I needed a reason to tear someone's head off, and some moron introducing legislation to ban authors because they're gay, or write about gay characters works for me.
For the record, books that I've written as Jessica Hall and S.L. Viehl would be included in this ban, because gay characters do populate some of them. You know. Just like the real world. Real life.
You can thank James R. Winter of Northcoast Exile for flagging this one.
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I'm so relieved to see that someone else was as outraged as I was about this. How ridiculous have our country's legislator's become? Yes, let's obliterate an entire cross-section of people from our libraries just because we don't agree with their lifestyle.
ReplyDeleteUsing that logic, shouldn't we also be banning all books on, let's say ... Hitler, genocide, communism, etc? Just a thought.
As a single girl that hopes to marry and have children some day, I shudder at what I see happening around me some days.
Of course, people are entitled to different opinions than mine. The thing is -I'd like to maintain the freedom to have my opinion and read about people that have different opinions than mine.
It just moves me that much closer to a banned book. ;) Screwy people! Like ignoring the presence of homosexuality (or sweeping it under the rug) is gonna make the world safer for paranoid heterosexual men.
ReplyDeleteWow. So does this mean lawmakers have documented cases of books turning people gay?
ReplyDeleteFurther proof that our legislators have way too much time on their hands (and power grubbing lust in their hearts).
Come on, you're being too hard on the guy. He clearly has the inside track -- he says that book after book he's read pushes the homosexual agenda.
ReplyDeleteDamn! Was I out of the office the week they passed that around? Or maybe the agenda was classified due to the Patriot Act? Or maybe it's only available to gay people -- hey, in that case how come Allen got to read it???
It figures it would be Alabama. They can't openly ban or legally discriminate against blacks anymore, so I guess they're looking for new fodder. Alabama is a beautiful state and has some very decent, sensible people living there, but they have way too many who just don't "get it."
ReplyDeleteDoes that mean that books involving gay characters might 'turn' heterosexual people gay? Maybe he's afraid he'll slip over to the other side. Horrors!
ReplyDeleteI'd consider banning gay characters in books--if it would mean we could also ban idiotic legislators who curry the favors of fear-mongers just to get their lame names on bills...
ReplyDeleteThat might be an equitable trade...
~Dreamweaver
Good grief! So much for certain Elizabethan dramatists, then, eh?
ReplyDeleteAt least it died, since there weren't enough people available.
ReplyDeleteDid this guy fail to recall that banned books immediately step up in sales after they're banned - simply because they are "too horrible for humanity to read"?
I really love that Shakespeare almost made the list. Those WERE plays where men dressed as women, after all - VERY dangerous stuff there! ^-*
I am totally baffled by the connection between sexuality (of any kind) and morality. How did the two become inexorably linked? What someone does in a bedroom has no effect on the type of person they are. I personally enjoy red lingerie on the wife but I don't think anyone cares or believes that makes me "immoral". Get past it all!
ReplyDeleteAs for banning books of any kind, the elected official who suggests it should be immediately impeached from office since they obviously have no understanding of the Bill of Rights. That marks them as incapable of performing the job they were chosen to do. Fire any idiot who uses the words "ban" and "book" in the same sentence!
Just my $0.02
Jim C.
Fortunately the measure died when not enough members of the legislature showed up to vote on it. See the editor's note at the end of the CBS News story.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/04/26/eveningnews/main691106.shtml
Ugh! What a way to teach tolerance!
ReplyDeleteMy son is being teased in school for being gay. He's not (or at least doesn't know yet), but the kids have learned from somewhere that gay=bad=teasing fodder. This is confusing my boy who has a mom who says it's not a bad thing on one side and the friends who tease him on the other.
This is the society our legislature wants to promote? Actually, I find it really sad that the bill died because not enough people showed. What that means to me is that rather than making a stand against bigotry and discrimination, our legislators chose to hide so that they didn't have it on their record that they voted against an anti-gay measure. They didn't want to stand up and be counted as "pro-gay" or more to the point anti-discrimination. Are we moving forward or backward? Is the next step to ban all black books? All books written by women? All Irish books? Don't we EVER learn from our history?
Sorry for the rant. Hit a minor hot button here.
No so cheery,
Margaret
So the majority of members basically abstained rather than turning up to bloody well throw it out on its ass with a loud "Nay!". Hmmmmmm.
ReplyDeletekate: I think the agenda got stuck to the back of a copy of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and then lost in the filing. I'm sure I've got a spare kicking around somewhere though, so I'll see if I can dig one out. As long as you're a feminist, you're entitled to a copy under the terms of the 1977 Dworkin-Vidal Pact (which basically established the Axis of Liberal Evil in its present form, I understand).
Just as a bit of an aside, I saw a production of the Laramie Project last year, and thought afterwards--once I was done crying--that everyone should have to see it.
ReplyDeleteMaybe that would help teach tolerance.