First the emancipation proclimation, than women were allowed voting rights... now its time for gay financial rights and tolerance The south is fucking crazy (especially alabama)... Further proof... 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." [img]http://ads.al.com/RealMedia/ad...ml/story/Birmingham/n/nstate/@StoryAd?x[/img]"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.
Pfft...that is ridicolus and unconstitutional. I mean, that's like discrimination. Some people just need to grow up. That's apalling that they wouldn't want books about gay people...especially in college/highschool/public libraries, where most people are old enough and mature enough to make choices about what *they* want to read. That choice of what to be able to read should not be interfered with by the government, solely up to the idividual.
All I can say is thank God for the internet, despite the junk that is found on there..At least that's a library they'll never be able to destroy! :H
*busts up laughing* Oh man, how the hell did this guy get into the legislative power? This won't fly by the Supreme Court if an appeal is made.
the same guy originally tried to push for works of shakespere to be banned from libraries too, but he made an exception to "classic" works. So... what is this "homosexual agenda"... we should come together and work on an actual agenda/evil plot... Like trying to turn people gay through hypnosis.
Yes, allow us to corrupt the youth's culture and turn them into homosexuals when it's based more so on subconscious determination of sexual orientation and a small part of personal preferance through propaganda-filled means!
something somewhat similar is happening in a town in massachusetts...a father found a picture book that his child read in the school library that showed different kinds of families in one picture...of course there was a same sex parenting pair (two alliterations...sweet) and so now that father is trying to get those types of books out of school systems... if my understanding is correct it was only one picture and nothing about the homosexual parents was actually written about... some people...and we're supposed to be the second crazy state (after california of course)
The proposed ban so blatantly violates the First Amendment that it doesn't have a snowball's chance in a blast furnace of surviving a legal challenge if it becomes law. A right-wing homophobic member of the legislature in my home state of Vermont introduced a bill four years ago to not only ban books with gay-positive messages from our public schools and libraries, but also bar any discussion of homosexuality in the schools "that promote the homosexial lifestyle." Not only did the bill go nowhere after it was roundly ridiculed by every media outlet in the state for its obvious violation of the First Amendment, but the homophobe who sponsored the ill-fated bill is now out of office, having been defeated last November by a candidate of the liberal Progressive Party in Vermont's most conservative Republican district. -- Skeeter
didnt even read ur post till after i posted this one... did i copy you? Oops. 2 different articles, i thinks.
