We Never Understood Walt Whitman Anyway

Not content merely to ban gay marriages (twice) the Alabama legislature is now considering banning anything written by for or about gays. In book after book, State Representative Gerald Allen, sponsor of the bill, reads what he calls the "homosexual agenda," and he's alarmed. "I started thinking about this after I happened to catch a Sponge Bob Square Pants show. And before you ask, I didn't enjoy it."

"I don't look at it as censorship," says Allen, "because it's not like gays have rights in the first place. At least not in Alabama." Allen originally wanted to ban Shakespeare. "Have you seen the way that guy dressed?" he said at a news conference. "If he wasn't a little light in the wrist I'm a flying pig."

A reporter mentioned that Alabama students might be put at a disadvantage if they were unable to read poets like Sappho, W. H. Auden, A. E. Houseman, or authors like Socrates, Emerson, Oscar Wilde, Sir Francis Bacon, Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote and Gore Vidal, or Alice Walker's novel "The Color Purple" which has lesbian characters, Allen responded that most Alabama school children couldn't read "that high brow stuff" anyway, and later said, "What does it matter. Socrates ain't going to help no one be a better mechanic, or hair dresser."

Asked to point out examples of the "homosexual agenda" in the books he wants to ban, Allen said he wasn't sure exactly, "but there's a lot of those big words I don't understand and I'm pretty certain it's some kind of code. I know 'forbearance' pops up quite a bit," he said. "That's got to be something dirty. I think it has to do with man parts."

Allen explained that his bill would also include television shows and movies written by, or incorporating homosexuals. "I'm also looking into funding a program that would distribute anti gay tin foil beanies to all the residents of Alabama," We think that between my bill and the hats, we can make the residents of the state safe from the homo beams...er...agenda. I mean the homosexual agenda."