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?
It’s 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?
That’s 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 it’s immoral to commit crimes. Put out a fire because it’s 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 can’t 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 I’ve yet to hear much more than emotion based attempts to compare it to the right to be black, I’m 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.
"the government has no right to impose the liberal moral and religious viewpoint on others."
I agree - Nor do they have the right to impose the conservative moral and religious viewpoint on others.
What a loaf!
Too bad he says to the effect that for a 'mo the light "never turns green...". It doesn't for any number of people like mass murderers, pedophiles, the earnest quadraplegic who just wants to play baseball.
His Shakespeare rant is simply ridiculous! Romeo was lusting after Juliet, not a "male cheek". What does THAT have to do with anything?
This guy is an idiot.
What wit.
This has been in the sidebar for a month now.
No it wouldn’t. There’s no call for book purges, just a refusal to fund new pro-homosexual material in schools.
You just took something limited and reasonable and expanded it to unreasonable proportions, like saying rules to ban sex offenders from working in schools means banning them from ever speaking to women or kids again.
Apparently he doesn't realize what's out there. The following books might be found in our public and school libraries:
Title |
Author |
Age Group |
|---|---|---|
|
|
|
|
| 123 A Family Counting Book | Bobbie Combs, Danamarie Hosler | |
| ABC A Family Alphabet Book | Bobbie Combs, Desiree Keane | |
| All Families are Different | Sol Gordon, Vivien Cohen | |
| Daddy's Roommate | Michael Willhoite | |
| Duke Who Outlawed Jelly Beans | Johnny Valentine, Lynette Schmidt | |
| Heather Has Two Mommies | Leslea Newman, Diana Souza | |
| Jack & Jim | Kitty Crowther | |
| Jenny Lives With Eric and Martin | Susanne Bosche, Andreas Hansen | |
| King & King | Linda De Haan, Stern Nijland | |
| King & King & Family | Linda De Haan, Stern Nijland | |
| My Two Uncles | Judith Vigna | |
| Oliver Button Is a Sissy | Tomie De Paola | |
| The Sissy Duckling | Harvey Fierstein, Henry Cole | |
| Who's in a Family | Robert Skutch, Laura Nienhaus |
I’d like to see the video, but on the surface the charges sound like PC BS.
You're wrong about this. There was a thread a while back (when this first came out), and Allen said he wanted books pulled from public libraries. I'm not just making stuff up. I'd find the thread, but I'm pressed for time right now.
Question for the author: if public schools prohibit using the Bible as a teaching resource, have they not "banned" a book?
Wish I could learn the shortcuts to posting links like that, I'm one of the HTML challenged FReepers. LOL
Michael Marcavage, a character witness at White's trial, had been ejected earlier after Callahan expressed concern about an Internet site that offered a $5,000 reward for information on both the victim and prosecutors that might help free White.White was convicted of having sex with a boy, but Marcavage tried to prevent justice to be served.Marcavage, 24, of Lansdowne, became agitated, stood up, and accused Callahan of lying. He also admitted setting up the Web site before being escorted from the courthouse.
On the particular claim that Marcavage is being prosecuted for reading the Bible, he is not giving the other side of the story. Most relevant facts are not shown in the video.
I watched that series because of all of the hype. I don't understand why it got all of the praise that it did. The plot did nothing for me, and not because of the gay / aides angle. It just wasn't at all riveting. It was simply a political statement in search of a mini-series.
The Guardian is the short bus of journalism.
That's a lie.
I just sent a letter to the ombudsman, Ian Mayes.
He can be contacted at
reader@guardian.co.uk.
Is The Guardian a respected paper in Britain?I don't know much about the publication, but it's mentioned often. Deceptive headlines? I thought that was the prerogative of papers like National Enquirer.
This guy is an idiot...that number from "A Chorus Line" is about plastic surgery.
I’ve only taken part in two or three protests. I remember at the 2000 recount in West Palm Bach there were counter protest across the street. Both sides had to be separated or there would be dozens of bloody Democrats. (Not necessarily a bad thing.) One sturdy little girl came over and began spouting some anti-Bush bull. She was swarmed worse than the guy on video. She eventually was persuaded to leave, but if she refused and was arrested, it wouldn’t have been for promoting Democrats.
It looks like the arrest was for disrupting the gay event, not for “quoting scripture in public”. It needed to be done.
The writer is trying to equate cutting funding for arts programs as being homophobic becuase a gay oriented play was produced with grant money.
Charges were dropped against the remaining seven apparently because they were not seen quoting scripture on the videotape.
Philadelphia city prosecutor in the case, Charles Ehrlich, attacked the Christians as “hateful” and referred to preaching the Bible as “fighting words,” the judge agreed.
Tupelo, MS - After a federal appeals court denied an emergency appeal to stop prosecution of 11 Christians on Tuesday, Philadelphia Municipal Court Judge William Austin Meehan ordered four of the Christians to stand trial on three felony (criminal conspiracy, ethnic intimidation, and riot) and five misdemeanor charges. If convicted, they could face up to 47 years in prison.
He was Convicted of solicitation based on the testimony of the boy.(the boy claimed that White offered him $20.00 for sex) There were no other witnesses, He had no prior record of any sex crimes.
I'm not disputing that the guy's an idiot, but the article says "...besides 'tits and ass', a prominent gay solo number."
That may be “apparent” to someone’s agenda, but I doubt the judge or even the DA would agree it was apparent to theirs. A prosecutor might use the word “hateful” to promote his case, and a judge might not object when that prosecutor characterized something they said as “fighting words” in the middle of a presumably permitted opposition protest just as “Bush stole the election” would be fighting words in the middle of the protest I referred to.
