Inauguration Day is upon us and President Bush is concerning himself with a real threat to national security. He has met five times with Republican Alabama state legislator, Gerald Allen. The topic: Allen’s bill before the Alabama legislature which would ban "the expenditure or use of public funds or public facilities by any state agency or public entity for the purchase, production, or promotion of … a lifestyle prohibited by the sodomy and sexual misconduct laws of the state."
In plain language, the "promotion" of homosexuality. "No public funds shall be used for the purchase of textbooks or library materials that recognize or promote homosexuality as an acceptable lifestyle."
Tennessee Williams, Sophocles, Allen Ginsberg, Alice Walker all have to go — whether in a K-12 setting, the University of Alabama or any other institution receiving state funds. One can only wonder at the reasoning behind this bill.
The British newspaper The Guardian Unlimited ran an interview with Allen on Dec. 9 of last year where he admits that his motivation was not any real threat he perceived to his or any other children — nothing at school or in the local library. It was politics. "It was Election Day … 14 states passed referendums defining marriage as a relationship between a man and a woman … traditional family values are under attack." When pressed, the threat remained undefined except that it involves gays. When further pushed for specific examples of this threat, Allen directed the interviewer to "Go on the Internet."
Censorship, you fear? Allen thinks not. "For instance, there’s a reason for stop lights. You’re driving a vehicle, you see that stop light, and I hope you stop." Two columns ago I made a reference to no-value logic. Here is a prime example of such reasoning. Being gay is now equated with driving through a stop light.
Imagine never being exposed to any art, drama or literature which, in the minds of the Gerald Allens of the world, promotes homosexuality. Imagine losing out on Plato due to the questionable relationship between Socrates and Alcibiades. This no-value logic would consider studying Plato as the moral equivalent of running a red light. Get the morality police on the case; write a ticket. Have you ever read "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" or "The Color Purple?" By now you are a chronic offender — or worse. Perhaps you are being led away from a healthy heterosexual life style into the nether world of decadence and immorality.
Conservatives dismiss liberal fears of censorship as paranoia, yet Bush has met with Allen five times. It’s not paranoid to suppose that such federal matters as Supreme Court appointments were discussed. Because, after all, if reading Plato in Alabama is dangerous, it’s dangerous everywhere. And if Bush cannot pack the Court, at least let states rights lead the fight against full citizenship for gays as, in an earlier time, it did for blacks.
Jeff Rice, Weinberg ’72, is a history lecturer and a Weinberg College adviser. He can be reached at [email protected].