[NEohioPAL]Proposed bill to block govt funds to purchase books or materials that 'promote homosexuality'

[wsd]

This means no more public university or NEA funded organization 
productions of Tennessee Williams, A Chorus Line,  Angels in America -- 
the list will be huge I'm sure.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/features/story/0,11710,1369643,00.html

*'We have to protect people' *

President Bush wants 'pro-homosexual' drama banned. Gary Taylor meets 
the politician in charge of making it happen

*Gary Taylor *
*Thursday December 9, 2004*

*Guardian*

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.

Guardian Unlimited