The girl that I spoke of who crashed the Republican recount protest was about 5’, young, harmless and as cute as can be. She was also black. But she was one of those people who are gifted with the ability to roll propaganda off her tong like a Pravda news wire and she just wouldn’t shut up. I’m sure if she were arrested there’d be activists claiming that it was “apparent” that she was arrested because she was black or female or for quoting Democrats. And I think that it would have backfired on them just as these absurd claims of “scripture prosecution” will backfire on the AFA evangelists that get sucked into it.
I stand corrected.
White was convicted of soliciting sex with a boy, despite Marcavage's attempt to subvert the judicial process:
Michael Marcavage, a character witness at White's trial, had been ejected earlier after Callahan expressed concern about an Internet site that offered a $5,000 reward for information on both the victim and prosecutors that might help free White.Not only Marcavage cannot respect authority inside a court of law, he also disobeys the police officers who are trying to keep the peace. His claim to religious persecution is dubious.Marcavage, 24, of Lansdowne, became agitated, stood up, and accused Callahan of lying. He also admitted setting up the Web site before being escorted from the courthouse.
I really can't respect anything from a culture that cant even learn to brush their freaking teeth.
The "instrument of crime" referred to in this case is a Bible.
From what I understand the prosecutor in the case is part of the same leftist Gestapo that slammed the FReepers Don and Terri Adams with trumped up charges at the 2000 DNC in Philly.
For me, though, this thread is about media bias and the absolute insanity of the Guardian
What many who are familiar with the recent case do not know is that Mr. Marcavage has longed been involed in the fight for traditional morals, and has been in the middle of many incidents where "progressives" have been using tactics of questionable legality against those who would dare to stand against them.
The first documented incident was when Mr. Marcavage was a student at Temple University, which is also in Philadelphia. A more complete account of this incident is available in an article by Accuracy in Academia, but the key details are excerpted below.
Eighty years ago the Soviet Union developed a novel method of dealing with dissenters: it labeled them insane and committed them to mental institutions.
A Temple University student contends that his school resorted to these very tactics in response to his objections to a school-sponsored performance of a play that depicts Jesus as a promiscuous homosexual.
Michael Marcavage filed suit against Temple University in December 2000 for a an incident in which he alleges that University officials censored an event he had organized, roughed him up, and involuntarily committed him to the psychiatric ward of the school's hospital. His only offense, he claims, was to organize an event to counter a play that mocks Christianity.
The civil rights suit was filed in the U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania and contends that the plaintiff's First, Fourth, and Fourteenth Amendment rights were violated. The defendants in the suit are Temple University, its vice president for operations, William Bergman, and its managing director of campus safety services, Carl Bittenbender. Attorneys for the plaintiff include lawyers for the American Family Association's Center for Law and Policy....
During a contentious meeting on November 2, 1999-less than a week before the planned event was to take place-Temple vice president William Bergman called Marcavage into his office to inform him that the university was not permitting him to hold his program. Following a discussion, a disgusted Marcavage retreated to the restroom, threw water on his face, and asked God for direction about what to do next. God, however, had little to do with what then happened....
Marcavage's suit states that Temple Vice President "[William] Bergman pounded on the [bathroom] door and demanded that [Marcavage] come out." Marcavage then opened the door and was physically forced by Bergman to return to his office. "Once back in Bergman's office," the suit details, "Bergman, suddenly and without warning, pushed [Marcavage] down into a chair…. alarmed and afraid by Bergman's use of force, [Marcavage] told Bergman he wanted to leave. Bergman said no." Marcavage then asked to use the phone, a request that was also rebuffed. Realizing that these officials had no right to keep him against his will, Marcavage attempted to leave. The legal brief reports that the "Plaintiff then arose from the chair and was tripped to the floor by Bergman. As Plaintiff raised himself off the floor, he was forced onto a couch and held down by Bergman and Bittenbender. Plaintiff's repeated pleas to be released were refused."
Uniformed Temple Police then arrived and were ordered to handcuff Marcavage, who "was then carried out of the building and placed into a police car." The police refused to divulge to the student why he was being arrested or where he was going. "Shortly thereafter, Plaintiff was taken to the Emergency Crisis Center at Temple University Hospital against his will." The Christian student was then held in the psychiatric ward for more than three hours. Doctors examining him concluded that nothing was wrong with him and finally released him at 3:15 p.m....
Though the civil suit was filed at the end of the year 2000, the case has been slowly progressing, and in May 2004 a federal judge ruled that the suit can proceed to trial.
More recently, Mr. Marcavage and another pro-lifer, who were on their way back from the Democratic National Convention, were pulled-over in Connectict on July 29, 2004, for carrying pro-life signs on the side of their truck (a federal lawsuit was filed after this incident).
On August 9, 2004, Marcavage and 4 other Christian activists were ejected from the 2nd annual Philadelphia Philles' Gay Day after unfurling a banner that said "Homosexuality is a Sin, Christ Can Set You Free."
Less than a month later, at the Republican National Convention, Marcavage and Steve Lefemine, director of Columbia Christians for Life, spent over 30 hours in jail after being arrested across the street from Madison Square Garden on a public sidewalk for bringing a pro-life message to the convention. The charges against the two in connection with this arrest were later dropped by a New York City Municipal Court judge.
“You must be oblivious to the fact” that you listed 3 charges, and only one “apparently” is hate crime based. Nevertheless, you haven’t addressed the “fact” that they needed to be arrested just like that girl in our recount demonstration would have if she refused to return to her side of the street.
This is NOT a case of people being persecuted for “quoting scripture publicly” as you said. No more than screaming fire in a crowded theater is a crime against the 1st amendment. Maybe the DA bungled the prosecution a little by including the ethnic charge and let some zealots get a toe hold in with claims of religious persecution, but no one but predisposed kooks bantering about Nazi and Gestapo references are going to buy it.
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