smirk wants pro-homosexual drama banned

[donsu]

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


'We have to protect people'


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.

-snip-

"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".

-snip-
------------------------------


watching america change

[Worst Username Ever]

1. I wonder if the budget covers brown dye for their shirts.

[sakabatou]

7. Probably does

and free short cuts for their mustaches.

[TexasChick]

16. LOL! n/t

[Deja Q]

2. He can save society from himself, if he ever had one divorce or one night

of a one night stand.

What's been under attack for 40 years? I didn't notice anything, except people like me continue to get attacked. and we're vone nothing wrong. We're not immoral. Hell, we're a lot more moral than those who claim to be.

He can shove his book where the sun don't shine then spin on it.

[Runcible Spoon]

3. oh the fucking nerve of these sanctimonious fuckwads!

:grr: I loved "the Color Purple" when I read it in high school, and what I remember from the book is not the lesbian relationship (which WAS touching and inspiring) but the vivid depictions of what it might have been like growing up poor, black and female: raped, abused, and then finally having the courage and self-determination to find a piece of happiness. Apparently any books that don't sing the praises of rich WASP culture will soon go the way of the Caronlina parakeet...

[sui generis]

4. so, I guess that's the end of the Sopranos?

There are hundreds of "lifestyles" of questionable morality that aren't goin'-to-meetin' three times a week that can be depicted as positive. Why stop with the gay thing?

I really fucking hate that word "lifestyle" anyway - we don't have lifestyles! We have lives. Get used to it. Actually I don't give a shit if anyone gets used to it or not.

We "are".

Most of our lives ARE positive. We don't need depictions - reality will do, but at any rate I honestly believe that people like that need to get their agenda shoved down the throats of the asshats who didn't get off their lazy asses to vote this time - there will be a backlash.

[Behind the Aegis]

5. and yet...

They seem to have no problem with the violence in movies. When I was a little boy, we were not allowed to see rated "R" movies that had excessive violence. If it was "R" because of sexual content, then we might get to see it. My mother's rationale was that sex is natural and should not be reviled, violence, however, was unnatural and unnecessary.

These people are scary. They are Nazi incarnates. They are filled with self-righteousness and hate. It will be their undoing IF people continue to fight them and not give in. Not all battles are worth fighting, but if you acquiesce ALL battles, you WILL lose the war!

[clydefrand]

6. Can the clock be turned back?????????????

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, if so I want to be 40 years younger, too! You know...many of us have lived through these past 40 years and we're still good people. Wonder what happened to us that we haven't had our minds infiltrated with baaaaaaaaaaaaaaad stuff and we still have a positive outlook on life and believe in the innate goodness of humanity and believe that we have a right to choose what we do?

Well, I for one choose not to listen/read things that are offensive to me and that includes violence and not just sex! Heck, I like sex!

[idiosyncratic]

8. After they make the books go away, will the people be next? n't

[nostamj]

9. The Diary of Dan Frank

This was written for a 'dystopia' thread in the new Writing forum. Thought it might be of interest here. It's a nightmare scenerio, to be sure. But, if the fundamentalists are allowed and even encouraged to continue their agenda, it is a nightmare we could see coming to pass here.

The Diary of Dan Frank

Outside Ithaca, NY. In the year of our Bush 2007

I know. Terrible joke. Black and bleak. How dare a queer compare his plight to innocent Anne. Truth? Never read it. Remember Shelly Winters in the movie. Right? It's been years. Never went for those black and bleak pictures.

But I'm a furious, frustrated, and frightened old fag. We say flip things like that when we're furious, frustrated, and frightened. Should I sing you the score to Jerry Herman's DEAR WORLD or amuse you with my Bette Davis impression?

Sorry. Can't.
Days without a cigarette: 107.
Days without a cocktail: 126.
Sorry. Can't.
A proper Bette Davis impression requires both a cigarette and a cocktail.

Imagine it. There are no gay bars left by now, surely. Nothing in the open. No piano bars where a bearded baritone belts out the Judy Garland songbook. No go-go boys with g-strings stuffed with singles. No gentlemen of a certain age surveying the working boys in the bleary hours.

