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Gay book ban goal of state lawmaker
Wednesday, December 01, 2004
KIM CHANDLER
News staff writer
MONTGOMERY - An Alabama lawmaker who sought to ban gay marriages now wants to ban novels with gay characters from public libraries, including university libraries.

A bill by Rep. Gerald Allen, R-Cottondale, would prohibit the use of public funds for "the purchase of textbooks or library materials that recognize or promote homosexuality as an acceptable lifestyle." Allen said he filed the bill to protect children from the "homosexual agenda."


"Our culture, how we know it today, is under attack from every angle," Allen said in a press conference Tuesday.

Allen said that if his bill passes, novels with gay protagonists and college textbooks that suggest homosexuality is natural would have to be removed from library shelves and destroyed.

"I guess we dig a big hole and dump them in and bury them," he said.

A spokesman for the Montgomery-based Southern Poverty Law Center called the bill censorship.

"It sounds like Nazi book burning to me," said SPLC spokesman Mark Potok.

Allen pre-filed his bill in advance of the 2005 legislative session, which begins Feb. 1.

If the bill became law, public school textbooks could not present homosexuality as a genetic trait and public libraries couldn't offer books with gay or bisexual characters.

When asked about Tennessee Williams' southern classic "Cat On A Hot Tin Roof," Allen said the play probably couldn't be performed by university theater groups.

Allen said no state funds should be used to pay for materials that foster homosexuality. He said that would include nonfiction books that suggest homosexuality is acceptable and fiction novels with gay characters. While that would ban books like "Heather has Two Mommies," it could also include classic and popular novels with gay characters such as "The Color Purple," "The Picture of Dorian Gray" and "Brideshead Revisted."

The bill also would ban materials that recognize or promote a lifestyle or actions prohibited by the sodomy and sexual misconduct laws of Alabama. Allen said that meant books with heterosexual couples committing those acts likely would be banned, too.

His bill also would prohibit a teacher from handing out materials or bringing in a classroom speaker who suggested homosexuality was OK, he said.

Allen has sponsored legislation to make a gay marriage ban part of the Alabama Constitution, but it was not approved by the Legislature.

Ken Baker, a board member of Equality Alabama, a gay rights organization, said Allen was "attempting to become the George Wallace of homosexuality."

Aside from the moral debates, the bill could be problematic for library collections, said Jaunita Owes, director of the Montgomery City-County Library, which is a few blocks from the Alabama Capitol.

"Half the books in the library could end up being banned. It's all based on how one interprets the material," Owes said.

Can we just create 5 gay states and end this. Of course they would be the
nicest and best decorated. BTW i am GW

It would make it so much easier knowing everyone in my state was Gay
Oh wait a minute my Governor (NJ) jsut resigned because he was Gay

I seem to remember another leader ( ) who banned books for fear of his "constituency" being wrongly exposed to anything out of his approved mindset...what was his name, again?

What rocks do people like him crawl out from under.

It's obviously the use of public funds that is at issue here. This should be put to the citizens of the state.

In Alabama? Jeez, be thankful he's not suggesting a vote that all fags and dykes be hanged, drawn a quartered, and head posted on a pike at the city gates. In that state, it'd pass 9:1!

There are also subtle ways, that less overtly bigoted States than Alabama keep gay themed books off liabrary shelves. They keep them in stacks out of sight, and it would require a student to request the book to find it. Kids with questions about their sexual preference ARE NOT going to go ask a librarian where "Now That You Know", or "Loving Someone Gay" is shelved. They might have picked it up off the shelves and read some of it, if it were available.
The Alabama case really p*ssed me off tonight, gays and lesbians pay taxes, and books which deal with gay subject matter have just as much right on a liabrary shelf as straight themed materials. Gay and lesbian kids come from heterosexual households, so EVERY parent should care that one day their son or daughter might need to read something positive about their lives.
The beautiful literature that would be lost if these idiots in Alabama have their way with censoring gay books. Keats, Shakespeare, Isherwood, Wilde, and Dickenson
and Gertrude Stein would all be removed.

SHAME, SHAME, SHAME!

What next, African American writers banned? Jewish books banned?
If you took a popular vote in Alabama I doubt these would get public funding either!

One begins to wonder just why there is this overzealous reaction from the Radical Right. It falls into the category of:

"Me thinks she doth protest too much"

I guess time will tell but I will not be travelling at all to Alabama until they figure this out. I have to boycott prejudice from here on out.

This character was on Hannity & Combs tonight. Even Hannity got after him. :D

whew

that's a slight relief.

it is interesting that Tucker Carlson, the bow-tie wearing neo-con that he is, was the one to say But Boy on National TV when thinking of Jon Stewart and John Kerry together. Very revealing.

Let's start using the correct vocabulary. The right is not radical, it's reactionary. The radicals are the ones who brought us to this point of social responsibilty; the reactionaries want to turn it back.

Point well taken...

I think it should be up to the parent to decide what their child reads in the secondary and primary grades. Universaties should be able to carry a wide range of reading materials without being censored. I think there is something in the constitution about that. <_<

Interestingly enough, Lynn Cheney's book "Sisters" will be banned as well.

I think they ban would apply to all public libraries, not just school ones, I have no idea how they'll address Newspapers and other periodicals. This will certainly have a negative impact on the Universities in the state as this would prevent access to certain required texts and journals neccessary for certain coursework at their libraries (aren't there state funded medical schools there as well)?

Parents-plural- should decide, then each parent should decide if an individual book is appropriate for their individual child (which would require the parent to monitor their children's reading habits...). As it stands now, anyone from the Christian Talaban who raises an objection about anything can get a book removed from a school library. REMOVED! So, the self-righteous morality of one person, based upon an objection that offends only them, can decide the entire reading curriculum of an entire school.

Universities should have unlimited reading materials, short of the most debased, gratuitous violence or pornography. Racist, sexist, rebelleous, sexual, fanatical, religious, Turner Diary-type stuff- all of it, along with every mainstream publication, should be in a university's library. The purpose of a university is to understand the universe and, like it or not, all of that stuff is part of our human universe.

I wish they would leave all of our books alone! I dont care if the characters are George Washington, Martin L. King, Harry Potter or Ellen.

Right now im reading The Da Vinci Code, it could be next on thier list after all it basically is against most religious extremist views.


Book banning, wonder whats next Betty Crockers Recipes?

It's not ONLY books it will censor theatre productions if it's gay themed and receives public funds.
What is the funniest thing about Christian Reich's banning books, they aren't able to control the seductive lure of Harry Potter books and movies, the kids that can't see them at their own homes, will read and see the videos at a friend's home. :D
More than likely their parents disapproval of these books makes the sneaking the forbidden all that more exciting for their kids.
Censorship didn't even work in Nazi Germany, they attempted to have an art show of degenerate art,(socialists and jews) and it became the MOST popular art showing.....ooops!

True but if you stop them at the books you can stop them from the rest.

Your also right about kids, mine are proof, my sneaky little angels snuck over a friends house and watched a movie called saved!. after I told them they couldnt watch it over there, but i guess i could of explained I wanted to watch it with them and discuss it afterwards.

<_< Censorship did work in Nazi Germany for nearly 12 years- it's how they got by with what they did. Government censorship, when done well, can be very effective. But ours is not 'censorship', at least according to the Christian Talaban, it's 'keeping obscenity, fags, hiphop, junky nudity' everything but plain mashed potatoes away from everyone. Government isn't doing it, moralistic demagogues are. It's the same sense of self-righteous piety and morality that led to Prohibition. Morality can't be legislated; if it could there would be not prostitution or Las Vegas.