Don Cornell is suspicious, nervous. He steps out from behind a pillar at the Clark County Library, looking antsy in a way you wouldn't expect from the president of the board of directors of a children's theater group. But the dark-haired, mustached man in the black jacket is edgy. He wants copies of any notes or tape recordings taken during our meeting, and two questions into the interview bursts out "Who are you?" It's unclear whether he's always been that way, or if recent events that have some labeling him a homophobe have created this skittishness.
Sign Design Theatre Company never wanted to get political, steered away from being controversial. As a theater group that teaches deaf children to combine sign language with music, it hadn't planned to become mixed up in any kind of hot-button issue like homosexuality. But through an odd series of events, Sign Design was introduced to the real, controversial world and had to make decisions about its policies, and who it will take donations from. The group decided that gays' green seems to not spend quite as well.
It all began with the Internet. Jayson DiCotignano, whose 4-year-old son attends Sign Design, volunteered to develop the organization's website. To both parties, it seemed like an innocuous position, and the nonprofit welcomed his expertise. It set no boundaries for him, leaving the site up to his best judgment. In retrospect, Cornell realizes that's where they went wrong.
"We didn't tell him that he had to submit everything to us, because he put it on," Cornell explains. "So we don't believe that he did anything in bad faith or not in keeping with what we had asked him to do."
DiCotignano developed a great site, but Cornell was confused when he came to a "Sponsor" page, where there were links to the Charter School for the Deaf, One Stop Doll Shop, and We Are Family Las Vegas. The first two made sense: the Charter School for the Deaf for obvious reasons and One Stop Doll Shop because it had donated money to the organization. But the third one, We are Family Las Vegas, is an organization supporting gay couples with children, and Cornell was confused about its presence. He requested that the webmaster remove it until he polled the board, calling Sign Design a "middle-of-the-road" organization that doesn't denounce homosexuality but doesn't endorse it, either. He offered to write a check for whatever amount of money We Are Family paid.
But they hadn't paid anything. It turns out that it's an organization that DiCotignano belongs to and also serves as webmaster for. He thought it would behoove both organizations to be listed on one another's sites as "sponsors."
"It was an opportunity, and I've done it for many organizations to blurb both memberships, to benefit both memberships, to enhance. And it's worked in the past, but this man has interfered because he didn't like it."
Now, had Cornell made the case that We Are Family should not appear on the sponsor page unless they are a sponsor, and that a webmaster doesn't get free reign to publish links simply because he's involved with them, the issue may have been moot. But he didn't. Cornell pushed the "controversy" button. And close minded or not, he is the president of a private organization which can discriminate how it wants. DiCotignano was infuriated; he resigned and is spreading the word that Cornell is a bigot. Cornell denies the accusations.
"I do believe that it is absolutely Sign Design's right to decide what will go on the website," Cornell says. "He can disagree with it, but I believe it's still our right. I mean, if the guy was a passionate conservative Republican and ended up having links to the Republican Party and the NRA and all that kind of stuff, I think we would have reacted the same way. I don't know, we weren't faced with that. We were faced with this."
Whether or not you agree with how Sign Design handled the situation, it's hard to get past the ironies. One, that a group that preaches acceptance and diversity is slamming the door on funding because of a certain lifestyle. And two, that the attempt to be "noncontroversial" had the opposite effect—this small, previously apolitical theater's efforts to veer away from all that could be offensive has actually made it the controversial group it didn't want to be.