In Alabama, Republican lawmaker Gerald Allen says that homosexuality is so awful that the state should refuse even indirect funding for any book or play that depicts homosexuality in a positive light. This affects libraries, schools, colleges, and a host of other venues.

CBS reports:

[U]nder his bill, public school libraries could no longer buy new copies of plays or books by gay authors, or about gay characters. "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."

I suppose that it also wouldn't be censorship to do the same with anything that depicts atheists in a positive light or by atheist authors. What about books and plays that depict Muslims in a positive light? Maybe works by Marx should be banned, since they obviously advocate communism — that's not "censorship," that's just protecting 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. [emphasis added]

I have my doubts that Gerald Allen can even define what literature is. He certainly doesn't have a clue about what freedom of speech is — or just freedom, for that matter.

Librarian Donna Schremser fears the "thought police," would be patrolling her shelves. "And so the idea that we would have a pristine collection that represents one political view, one religious view, that's not a library,'' says Schremser.

People like Gerard Allen don't want to have a library, they want to have a propaganda organ for an ideologically and religiously pure society. They don't believe in free speech, personal liberty, religious liberty, or even democracy. The ideal state for the Christian Right isn't a democracy, it's a theocracy.

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