http://www.365gay.com/newscon05/02/021005novel.htm
Gay Novel & Shovel Sent To Book Banning Senator
by 365Gay.com Newscenter Staff
Posted: February 10, 2005 9:01 pm. ET
(Los Angeles, California) Gay novelist, Michael Holloway Perronne, shipped a copy of his novel, A Time Before Me, along with a miniature shovel, to controversial Alabama lawmaker Rep. Gerald Allen on Thursday.
Allen recently made headlines by proposing a state law that would ban gay books, plays, and films at public institutions. (story)
If his bill became law, public school textbooks could not present views on homosexuality, college theater groups would not be able to perform plays like the Tennessee Williams classic "Cat On A Hot Tin Roof" or The Laramie Project, and public school libraries could not display books that include lesbianism like Alice Walker's "The Color Purple."
During the uproar over the proposed law Allen said, “I guess we dig a big hole and dump them in and bury them.”
Perronne said if Allen wins he wants his debut novel to be in good company.
“If Mr. Allen is determined to bury such great works as The Color Purple, The Picture of Dorian Gray, and Brideshead Revisited, then I would be honored to have my own work buried with such classics. Mr. Allen can use the shovel I sent him to start digging his hole.”
"A Time Before Me" explores a gay teen’s search for his identity in the contrasting worlds of small town Mississippi and New Orleans.
Perronne is an adult education instructor and writer living in Los Angeles but he says he will always call the Deep South home.
“Coming out in the South, I think, is a very different experience than it is coming out in the rest of the country- both positive and negative.
"When I tell people I came out at 17 and in the Deep South (Mississippi), people often assume it must have been a horrible time in my life. I actually experienced the opposite. Sure, there is homophobia there, but there’s also a large percentage of the population that’s a lot more open minded that the media presents Southerners as a whole. It’s important to me that people see that not everyone in the South has the same mindset as Mr. Allen.”