I watched them remove the gay statues from Sheridan Square on the NewsChannel. Two couples in white plaster. No one could even show up and cry. You'd think that one, one last drag queen with visions of the 1969 Stonewall Rebellion–(which happened just across the street)–would have shown up to toss a symbolic trash can or epitaph... (It's a prayer park now.)

But no. The 'lists' had been instituted. We had been out and proud. We had enlisted, marched, joined, donated and subscribed. And, we had been listed. New names crossed off every day. It's impossible to get a good haircut. Those who could, fled. Those who could not flee, hid. Or, were caught. Send to 'compassion camps' for healing.

I should be in Costa Rica (where everyone thinks I am). But, I hate to travel. Shouldn't I be pleased? Now, I can't travel at all. Legally. Can't even leave these rooms. My sister is too generous. Her husband is kind to a fault but his eyes betray his fears for their children.

My 'gentle' nephew must be coarsened, protected. He will never inherit my collection of show music. That was abandoned with the books and videos and... My entire gay life.

This morning I sat in the dark and tried to recall the original cast recording of HOW NOW DOW JONES straight through. Who can resist a Brenda Vaccaro musical? But I stopped at the suicide song. Oops. Forgot about that one.

For the record, I am not suicidal. For reasons somewhere between cowardice and curiosity, I'm not going that route.

Staying here is not possible. There are rewards, great and small, for those who assist in outing anyone from the 'lists.' Witch hunts for fun and profit! Hunting an endangered species! It's the new Lotto!

Oh, they laughed when I warned them. Mary! What are they going to do? Nuke San Franciso?

Of course, the nuke came to South Florida. By boat. In the frenzy that followed, any opposition to the 'lists' was seen as un-American. After film of the first protests, where it was reported that NG troops were fired on by the 'militants,' organized opposition became a deadly gamble that very few were willing to take.

Soon. My brother-in-law knows why I asked for the maps. Soon I will leave by night and try to find the underground. I hope they appreciate show tunes.

[idiosyncratic]

17. Thank you for that. n/t

[nostamj]

18. thank you.

it was written a little while back but seemed like the right thread to toss it out again!

[MisterP]

19. Bush: "I'm a magician. I can make people disappear."

[tsuki]

10. "Hollywood, the music industry." The only two media that they

don't have a lock-down on.

[Atman]

11. Forty years?

"Traditional family values are under attack," Allen informs me. They've been under attack "for the last 40 years"

I'm forty-five. So I don't view Allen's Utopia as "traditional" anything. "Bygone era," more like it. For me and people of my generation, helping others, not discrimination based on race or sexual preference, seperation of church/state...THESE are our "traditional values." So who is this schmuck to think he speaks for me or my generation?



NBY 1st Amendment Shoppe

NotBannedYet.US

[Tony_Illinois]

12. I feel like I'm on another planet . . .

"Liberal librarians" and "trendy teachers". Please. And what is it with these pea-brains that causes them to believe so viscerally that any positive depiction of gay people or the gay "lifestyle" places this nebulous enigma they elect to call "family values" under attack?

What possible threat is there to this individual or they whole effing state of Alabama, for that matter, if some kid in school reads a play by Tennessee Williams or listens to some music by Elton John? And what "family values", pray tell, doe all the divorce, wife-beating, child abuse and drunk daddies on Friday night teach to the kids down there? :scared:

[saracat]

13. Hoe does he justify Shrub attending the Kennedy Center

Honors for Elton John?

[Old and In the Way]

14. The good old days....1964

No one was protesting our war against Godless Communism. The music was about Puppy Love (ooops, that'd be illegal today). All men had crewcuts, horn-rim glasses, and thin ties. Women were getting their abortions in back alleys. Negroes were still 2nd class citizens. We had a CIA making the world safe for American-style corporate democracy.

We had that popular President assassinated a year earlier, but still....

Yes, let's return to the "good old days"....

[Wisc Badger]

15. Oh Phooey and Banana Mush

spare me please spare me!!!!!!

:puke:

[MisterP]

20. note how a propagated ridiculous lie influenced policy:

"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."