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Alabama- Students React to Lawmaker Who Seeks to Ban Books
February 22, 2005
UPDATE 2/22/05: Republican Sen. Gerald Allen of Alabama is attempting to pass legislation that calls for all public schools in his state to stop buying and to destroy all textbook and library materials that recognize or promote homosexuality as an acceptable lifestyle.
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In response, students of the University of North Carolina conducted a 24-hour reading of texts with homosexual themes or characters. The reading began at noon 2/21 and continued until noon on 2/22.
The protest, titled “Read Free for Alabama,” includes the reading of excerpts from Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, Alice Walker’s The Color Purple and Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.
The UNC campus is involved in the protest in other ways: The Bull’s Head Bookshop has a display of books that might be banned. The table, labeled “The Pro-homosexual Agenda,” will be on display until the readings end. A campus coffee shop provided free beverages to the students reading in the protest.
Although the students are not in Alamaba, they feel the chilling effect from the proposed law would spread to their state and campus as well. “This legistlation affects me personally,” a student involved in the protest said. The banning of the books is a hindrance to free speech and will have serious consequences on the academic world.
For ways you can protest this new bill, please see the previous alert below.
December 2, 2004:
PEN USA’s First Amendment Action Committee is shocked by the attempts of an Alabama lawmaker to ban all books that mention homosexuality from town and university libraries, and destroy existing copies. This would be blatant government censoring and book burning reminiscent of the most shameful periods in history.
Rep. Gerald Allen, (R-Cottondale) wants to prohibit the use of public funds for “the purchase of textbooks or library materials that recognize or promote homosexuality as an acceptable lifestyle.” Rep. Allen believes our culture is “under attack from every angle” due to the “homosexual agenda.”
If the bill passes, novels with gay protagonists and college textbooks that hint at homosexuality being natural would be “removed from library shelves and destroyed.” Allen suggested digging a big hole and burying them. When asked about Tennessee Williams’ southern classic “Cat On A Hot Tin Roof,” Allen said the play probably couldn’t be performed by university theater groups.
“It sounds like Nazi book burning to me,” said Southern Poverty Law Center spokesman Mark Potok. He added the ban would remove “a good portion of the classics of Western civilizations.”
Allen pre-filed his bill in advance of the 2005 legislative session, which begins February 1.
There are those that suggest the bill is too broad and unenforceable (even The Bible may fall under it’s ambiguous guidelines) and will not pass. However, there are those that are worried the bill may pass, especially with the recent Amendment Two outcome that surprised many. (Amendment Two would have removed language mandating school segregation from the state constitution. It was defeated.)
Allen’s bill would ban books that help children deal with homosexuality in their world, like Heather has Two Mommies. It would also ban classics like The Color Purple, The Picture of Dorian Gray, and even some works of Hemmingway.
The bill would also ban materials that “promote a lifestyle or actions prohibited by the sodomy and sexual misconduct laws of Alabama” whether the couples committing the acts are heterosexual or homosexual would not matter. Teachers could not hand out materials or bring in a classroom speaker that would suggest homosexuality was okay.
The ACLU of Alabama noted in a press release, “The bill proposed by Representative Gerald Allen that would ban books about gay and lesbian people from public libraries is bad public policy, unconstitutional and just plain wrong.”
PEN USA agrees with Jaunita Owes, director of the Montogmery City-County Library, who notes this censorship would be problematic for library collections. “Half the books in the library could end up being banned,” Owes said, “It’s all based on how one interprets the material.”
PEN USA is appalled at a proposed law which could censor half the books in a library, many of them classics. Literature, especially that which sparks discourse, is a necessary part of any culture.
Stephen Rohde, First Amendment lawyer and Vice President of PEN USA’s domestic Freedom to Write program, says, “In the years that PEN has monitored assaults on the First Amendment, this is one of the most blatant, mean spirited, divisive and dangerous. This bill if passed would represent an undiluted act of censorship. The government cannot ban books based on their content, outside of limited exceptions such as obscenity or defamation. This proposal deserves the swift and unanimous condemnation of everyone who is devoted to freedom of expression. If we start down this dark and slippery slope, who knows what group or idea will be next on the chopping block.”
Recommended Action:
Write to Rep. Seth Hammett, Speaker of the House, and urge him to defeat a bill which proposes to ban half the books in all of Alabama’s public libraries.
Representative Seth Hammett
Room 519-A
11 S. Union Street
Montgomery, AL 36130
(334) 242-7668
seth.hammett@alhouse.org
Also:
Representative Demetrius C. Newton,
Speaker Pro Tempore of the House
Room 516-B
11 S. Union Street
Montgomery, AL 36130
(334) 242-7663