Of course not.
	It was anonymous.  As anonymous as the person whose arm
	rose from a nameless, faceless crowd and let the rock fly!
	Did I say crowd?  Well, I meant mob.  Because a mob is 
	nothing but cowardice with a franchise and over the past 	
	few months I've seen this community - a place that I love,
	torn apart by cowardice.  And a mob has fostered fear and
	hatred and intolerance and over what?  What is the great
	bone of contention?  It's freedom.  It's freedom, pure and
	simple.  Freedom in the form of person's right to choose
	his or her own way of private life.  Now how could this
	happen?  How?  How could one person's personal private 	life 
	cause somebody else to react so violently?  Well, there are those 
	among us who are afraid of freedom and
	threatened by choice and terrified of difference and they
	seek to destroy a person's right to his or her own truth
	and they lash out and label this a sin, and that an 
	abomination.  And they won't feel safe ... no, they won't
	feel safe until they are better ... more entitled ... more
	equal than the other.  Whites better than blacks!  Males
	better than females!  Straights better than gays!  Because, 
	you see, the mob is very, very scared and that is
	very scary.  But who among you ... who among you, would
	have the courage to step from the safety of a mob?  And 
	who among you would come up here alone and attack me for
	preserving freedoms that I am sworn to protect?  Here's
	your rock!  Now who among you will cast the first stone?

...BREAK

Andrew:	Outside, while we sit here, someone's reading the names of
	people who have died of AIDS.

Walter:	The names of perverts!

Andrew:	It's the sound of remembrance ... of remembrance.  Of
	family and of friends and of loved ones.  It's the sound 	
	of love!  And all the people that have gathered in our
	meadow today have come out of love ... and every stitch
	in that quilt was made out of love.  And the quilt is so
	big!  And it's not because a tragic disease has cut a 
	swath through our society, it's because there's so much
	love for the people the disease has claimed.  And they
	will be remembered.  They will be remembered ... for the
	experiences that they had and the dreams they shared and
	the joy they brought and the sorrow they left behind.
	They'll be remembered.  And it's all fueled by that which
	makes us most human - love.  What is love?  What is love?
	It's acceptance.  That's what Christ's message to us is.
	Love one and other.  Accept one another.  When you love
	someone, what do you do?  You take them in.  You take
	them into your heart and that is surely why it hurts so
	much when we lose someone that we love, because when they
	die, we lose a part of ourselves.  

[Andrew picks up the rock in one hand and the quilt in the other]

	Of course ... I guess ... that the truth is, everybody is
	part of us and we are part of everybody else.  We forget
	that sometimes.  We want to insist that we are not related
	to certain people at all because they are - oh, maybe too
	little of that color.  Or maybe too much of that behavior.
	And we get scared and we get selfish and before you know
	it, we have picked up a rock.  (Looking at the rock)  
	Hatred.  Hatred and intolerance.  They've been with us 
	forever.  How?  How can love beat that?  Hatred is so hard
	and sharp, unyielding.  (Looking at the quilt)  Love is so
	soft and gentle and giving.  I guess love can never beat
	hatred.  Never.  All love can do ... all love can do is
	accept it, to take it in.  (Wraps the rock in the quilt)
	And bit by bit, piece by piece, so that after awhile and	
	with a whole lot of patience ... hatred disappears.  And
	it's true that love can never defeat hatred ... but it
	can overcome it!  It can definitely, definitely overcome 
	it!

[Walter Douglas breaks the silence by clapping]

Walter:	Bravo!  Bravo!  (To the congregation)  Do you see what 	he's 
	trying to do?  He's trying to wrap us around his
	finger like he wrapped this freak flag around that rock!

Andrew:	Mr. Douglas...

Walter:	No!  No!  You made your speech - you listen to me.  You
	stand up there spewing your liberal pap about acceptance,
	all you're trying to do is obscure the issue!

Andrew:	So what are you going to do?  Are you going to stand there
	and tell me that the right to privacy or the right to love
	as you see fit has nothing at all to do with acceptance?

Walter:	But see, only your ideas of what is acceptable count, 	right 
	Reverend?  Right?  Especially when it comes to 
	advocating perversion!  Especially when it comes to 
	circumventing the vestry's process and dragging this
	congregation into some kind of political vaudeville, 
	without so much as a by-your-leave ...  Well, that goes
	way beyond my ideas of what is acceptable!  This is our
	church!  Not yours!  Ours!  And somebody has got to speak
	for the people that you have disenfrachised!  I'm talking
	about normal, decent people who don't want our church 
	pulled into the gutter by a gay-loving heretic!

Billy:	(Jumping up from the pew)  He's not any of those things!

[Billy slowly steps beside Andrew at the altar]

Walter:	Oh, God...

Billy:	I've got something to tell you.  Something to tell all of
	you.

Walter:	Stop right there!  Right now!

Billy:	I won't stop!  I can't!  I'm sick of being quiet and tired
	of being scared.

Walter:	I'm warning you...

Billy:	About what?  What are you afraid of?  That I'll say 
	something disgusting, something perverted?  Well, I'm not
	afraid, not anymore.  Because I know who I am and I can
	finally admit it.  I'm Billy Douglas ... and I'm gay.

Walter:	Shut up!  You shut up!

Billy:	But Dad, I'm the same kid!  I'm the same one that you took
	canoeing and camping.  I'm the same kid you hugged half-	
	to-death when I brought you that dorky pipe home for 
	Father's Day last year.

Walter:	No!  You are not!

Billy:	Yes I am!  I'm the same!  I am.  But I never would have
	known that if it wasn't for Andrew.  I was going crazy.
	Do you know what it's like to wake up every morning and
	look in the mirror and say it can't be!  It can't be!
	It can't be!  I was going to explode!  But Andrew - he
	treated me like ... like me.  He put his arm around me,
	yeah, he put his arm around me and told that it was okay -
	that I was okay.  I was okay like this.  And then somebody
	started a rumor saying that he was trying to molest me, 	
	put the moves on me, a homo ... that's bull!  He only put
	his arm around me because I didn't think that my family 	
	... that my family would.  See, this is how this whole
	thing got started.  Somebody just twisted the truth
	around.  But I was too scared, too afraid to admit who I
	really was.  Mom ... Dad ... maybe you can't love me
	anymore.  But I still love the both of you.  And no matter
	what you think, I'm still your son.  I'm your son, Billy
	Douglas and I always will be.

Virginia:(Rushing to her son)  Nothing could ever make me stop 
	loving you!  Nothing in this world!