More repugnant shit from Jesusland. Alabama to burn books; ban gays from libraries

dotadave · Dec 1, 2004

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.
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Fuck the South.

Soulless||Chaos · Dec 1, 2004

Haha I hadn't heard about that... Alabama is such a fucking retarded place, I hate living here... What's next? Let's ban anything with promoting evolution or science! Ah fuck it, lets just ban books altogether!! The bible's all we need!!

Ole_Goat · Dec 1, 2004

I don't know anything about Rep. Gerald Allen's history in the Alabama House of Reps, but genernally speaking, eventually there's going to be someone calling attention to themselves. In this instance through over the top legislation. Should it ever come out of conference, there may be some votes for it, but doubtful it would ever become law.
Just another way of getting publicity for his cause, not through passage but how much ink he recieves.

flowerchild89 · Dec 1, 2004

Jesus Christ, we're supposed to be moving ahead...we seem to be stuck in the past, where we discriminated against others for shallow reasons...
Home of the free? psHAW.

Ole_Goat · Dec 1, 2004

flowerchild89 said:

Jesus Christ, we're supposed to be moving ahead...we seem to be stuck in the past, where we discriminated against others for shallow reasons...
Home of the free? psHAW.
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When view from the perspection of a hundred or a thousand years, progress, in reguardless the field or political thought, seems smooth and orderly. Only when the focus is viewed close up - by the year or even decade, will the false starts and regressions become appearant.

Progress also isn't uniform over a large geographic area. After the fall of the Roman Empire, the "Dark Ages" fell over Europe lasting approx. 500 years. The reason we have the Greek and Roman literature such as Philosphy, Law, Histories, is they were protected in the Muslem world. They valued learning, books, and especially Libraries.
Rather ironic, I heard recently Spain by itself can match annually the entire Moslem world in new book publications.

Mui · Dec 1, 2004

stilanas said:

Fuck the South.

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I agree.

beatlerific · Dec 1, 2004

eek don't fuck the entire south... you know, there are SOME civilized human beings who's humble abodes happen to be in the southern states. it's not our fault man.. i mean, yeah that whole thing about alabama banning literature with homosexuality in it is ridiculous BUT you cannot blame the south. there are people in the south with small mind mentality but hey, that's EVERYWHERE. it's just more prominent in the south.
so please don't fuck the south.. and if you still choose to, be gentle.

hayduke_lives5447 · Dec 1, 2004

Alabama needs to ban books promoting Incest as an acceptable lifestyle. I think that is probably a much more common occurance than homosexuality in alabama.

beatlerific · Dec 1, 2004

gah! i hate steriotypes having to do with the south. they make us look so bad when most of us really aren't!

Megara · Dec 1, 2004

ONE PERSON filed a bill TO BE VOTED ON and look how many are denouncing the south and alabama. Are we going to judge all white people on the actions of the KKK now? We really need to teach reading comprehension in schools...

hayduke_lives5447 · Dec 1, 2004

It was just a joke, lighten up.

beatlerific · Dec 1, 2004

exactly my point megara. GENERALIZING AND STERIOTYPING ANY POPULATION OF PEOPLE IS BAD BAD BAD!!! GRRR! please realize this!

beatlerific · Dec 1, 2004

hayduke_lives5447 said:

It was just a joke, lighten up.
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yeah but do you know how many times i hear that when i tell people i am from arkansas? it just gets annoying. i'm sorry for sounding angry. i'm just sick of southern jokes seeing as how i am from arkansas and all :/

dotadave · Dec 1, 2004

Megara said:

ONE PERSON filed a bill TO BE VOTED ON and look how many are denouncing the south and alabama. Are we going to judge all white people on the actions of the KKK now? We really need to teach reading comprehension in schools...
Click to expand...

Speaking of the Alabama

Alabama Vote Opens Old Racial Wounds

Sun Nov 28, 6:48 AM ET

By Manuel Roig-Franzia, Washington Post Staff Writer

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. -- On that long-ago day of Alabama's great shame, Gov. George C. Wallace (D) stood in a schoolhouse door and declared that his state's constitution forbade black students to enroll at the University of Alabama.

He was correct.

If Wallace could be brought back to life today to reprise his 1963 moment of infamy outside Foster Auditorium, he would still be correct. Alabama voters made sure of that Nov. 2, refusing to approve a constitutional amendment to erase segregation-era wording requiring separate schools for "white and colored children" and to eliminate references to the poll taxes once imposed to disenfranchise blacks.

The vote was so close -- a margin of 1,850 votes out of 1.38 million -- that an automatic recount will take place Monday. But, with few expecting the results to change, the amendment's saga has dragged Alabama into a confrontation with its segregationist past that illuminates the sometimes uneasy race relations of its present.

The outcome resonates achingly here in this college town, where the silver-haired men and women who close their eyes and lift their arms when the organ wails at Bethel Baptist Church -- a short drive from Wallace's schoolhouse door -- don't have to strain to remember riding buses past the shiny all-white school on their way to the all-black school.

"There are people here who are still fighting the Civil War," said Tommy Woods, 63, a deacon at Bethel and a retired school administrator. "They're holding on to things that are long since past. It's almost like a religion."

There are competing theories about the defeat of Amendment 2, the measure that would have taken "colored children" and segregated schools out of Alabama's constitution. One says latent, persistent racism was to blame; another says voters are suspicious of all constitutional amendments; and a third says it was not about race but about taxes.

