Posted on 01/05/2005 7:12:17 AM PST by dead
President Bush wants 'pro-homosexual' drama banned. meets the politician in charge of making it happen
What should we do with US classics like Cat on a Hot Tin Roof or The Color Purple? "Dig a hole," Gerald Allen recommends, "and dump them in it." Don't laugh. Gerald Allen's book-burying opinions are not a joke.
Earlier this week, Allen got a call from Washington. He will be meeting with President Bush on Monday. I asked him if this was his first invitation to the White House. "Oh no," he laughs. "It's my fifth meeting with Mr Bush."
Bush is interested in Allen's opinions because Allen is an elected Republican representative in the Alabama state legislature. He is Bush's base. Last week, Bush's base introduced a bill that would ban the use of state funds to purchase any books or other materials that "promote homosexuality". Allen does not want taxpayers' money to support "positive depictions of homosexuality as an alternative lifestyle". That's why Tennessee Williams and Alice Walker have got to go.
I ask Allen what prompted this bill. Was one of his children exposed to something in school that he considered inappropriate? Did he see some flamingly gay book displayed prominently at the public library?
No, nothing like that. "It was election day," he explains. Last month, "14 states passed referendums defining marriage as a relationship between a man and a woman". Exit polls asked people what they considered the most important issue, and "moral values in this country" were "the top of the list".
"Traditional family values are under attack," Allen informs me. They've been under attack "for the last 40 years". The enemy, this time, is not al-Qaida. The axis of evil is "Hollywood, the music industry". We have an obligation to "save society from moral destruction". We have to prevent liberal libarians and trendy teachers from "re-engineering society's fabric in the minds of our children". We have to "protect Alabamians".
I ask him, again, for specific examples. Although heterosexuals are apparently an endangered species in Alabama, and although Allen is a local politician who lives a couple miles from my house, he can't produce any local examples. "Go on the internet," he recommends. "Some time when you've got a week to spare," he jokes, "just go on the internet. You'll see."
Actually, I go on the internet every day. But I'm obviously searching for different things. For Allen, the web is just the largest repository in history of urban myths. The internet is even better than the Bible when it comes to spreading unverifiable, unrefutable stories. And urban myths are political realities. Remember, it was an urban myth (an invented court case about a sex education teacher gang-raped by her own students who, when she protested, laughed and said: "But we're just doing what you taught us!") that all but killed sex education in America.
Since Allen couldn't give me a single example of the homosexual equivalent of 9/11, I gave him some. This autumn the University of Alabama theatre department put on an energetic revival of A Chorus Line, which includes, besides "tits and ass", a prominent gay solo number. Would Allen's bill prevent university students from performing A Chorus Line? It isn't that he's against the theatre, Allen explains. "But why can't you do something else?" (They have done other things, of course. But I didn't think it would be a good idea to mention their sold-out productions of Angels in America and The Rocky Horror Show.)
Cutting off funds to theatre departments that put on A Chorus Line or Cat on a Hot Tin Roof may look like censorship, and smell like censorship, but "it's not censorship", Allen hastens to explain. "For instance, there's a reason for stop lights. You're driving a vehicle, you see that stop light, and I hope you stop." Who can argue with something as reasonable as stop lights? Of course, if you're gay, this particular traffic light never changes to green.
It would not be the first time Cat on a Hot Tin Roof ran into censorship. As Nicholas de Jongh documents in his amusingly appalling history of government regulation of the British theatre, the British establishment was no more enthusiastic, half a century ago, than Alabama's Allen. "Once again Mr Williams vomits up the recurring theme of his not too subconscious," the Lord Chamberlain's Chief Examiner wrote in 1955. In the end, it was first performed in London at the New Watergate Club, for "members only", thereby slipping through a loophole in the censorship laws.
But more than one gay playwright is at a stake here. Allen claims he is acting to "encourage and protect our culture". Does "our culture" include Shakespeare? I ask Allen if he would insist that copies of Shakespeare's sonnets be removed from all public libraries. I point out to him that Romeo and Juliet was originally performed by an all-male cast, and that in Shakespeare's lifetime actors and audiences at the public theatres were all accused of being "sodomites". When Romeo wished he "was a glove upon that hand", the cheek that he fantasised about kissing was a male cheek. Next March the Alabama Shakespeare festival will be performing a new production of As You Like It, and its famous scene of a man wooing another man. The Alabama Shakespeare Festival is also the State Theatre of Alabama. Would Allen's bill cut off state funding for Shakespeare?
"Well," he begins, after a pause, "the current draft of the bill does not address how that is going to be handled. I expect details like that to be worked out at the committee stage. Literature like Shakespeare and Hammet [sic] could be left alone." Could be. Not "would be". In any case, he says, "you could tone it down". That way, if you're not paying real close attention, even a college graduate like Allen himself "could easily miss" what was going on, the "subtle" innuendoes and all.
