The AL lawmaker who sought to ban gay marriages now wants to ban novels with gay characters frm public libraries.
The bill by Rep Gerald Allen would "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."
Give me a freakin' break.
This is the full article fom The Birmingham News.
Gay Book Ban
Full Version: Alabama bill to ban Gay books
Those nutty red states.
And we don't want us no fairy music either.
Typical example of "compassionate conservatism" isn't it? Inclusion wins!
Only if we get to protect the children from the creeping threat of rampant Christianity. Those folks recruit, you know. They're better at it than Marine Recruiters, in fact (to bring in an entirely different thread).
QUOTE
puckman1:
Typical example of \"compassionate conservatism\" isn't it? Inclusion wins!
No, just an example of Religious Wrong rhetoric, kind of like the tag line you stole. Typical example of \"compassionate conservatism\" isn't it? Inclusion wins!
Well, this bill would then ban the "bible" from all libraries and universities in the state - after all, there is that whole pesky David and Jonathan relationship, not to mention Ruth and Naomi.
Gee, I really enjoy looking at some of those books in the 796 Dewey Decimal section. Guess they have to go.
Not only the Bible, but Shakespeare's Sonnets (especially the first 2/3rds, to the "young man"); poems by Shelley, Byron, Whitman, Emerson, Dickinson, Hopkins, Hart Crane, Housman, H.D., Stein, Ashbery, Ginsberg, O'Hara, Rich, Merrill, Lorde, etc.; Melville's Moby Dick and Billy Budd; works by Henry James, Andre Gide, Marcel Proust, Thomas Mann, Gore Vidal, Pier Paolo Pasolini, James Purdy, William S. Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, Manuel Puig, Alice Walker, June Jordan, Toni Morrison, etc. (And this only barely scrapes the, uh, homo-drenched depths of the art we call literature.) But then something tells me that these works, like the Bible, aren't really being read by the idiot who's calling for the banning....
Fantomas, you forgot Carson McCullers, Tennessee Williams, and a hell of a lot of the science fiction genre.
Better add Jane Austen to that list, just to be sure - not only was she an unmarried woman, who actually rejected a marriage proposal from a very rich man and kept writing instead, but there is something very light in the loafers about Sir Walter Eliot in Persuasion.
And aren't there rumors about Martha Mitchell and Harper Lee - better knock out both Gone With the Wind and To Kill a Mockingbird - one cannot be too careful where our children are concerned.
Better add Jane Austen to that list, just to be sure - not only was she an unmarried woman, who actually rejected a marriage proposal from a very rich man and kept writing instead, but there is something very light in the loafers about Sir Walter Eliot in Persuasion.
And aren't there rumors about Martha Mitchell and Harper Lee - better knock out both Gone With the Wind and To Kill a Mockingbird - one cannot be too careful where our children are concerned.
Maybe Alabama should simply plan to ban ALL books, just to be on the safe side.
Everyone should calm down!
According to a program on NPR yesterday, federal-state-local revenue cutting means that lack of library funding is forcing libraries to close - so there won't be any problem at all! It's all part of trickle-down government policy.
Freedom is apparantly on the march!
Nat
According to a program on NPR yesterday, federal-state-local revenue cutting means that lack of library funding is forcing libraries to close - so there won't be any problem at all! It's all part of trickle-down government policy.
Freedom is apparantly on the march!
Nat
Does it really matter whether the officials in Montgomery ban books from public libraries statewide? Apparently not too many people in the state use them; Alabama is ranked low when it comes to education. By keeping the population uninformed and unenlightened about different ideas the powers that be are able to remain in power, not only in Alabama but throughout the Bible Belt.
Or throughout the nation. We appear best at refusing to face things. I'm convinced that much anti-gay feeling is simply a refusal to think about new and challenging ideas.
Or the war. From the NYT:
from "On War", by Chris Hedges, a reporter for the New York Times
"On War" reviews Generation Kill by Evan Wright and The Fall of Baghdad by Jon Lee Anderson
"The vanquished know war. They see through the empty jingoism of those who use the abstract words of glory, honor, and patriotism to mask the cries of the wounded, the senseless killing, war profiteering, and chest-pounding grief. They know the lies the victors often do not acknowledge, the lies covered up in stately war memorials and mythic war narratives, filled with stories of courage and comradeship. They know the lies that permeate the thick, self-important memoirs by amoral statesmen who make wars but do not know war. The vanquished know the essence of war -- death. They grasp that war is necrophilia. They see that war is a state of almost pure sin with goals of hatred and destruction. They know how war fosters alienation, leads inevitably to nihilism, and is a turning away from the sanctity and preservation of life. All other narratives about war too easily fall prey to the allure and seductiveness of violence, as well as the attraction of the godlike power that comes with the license to kill with impunity."
.......
