Canon Fodder
We're Here, We're Not Queer, and We Hate Minorities: American Censorship in 2004
Feel a chill in the air? What better way to warm up than by burning a book?
By Matt Hutaff Dec 14, 2004
To those who enjoy discriminating against their fellow citizen and think we're doing the Lord's work in the Middle East, I ask you this: what the fuck is wrong with Holden Caulfield?
With so many things to hate – blacks, Jews, Mexicans, the French, liberals, city-folk – are you so filled with bigoted, hateful emotions that you need to draw down your ire on fictional characters?
Gerald Allen thinks so. As a member of the Alabama House of Representatives, he's written a bill that would prohibit public funds from being used to purchase "textbooks or library materials that recognize or promote homosexuality as an acceptable lifestyle." The reason for this? Protecting children from a subversive "homosexual agenda," of course.
"Our culture, how we know it today, is under attack from every angle," Allen said in a press conference last week. Thankfully, though, the concrete surrounding Allen's brain is tolerance-proof.
While I'm sure there are many concerned parents hoping their son or daughter don't listen to k.d. lang or visit the bath houses, I charge them to explain how censoring popular American fiction from their community is a positive thing.
You see, Allen's ban doesn't just keep Playgirl and Lynne Cheney's travesty of literature Sisters off of library shelves; it attacks cherished mainstream novels and plays like The Color Purple, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Brideshead Revisited, even to adults aware of the content. Does Allen care? Of course not. His recommendation is to "dig a hole and dump them in it."
Allen's bill even prevents community colleges from performing A Chorus Line because it features a prominent gay solo. "Why can't you do something else?" he asks.
Something else? How about Shakespeare? The Bard may have penned some of the most memorable fiction in the English language, but there are homosexual undertones throughout his work. Coupled that with the "risqué" origins of his theater (men-only productions were common practice) and comedies like As You Like It suddenly becomes an endangered species list as well. So how about that?
"Well... literature like Shakespeare and Hammet [sic] could be [emphasis mine] left alone." But, he adds, "you could tone it down."
How about this, Ger? You tone down your hillbilly rhetoric and learn to spell and I'll tone down my seething hatred for moralist pricks. That sound reasonable, you ass?
This is not an isolated example, by the way. Andrea Minnon, a Maine resident, wants Catcher in the Rye banned from her son's freshman reading program as well because it "espouses immoral ideas." Apparently Minnon has lived in a bubble for 50 years and is only now catching up on the controversy the book has generated, but at least she's reading the book herself to see if it's something she wants her child to read. That's how a child is protected – involved parenting, not draconian public policy.
But Gerald Allen has the ear of the President of the United States. In the past several months, Allen has met with George Bush five times to discuss his mandate on moral issues. Bush considers Allen part of his base constituency, and according to that, Americans hate even the notion that a homosexual might have any positive traits whatsoever.
This is not an argument on the value of gay men and women in American society. I believe all have the potential for greatness or idiocy regardless of race, creed, faith or sexuality. Nor is this an argument on the quality of the content of the books proposed banned under Allen's legislation, as I'm sure some are just plain awful.
This is about censorship, pure and simple.
There is nothing to be gained from book banning save a fascist America because one particular mindset doesn't agree with some of the content. Books are by and large an individual experience, tailored to appeal to a particular audience.
However, some books transcend genre and speak to an entire society. While I won't argue that Tennessee Williams is a sad, closeted hack, his stories bring awareness to Middle America that there are uncomfortable issues with homosexuality or pseudo-feminisism somewhere else in their country. Every person I've spoken to about Catcher in the Rye finds something relatable about it in its pages despite the controversy. These kinds of stories are precisely the ones that should be available to the masses because they invite shock or outrage and transport its readers to a different mindset. And what is point of literature if not to provoke discussion?
Strip away positive stories about subjugated minorities and all you are left with is demonization and falsehood. Look to Iraq as an example; a region with thousands of years of rich cultural heritage has been turned into the land of fanatical savages moving to the beat of the American war drum.
The literary heritage of the United States, once lively and eager to publish views contrary to the prevailing winds of politics, is now falling into the same intolerant religious rut that the government has fallen prey to. This is the country that printed and revered dissident poet Boris Pasternak's sweeping indictment of Soviet culture, Dr. Zhivago. Now it is a country that does all it can to limit the number of voices that can be heard.
How times have changed.
So where does it end? The mere mention of a homosexual curdles your blood? I guarantee striking gays from the reading list will only be the beginning. Soon anything contrary to the government, the Christian God or this arbitrary set of morals that has so enraptured millions they're afraid of thinking about two men kissing will be verboten. Even worse, by limiting the type of voice that can be heard people will grow up ignorant and afraid of people different than themselves, and that's a sad thing to think about.
Gore Vidal, a critic of George W. Bush's regime, could find himself out of work because no one will hire a gay writer writing his obviously gay views. Looking for the new Elton John record? He's a queer – no dice.
Once this way of thinking starts, it cannot stop. If a hayseed like Gerald Allen can bend the ear of the President and espouse a message of intolerance for gays, who's to say he and his followers can't target another group for vilification?
According to fiction writer Ray Bradbury, 451 degrees Fahrenheit is the temperature at which books burn. Does the political climate have to get that hot before real freedom-loving Americans get uncomfortable with supporting such a regime?
Canon Fodder is a biweekly analysis of politics and society.