So he regards his gay book ban as a work in progress. His legislation is "a single spoke in the wheel, it doesn't resolve all the issues". This is just the beginning. "To turn a big ship around it takes a lot of time."
But make no mistake, the ship is turning. You can see that on the face of Cornelius Carter, a professor of dance at Alabama and a prize-winning choreographer who, not long ago, was named university teacher of the year for the entire US. Carter is black. He is also gay, and tired of fighting these battles. "I don't know," he says, "if I belong here any more."
Forty years ago, the American defenders of "our culture" and "traditional values" were opposing racial integration. Now, no politician would dare attack Cornelius Carter for being black. But it's perfectly acceptable to discriminate against people for what they do in bed.
"Dig a hole," Gerald Allen recommends, "and dump them in it."
Of course, Allen was talking about books. He was just talking about books. He never said anything about pink triangles.
President Bush wants 'pro-homosexual' drama banned.
This statement in the sub-heading is not supported any where in the article. Or anywhere else, for that matter.
By the end of his article, he drags out the trite and shopworn Nazi analogy. Lazy, incompetent, and inflammatory journalism, in the extreme.
Why would any British person buy a newspaper that just makes things up?
Its a sign of desperation on the left when they have to lie so blatantly.
They know that refusing to purchase something with taxpayer funds is not banning it.
"Why would any British person buy a newspaper that just makes things up?"
Because many of them think it's all true. Even if one particular article is wrong, it still reinforces and informs their liberal view of the world and is therefore ok.
Denying federal funding is not "banning books". It is a matter of separation of church and state. People have a right to have differing moral and religious views on homosexuality, and the government has no right to impose the liberal moral and religious viewpoint on others.
As far as I'm concerned, you can dig a hole and dump the pink triangles in it as well, thank you.
If my kids are going off to college to re-enact "Angels in America", I want my money back. Scenes of sodomites begging their leather clad partners to "go ahead and infect me" do not qualify as entertainment in my book.
Agreed. However, on the same token, the government has no right to impose the conservative moral and religious viewpoint on others either. At the risk of sounding like a liberal (this is more the libertarian side of me), government should stay out of morality and religious issues as much as possible.
At the risk of sounding like a liberal (this is more the libertarian side of me), government should stay out of morality and religious issues as much as possible.
And the government should certainly not be in the business of funding any theater with money confiscated from its citizens under the threat of imprisonment for non-payment.
I think most Christians would be happy for a government that is neutral. It is the gay activists who are using the government to impose their views on society, through civil same sex "marriage" and gay propaganda in the public schools.
This guy denies the existence of homosexual propaganda in public school library books?
Is this the same Guardian that helped get kerry elected. Chuckle........
Not necessarily saying I disagree here. Just playing devil's advocate in pointing out . . . who is pushing for prayer in schools and the Ten Commandments to be displayed?
Thats a frequently heard proposition. But it ignores the fact that everything the government does (or at least should be doing) is from moral motivations. Imprison a criminal because its immoral to commit crimes. Put out a fire because its immoral to allow your stuff to burn.
Morality is simply a collection of principles to help us live our lives. Those principles can be religious, fashion or reason based. The government is prohibited only from promoting religious based morals because they can conflict and cant be resolved through reason.
If homosexuals want government schools to purchase books that promote their lifestyle, let them argue the case through reason. But since Ive yet to hear much more than emotion based attempts to compare it to the right to be black, Im not placing my bets on their success.
Pushing for?
Those things were stripped away via legal terrorism by the ACLU and judicial activism. Now Christians are facing felony charges "hate crime" for quoting scripture in public.
If you want on/off the list let me know.
The media never tells the truth.
Let me rephrase . . . pushing for the return of prayer in schools and the displaying the Ten Commandments.
Muahahaha - one of the quickest and easiest ways to get rich is to get people to pay you in exchange for telling them what they want to hear. I'm thinking of starting a newspaper myself ;)
"Christians are facing felony charges "hate crime" for quoting scripture in public."
Where?
First, it's state funding, not federal. And that's a big difference. It would mean public libraries would have to get rid of books that didn't conform to Allen's ideological test (because the public libraries get state funds, and it costs money to run a library). In effect, it would ban those books from public libraries.
People have a right to have differing moral and religious views on homosexuality, and the government has no right to impose the liberal moral and religious viewpoint on others.
You think the government is imposing something on you because the local public library has a copy of Cat on a Hot In Roof? And why doesn't the government have the right to impose the pro-homosexual view on bigots like you? You're claiming it has the right to impose an anti-homosexual view by denying funding for public libraries that don't conform ideologically--why shouldn't it be able to ban the opposite instead?
Why shouldn't the government be able to ban funding for any library that contains hate literature like the Bible?
Maybe you should learn to value our freedom before idiots like you take it away.
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