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South Carolina: Trumps AZ, Blocks Books That Mention Gays

 Seems like South Carolina is running for capital of the Confederacy, putting the legislature in charge of college curriculum.

Why do good people choose to live there?

Members of the South Carolina House of Representatives on Wednesday voted to cut $70,000 in funding from two public colleges that assigned two books about same-sex relationships to freshmen students.

      “Out Loud: The Best of Rainbow Radio,” From a small radio studio in the heart of the Deep South, the voices of gay and lesbian Southerners suddenly filled the AM airwaves. ”For far too long,” the announcer stated, ”talk radio airwaves have been dominated by the people who talk about us. Starting this fall, we speak for ourselves!” What began in 2005 as an experiment Rainbow Radio, South Carolina’s first gay and lesbian radio show has since offered diverse, accurate, and often unparalleled stories of gay and lesbian Southerners, their families, and their friends.

  “Fun Home,” In this groundbreaking, bestselling graphic style memoir, Alison Bechdel charts her fraught relationship with her late father. In her hands, personal history becomes a work of amazing subtlety and power, written with controlled force and enlivened with humor, rich literary allusion, and heartbreaking detail.

Distant and exacting, Bruce Bechdel was an English teacher and director of the town funeral home, which Alison and her family referred to as the “Fun Home.” It was not until college that Alison, who had recently come out as a lesbian, discovered that her father was also gay. A few weeks after this revelation, he was dead, leaving a legacy of mystery for his daughter to resolve.

“If you want to make a point, you have to make it hurt,” state Rep. Garry Smith (R), who pushed for the cuts, told The State newspaper. “I understand academic freedom, but this is not academic freedom. … This was about promoting one side with no academic debate involved.”

 


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