Libraries Are Gay

At least, that what Alabama State Representative Gerald Allen thinks. He's written a new law that's sure to be a hit with the ignorant, backwoods, overall-clad, ultra-religious, possibly inbred hillbilles with cleft palattes that make up the vast majority of his constituency. He wants to bad all books from public schools featuring gay characters, or even written by gay people!

And that's the muted compromised version. The original bill would ban all "queer" books from all Alabama libraries, even university libraries.

Because, you know, kids pick up a book originally written by a gay guy, and it will obviously give them Homo's Disease. It's kind of like Crohn's Disease, only instead of feeling like you have to pee all the time, you feel like having sex with some dude.

"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."

Gerald needs to read some more books, methinks. Preferably a dictionary would find its way into his bedside reading. You know, right after "Chicken Soup for the Complete Douchebag's Soul" and whatever selection Satan's Book Club is plowing through this month. I think it' s the Necronomicon.

Well, it doesn't matter how you look at it Gerald, does it? It's clearly the textbook definition of censorship. You're making a rule about what books people can and can't read and attempting to enforce it as government policy.

And let's think about what literature would be denied to the youth of Alabama should Gerald's Rule now pass as law. No Tennessee Williams plays, he was a big fairy. So kiss "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" and "Streetcar Named Desire" goodbye. Certainly no Truman Capote...you ever heard that guy talk? There goes "In Cold Blood."

EM Forster? Queer as an $8 bill!
Gore Vidal? A swish!
Virginia Woolf? The books are filled with references to lesbianicism!
Marcel Proust? Well, he is French...and they probably don't read him in Alabama anyway


In fact, you know what would be fun? Let's take a look at some selections from a 1999 list gathered by the Triangle Publishing Group. They asked 250 gay and lesbian authors to comment on their favorite gay-themed books. Here are some of their responses, sure to be unavailable at a redneck library near you:

"Death in Venice," Thomas Mann
"Picture of Dorian Gray," Oscar Wilde
"Billy Budd," Herman Melville
"Brideshead Revisited," Evelyn Waugh
"The Bostonians," Henry James
"The Heart is a Lonely Hunter," Carson McCullers

Yeah, those all suck. Nothing will pervert young minds quite like reading Henry James.

And then there's that whole Shakespeare sonnet thing...You gonna kick old William out of the library? Will there be anything left? I sense Mr. Allen's ideal public reading center would include only old collections of Peanuts comics and the writings of TD James.

I spoke to a friend in Texas recently who has experienced this same kind of pig-headed ignorance. She reported that a local school district wanted to ban many worthwhile books because they included naughty words. Words like fuck, shit and cock-knocker, I can only imagine. (Who could forget James Joyce's immortal "Portrait of the Cock-Knocker as a Young Man"?)

This is just an impulse I will never understand. If you're a parent who's genuinely concerned about your kid reading a book with dirty words and then saying those dirty words, well, you need to stop worrying so much. Young people have read "Catcher in the Rye" and other books with naughty words in them for generations, and though they might pick up a nasty piece of slang here and there, it hasn't been warping fragile little minds.

And even if you don't want your kid to read that book...just don't let them read it! Create your own ignorant little offspring instead of forcing the rest of the world to keep their children ignorant. It's such a bizarre attitude - "Well, I'm not reading 'Naked Lunch' cause it's filled with gay stuff, so you can't read it either!"

We can pretend gaydom doesn't exist, like America has been for years and years. But understand this, people. It won't make gayness go away. If you ignored people with red hair, they might feel shunned and ostracized, they might keep out of public sight or cover their hair with a cap when they go outside, but they won't stop having red hair. You're just going to have to deal with it.

The gay stuff, I mean. Not the freaks with the red hair. Fuck those guys.

But seriously, people, this is the stupidest bill I've seen in a long time, and that includes that idiotic Florida measure allowing people to shoot each other in public for no good reason.

But 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 we're getting somewhere. Allen reads books, and no matter what books he reads, he sees a "homosexual agenda" seeking to convert him into a gay lifestyle...It hasn't once occured to him that maybe this comes from his own mind rather than the books? That maybe his subconscious mind is obsessed with gay sex because...he's gay, and he represses these desires due to religious conviction or fear of public reaction?

I mean, I read novels fairly frequently, and I can't say that I've read many books espousing a gay agenda. As in, books that don't just deal with gay issues, but attempt to actually convert me into gayness.

You hear this all the time from Republicans. "The homosexual agenda," trying to "turn out kids to a hedonistic lifestyle" and all this crap...and it's a total fiction. There is no homosexual agenda, unless you count getting making new episodes of "The L Word." It would be like saying "the heterosexual agenda."

Although, now that I think about it, there is a heterosexual agenda - to get rid of all the gay people! So, like everything else the GOP says, this is classic double-speak. They want to remove gayness from society, so they act like it's attacking them rather than the other way around. "Our straight way of life is in danger from you queers! Get your books out of my library!"

When the reality of the situation is reversed. Gay people are increasingly under seige by a theocratic government that seeks to destroy their way of life, by forbidding their relationships through law. This is just the latest example of limits being placed on homosexual liberty, but I doubt it will be the last.

I mean, what would be the "homosexual agenda" spoken out in words? Total World Gay Takeover, where everyone is gay? Not really a long-term plan, if you think about it. Also not really all that feasible, seeing as even the most open-minded and gracious of heterosexual males find the practice of gay sex kind of, well, let's say off-putting.

Maybe it's the widespread acceptance of homosexuality as a practice worthy of acceptance and tolerance rather than scorn and hatred. Yeah, that must be it.