Sunday, June 1, 2008

"Tony Kushner Turned My Son Geigh"

My friends and I were online looking around online and we stumbled upon an article with this headline:

High School Offers Homosexual Porn, Parents Complain


Intrigued.. we continued reading.

Parents in Deerfield, Ill., are upset that a local high school is using books in advanced English classes this spring that they say are laced with graphic sexual content, pervasive expletives and mockery of religion.

Worse, the books - "Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes (Parts 1 & 2)" - are required reading for advanced placement English students at Deerfield High School, but a parents' group wants them removed.

"Who would have ever thought that we would be handing out pornography in public schools?" asked Lora Sue Hauser, executive director of North Shore Student Advocacy, and a Deerfield parent.

"The fact that this was required is even more astonishing," she told Cybercast News Service.


The pornography in question?

Man: I think it broke. The rubber. You want me to keep going? (Little pause) Pull out? Should I --
Louis: Keep going. Infect me. I don't care. I don't care.

"There's no other way to describe this," Hauser said. "It is so egregious and so vulgar. I've been doing advocacy in schools a long time - and this is the worst thing I've seen."

She added: "It's an example of what I call 'the competition of edginess.' High schools across the country have this 'thing' going, where they choose literature or they choose programming or curricula that pushes the envelope, and keeps pushing the envelope - and now after years and years of it, this is what we've ended up with - clearly pornographic materials."


Hi, Sue. I wish we'd talked sooner. I'm sorry this little passage about a self-loathing gay man in the 1980's wanting to get infected with AIDS was too "edgy" for you. I know it can be a real shocker to read about gay people having sex, seeing as how we do it differently and everything. And I know you're probably real afraid that this writing is going to turn your son geigh... but I'm pretty sure it won't. How do I know? Well, Angels in America is a play about AIDS and politics in the 1980's. It's no Bel Ami, it's no steamy locker room snuff. If anything, the gay melodrama and endless talk about the intersection of sex and death and strained gay relationships in Angels in America is going to make your son never want to come out of the closet, for fear that he'll end up like the hopeless main characters. So don't worry. Really.

And please stop calling "Angels in America" pornography. That just makes you look desperate.

1 comment:

A.S.C. said...

Yeah... Angels in America never would have been allowed in my god-fearing Texas town. They want good literature but only if it doesn't challenge them.