The required reading list at Dearfield High's English class included a book that parents deemed pornographic. Shocked and outraged, they filed a complaint with the school board. The book in question, 'Angels in America,' is considered literature.
Dearfield High in Illinois is no stranger to controversy. Previously the school board implemented what many considered an "indoctrination" class for 14-year-old freshmen regarding the homosexual lifestyle. Students were required to sign confidentiality agreements, stating that they would not tell their parents about the class or the information discussed therein.
Continuing to push the homosexual envelope even further, the school had now elected to make "Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes (Parts 1 & 2)" required reading for advanced English students. The class was to begin this spring.
Parents, after reviewing a sampling of the contents of the 10-year-old play whose main theme is that of the homosexual lifestyle, said "no way" and banded together in an effort to put a stop to what they deemed to be pornographic material and inappropriate for a high school English class.
"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 is required is even more astonishing", she said.
Proponents of the material felt that the selection was justified. Peter LaBarbera, with Americans for Truth About Homosexuality, a conservative group, said the two books are simply two parts of a 10-year-old play on the topic of AIDS - one that has been heralded as "one of the great American plays of the 20th century."
In fact, playwright Tony Kushner won the Pulitzer Prize, and "Angels in America" won two Tony Awards. An HBO adaptation for television was nominated for an Emmy.
"It is defended as a literary work that shows forgiveness, kindness and compassion," LaBarbera said. "Of course, the first question that comes to my mind is, how many classical works of literature are there that show these virtues without delving into graphic homosexual sodomy?"
The request to have the material removed from the curriculum was long and drawn out. In the end the parents were relieved that the play was removed from the "required" list and placed on the alternate reading list. (although one would assume that with all of the attention it received, and being a high school teen, many will be opting to make their reading selections from that alternate list out of sheer curiosity).
Here is a brief excerpt from the book. You tell me, is this appropriate material for a high school English class?
Man: What do you want?
Louis: I want you to f*** me, hurt me, make me bleed.
Man: I want to.
Louis: Yeah?
Man: I want to hurt you.
Louis: F*** me.
Man: Yeah.
Louis: Hard?
Man: Yeah. You been a bad boy?
(They begin to f***.)
(Louis slips his hand down the front of Joe's pants. They embrace more tightly. Louis pulls his hand out, smells and tastes his fingers, and then holds them for Joe to smell ... they kiss again.)
Parents like Hauser said the work, which even mocks the Catholic nun Mother Teresa, is porn - not literature - and offers bad messages:
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.
While the books may be pornographic, according to Federal Law they are not considered obscene. The first route the parents group took was that of criminal, as they saw the dissemination of the material as harmful to minors. But Pat Trueman, who ran the U.S. Justice Department's obscenity enforcement unit from 1988 through 1992, confirmed what the group found out is true.
"Federal obscenity law says that material can be prosecuted as obscene if it appeals to a prurient interest - that is, a shameful or morbid interest in sex - and if it is patently offensive, and if it doesn't have any literary, artistic, scientific or philosophical value. That's the situation you run into if it doesn't have pictures and is just the written word," Trueman told Cybercast News Service.
"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."
Calls to the school superintendent and other administrators were not returned.
So, what do you think? Is this appropriate reading material for high school teens? Is there literary merit, and justification for placing this on either the required or alternate reading list?
With all of the great pieces of true literary genius that exist in this world, does there seem to be a hidden agenda, if you will, for selecting this particular work?
