[Marxism] Bush outlawing homosexual drama...

[EvitaRox@xxxxxxx]

read and weep...

'We have to protect people'

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

Thursday December 9, 2004
The Guardian



On the black list... A Chorus Line (pictured: Daniel Crossley and Jason Durr
in the 2003 Sheffield Crucible production). Photo: Tristram Kenton

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.
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