Republican Bigot Lawmaker Undermines the American Way

CBS News - Alabama Bill Targets Gay Authors

Republican Alabama lawmaker Gerald Allen has a problem. He can't seem to escape the subversive "homosexual agenda."

...in book after book, Allen reads what he calls the "homosexual agenda,"
and he's alarmed.

"It's not healthy for America, it doesn't fit what we stand for," says Allen. "And they will do whatever it takes to reach their goal."

Now I've known a couple of homosexuals in my life, and I was never aware of their universal "agenda." Back in the early 90s I had a gay friend whose "agenda" appeared to be mainly focused on taking Ecstasy, going to raves and listening to dance music, but to be fair, that was the identical agenda of many of my straight friends at the time as well.

In all seriousness, what is the "homosexual agenda" that Republican Extremists have gotten themselves so worked up about? They talk about homosexuality destroying the institutions of family and marriage... I have had gay friends and gay cultural influences around me for my whole life and I still prefer inserting the penis into the vagina. No amount of Scissor Sisters or Queer Eye for the Straight Guy is going to change that and as long as most of us continue to crave penis-vagina interaction, it follows that we'll continue to bring children into the world and will therefore by definition maintain some semblance of the institutions of family and marriage.

Republican Fundy Gerald Allen doesn't buy that, though. He's so scared of the negative influence that homosexuality has on children that he has proposed a bill to ban books written by homosexuals and books with homosexual characters from all Alabama school libraries. The bill appears to address the "cootie" theory of homosexual influence. If you touch a book with cooties then you have cooties. The next book you touch then also has cooties and so on. Cooties spreads and the Republic is lost.

"I don't look at it as censorship," says State Representative Gerald Allen. "I look at it as protecting the hearts and souls and minds of our children."

Books by any gay author would have to go: Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote and Gore Vidal. Alice Walker's novel "The Color Purple" has lesbian characters.

Allen originally wanted to ban even some Shakespeare. After criticism, he narrowed his bill to exempt the classics, although he still can't define what a classic is. Also exempted now [are?] Alabama's public and college libraries.

I'm happy to hear that there was some organized criticism of the bill, but the only thing they could get traction on was keeping Shakespeare on the shelves? Shakespeare must be beyond Allen's reading level - he mustn't realize how truly gay it is.

The snark aside, this is yet another example of insane, dangerous policy coming from the Greed and Hate Party that has no grounding in reality whatsoever.

Once upon a time, a lunatic lawmaker who wanted to legislate sweeping social change would have had to come to the table with some real evidence in hand - studies showing children who read books written by homosexuals becoming mass murders, arrests of gay readers for church burnings, etc. "It's not healthy for America," doesn't cut it in the real world.

State and National Greed and Hate Party leaders should be swatting deranged proposals like these down the moment they rear their ugly heads. That they don't is an indication of how deeply the crazies have sunk their claws into party leadership and how fundamentally weak they are on issues of free speech, discrimination, freedom of the press, etc.

Making a writer's sexuality the litmus test for whether or not a book can sit on a library's shelf is the height of Republican arrogance and stupidity. It is absurd beyond words and patently un-American.

It is also, sadly, par for the course today for a political organization that is coming apart at the seams as the hateful bigots who make up its membership seek to move towards their dark, medieval vision of morality in the face of a free, progressive, secular world.

[via Shakespeare's Sister]

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