"We are losing the war in Iraq. There has been a steady increase in the assaults carried out by the insurgents against coalition forces. The attacks over the past year have risen from about twenty a day to approximately 120. We are an isolated and reviled nation. We are tyrants to others weaker than ourselves. We have lost sight of our democratic ideals. Thucydides wrote of Athens' expanding empire and how this empire led it to become a tyrant abroad and then a tyrant at home. The tyranny Athens imposed on others it finally imposed on itself. If we do not confront our hubris and the lies told to justify the killing and mask the destruction carried out in our name in Iraq, if we do not grasp the the moral corrosiveness of empire and occupation, if we continue to allow force and violence to be our primary form of communication, we will not so much defeat dictators like Saddam Hussein as become them."
The above are the first and last paragraphs of this affecting and lucid review. I encourage you to read this article if you have access to it. Finally, here is a quotation from The Fall of Baghdad in which Jon Anderson recounts some of the collateral damage caused by American bombs upon a young girl and her brother:
Before the cloth covered her, I saw that the girl was covered in blood. Her brother looked as though he were sleeping. But they both were dead. Their mother was there, beside herself with grief. She was the woman I had heard wailing and hitting the walls. Then almost all the onlookers around the mother, including the doctors and nurses, broke down and cried. I ws overcome and went outside and sat down. I wept. The children's father ws sitting a few feet away from me, disconsolately sobbing into his arms.
Or the war. From the NYT:
from "On War", by Chris Hedges, a reporter for the New York Times
"On War" reviews Generation Kill by Evan Wright and The Fall of Baghdad by Jon Lee Anderson
"The vanquished know war. They see through the empty jingoism of those who use the abstract words of glory, honor, and patriotism to mask the cries of the wounded, the senseless killing, war profiteering, and chest-pounding grief. They know the lies the victors often do not acknowledge, the lies covered up in stately war memorials and mythic war narratives, filled with stories of courage and comradeship. They know the lies that permeate the thick, self-important memoirs by amoral statesmen who make wars but do not know war. The vanquished know the essence of war -- death. They grasp that war is necrophilia. They see that war is a state of almost pure sin with goals of hatred and destruction. They know how war fosters alienation, leads inevitably to nihilism, and is a turning away from the sanctity and preservation of life. All other narratives about war too easily fall prey to the allure and seductiveness of violence, as well as the attraction of the godlike power that comes with the license to kill with impunity."
.......
"We are losing the war in Iraq. There has been a steady increase in the assaults carried out by the insurgents against coalition forces. The attacks over the past year have risen from about twenty a day to approximately 120. We are an isolated and reviled nation. We are tyrants to others weaker than ourselves. We have lost sight of our democratic ideals. Thucydides wrote of Athens' expanding empire and how this empire led it to become a tyrant abroad and then a tyrant at home. The tyranny Athens imposed on others it finally imposed on itself. If we do not confront our hubris and the lies told to justify the killing and mask the destruction carried out in our name in Iraq, if we do not grasp the the moral corrosiveness of empire and occupation, if we continue to allow force and violence to be our primary form of communication, we will not so much defeat dictators like Saddam Hussein as become them."
The above are the first and last paragraphs of this affecting and lucid review. I encourage you to read this article if you have access to it. Finally, here is a quotation from The Fall of Baghdad in which Jon Anderson recounts some of the collateral damage caused by American bombs upon a young girl and her brother:
Before the cloth covered her, I saw that the girl was covered in blood. Her brother looked as though he were sleeping. But they both were dead. Their mother was there, beside herself with grief. She was the woman I had heard wailing and hitting the walls. Then almost all the onlookers around the mother, including the doctors and nurses, broke down and cried. I ws overcome and went outside and sat down. I wept. The children's father ws sitting a few feet away from me, disconsolately sobbing into his arms.
QUOTE
jqueer:
Only if we get to protect the children from the creeping threat of rampant Christianity. Those folks recruit, you know. They're better at it than Marine Recruiters, in fact (to bring in an entirely different thread).
To get even more specific, how about Catholicism? Talk about needing to protect children from something... frown
Only if we get to protect the children from the creeping threat of rampant Christianity. Those folks recruit, you know. They're better at it than Marine Recruiters, in fact (to bring in an entirely different thread).
QUOTE
Nat
The above are the first and last paragraphs of this affecting and lucid review. I encourage you to read this article if you have access to it.
Got links?
The above are the first and last paragraphs of this affecting and lucid review. I encourage you to read this article if you have access to it.
QUOTE
eftergivende:
Maybe Alabama should simply plan to ban ALL books, just to be on the safe side.
Not all the books.Maybe Alabama should simply plan to ban ALL books, just to be on the safe side.
Keep the ones with the "purty picatoors" so that they can at least finish their right good "bama higher edjewcashun"
This is a "lo-fi" version of our main content. To view the full version with more information, formatting and images, please click here.