The amendment had two main parts: the removal of the separate-schools language and the removal of a passage -- inserted in the 1950s in an attempt to counter the Brown v. Board of Education ruling against segregated public schools -- that said Alabama's constitution does not guarantee a right to a public education. Leading opponents, such as Alabama Christian Coalition President John Giles, said they did not object to removing the passage about separate schools for "white and colored children." But, employing an argument that was ridiculed by most of the state's newspapers and by legions of legal experts, Giles and others said guaranteeing a right to a public education would have opened a door for "rogue" federal judges to order the state to raise taxes to pay for improvements in its public school system.

The argument plays to Alabama's primal fear of federal control, a fear born of years of resentment over U.S. courts' ordering the desegregation of schools and the creation of black-majority legislative districts.

"Activists on the bench know no bounds," Giles said. "It's a trial lawyer's dream."

Giles was aided by a virtually unparalleled Alabama celebrity in his battle against the amendment, distributing testimonials from former chief justice Roy Moore, whose fame was sealed in 2003 when he defied a federal court order to remove a two-ton granite Ten Commandments monument from the rotunda of the Alabama Supreme Court. They were joined by former Moore aide Tom Parker, who handed out miniature Confederate flags this fall during his successful campaign for a seat on the Alabama Supreme Court.

Arguing that the amendment could lead to higher taxes is a potent strategy in Alabama, which is one of the nation's most lightly taxed states and which resoundingly rejected a record $1.2 billion tax increase proposed last year by Gov. Bob Riley (R), a conservative, to pay for school improvements and lessen the tax burden on the poor. But many blacks view the Amendment 2 opponents' tax pitch as a smoke screen.

As the vote results sink in, the deacons and the Bible-toting ladies at the Bethel church here have spoken of dark conspiracies, of sinister agendas. They speak from experience.

Vertia Killings, 72, was riding on a bus that had to be rerouted because of the commotion at the University of Alabama on the day Wallace -- who eventually renounced his segregationist past -- made his stand. Her father, Benny Mack, paid a $45 poll tax and "ate a little less" because of it, she said. Others chose to eat instead of vote.

Killings does not see the amendment's defeat as a matter of mere symbolism, even though Alabama's constitutional ban on integrated schools was trumped -- then and now -- by federal law. She has watched school testing results with growing uneasiness.

Black students in Alabama have struggled on some national tests, with 73 percent of black eighth-graders rated below basic competency in math, compared with 32 percent of white eighth-graders. Killings also frets about Alabama schools -- just as schools in many other parts of the country -- steadfastly resegregating. This phenomenon, which is getting increased attention among national education experts, is attributed to a kaleidoscope of factors, including the suburban migration of white families, private school expansion and the rising popularity of home schooling among white conservatives.

"It seems like we're having a reversal," Killings said.

It matters not at all to Killings and her friends that the amendment's opponents say they want to remove the segregated-schools portion of the constitution but cannot abide by guaranteeing a public education and fear mandates for higher education taxes. The people who are most affected by poorly funded schools are the same people who were affected in another era by poll taxes: poor blacks and poor whites.

"I don't know but a few black folks who can afford to send their kids to private school," said Charles Steele Jr., a former Democratic member of the Alabama legislature who lives here and is national vice president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

This is not the first time that Steele has tangled with Alabama's constitution, a gigantic document that has more than 740 amendments and more than 310,000 words, making it the world's longest, at nearly 40 times the length of the U.S. Constitution. Four years ago, voters repealed a constitutional amendment banning interracial marriage.

The state constitution, which most historians agree was written to protect large landowners and to disenfranchise blacks, is so riddled with antiquated wording that some high school students in Birmingham make an annual trip to the city library for a project known as the search for "the loony laws."

Yet the constitution, with its racist past and its racist present, only grows. On Nov. 2, it was amended three times -- numbers 743, 744 and 745.

Giles has said he would support taking out the passage about separate schools for "white and colored children" as long as the part about not guaranteeing a right to an education is kept.

Ken Guin, the Democratic House majority leader who wrote Amendment 2, is talking about trying again. Next time, he said, he might do it Giles's way.
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Cue the banjo music

hayduke_lives5447 · Dec 1, 2004

I have family in Arkansas. And what's wrong with Banjo Music?

beatlerific · Dec 1, 2004

oh really? where in arkansas?

hayduke_lives5447 · Dec 1, 2004

I have a cousin somewhere just outside of little rock.

beatlerific · Dec 1, 2004

ah

hayduke_lives5447 · Dec 1, 2004

yup

PhotoGra1 · Dec 2, 2004

What is the Homosexual Agenda?

I must have missed that newsletter....

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More repugnant shit from Jesusland. Alabama to burn books; ban gays from libraries

dotadave Member

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beatlerific not like other girls

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beatlerific not like other girls

Megara Banned

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beatlerific not like other girls

beatlerific not like other girls

dotadave Member

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beatlerific not like other girls

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beatlerific not like other girls

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More repugnant shit from Jesusland. Alabama to burn books; ban gays from libraries

dotadave Member

Soulless||Chaos SelfInducedExistence

Ole_Goat Member

flowerchild89 Member

Ole_Goat Member

Mui Senior Member

beatlerific not like other girls

hayduke_lives5447 Sancho

beatlerific not like other girls

Megara Banned

hayduke_lives5447 Sancho

beatlerific not like other girls

beatlerific not like other girls

dotadave Member

hayduke_lives5447 Sancho

beatlerific not like other girls

hayduke_lives5447 Sancho

beatlerific not like other girls

hayduke_lives5447 Sancho

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