The Facts Machine

"And I come back to you now, at the turn of the tide"

Thursday, April 28, 2005

SWEET HOME ALABAMA

Oh how charming of them!
Republican Alabama lawmaker Gerald Allen says homosexuality is an unacceptable lifestyle. As CBS News Correspondent Mark Strassmann reports, under his bill, public school libraries could no longer buy new copies of plays or books by gay authors, or about gay characters.

"I don't look at it as censorship," says State Representative Gerald Allen. "I look at it as protecting the hearts and souls and minds of our children."

Books by any gay author would have to go: Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote and Gore Vidal. Alice Walker's novel "The Color Purple" has lesbian characters.

Allen originally wanted to ban even some Shakespeare. After criticism, he narrowed his bill to exempt the classics, although he still can't define what a classic is. Also exempted now Alabama's public and college libraries.
(Let's link to this again!)

Even when you look past the question of what does and doesn't constitute a "classic", and when you look past the outlandish, UnAmerican bigotry, there's the problem of just how much literature this bans. It's not just Williams, Capote and Vidal, is it? Nope: The list includes a wide assortment of authors. (scroll through the list, quite interesting actually)

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]

<< Home