Last week, we reported that South Carolina state senator Mike Fair had succeeded in getting the University of South Carolina-Upstate to cancel a satirical performance called “How To Be A Lesbian In 10 Days Or Less” because he thought it was “recruiting” students to become lesbians.
Well, the show may be canceled, but the outrage machine rolls on. The State reports that Fair “said in a TV interview [last] week that Upstate students needed to be exposed to gay-themed materials and programs like ‘they do skinheads and radical Islam. They don’t need to be exposed to it.'”
State Sen. Lee Bright, who represents the area in the state legislature and who is challenging U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham in the GOP primary this year, joined Fair in the effort to cut the school’s budget in punishment for planning to host the show and for assigning LGBT-friendly reading material. “I think we’ve got their attention,” Bright said. “Folks in Spartanburg aren’t looking for that kind of bent at their local college.”
And now, a candidate for state superintendent of education is piling on, issuing a press release calling the show “dangerous” and “destructive” and calling for everyone involved to be fired. Superintendant candidate Gary Burgess wrote, in a press release flagged by the Charleston City Paper:
Sexual orientation, and teaching children about sexual orientation, is exclusively the purview of the home and Houses of Faith. A seminar teaching young adults how to be heterosexual or homosexual is completely off limits to schools, colleges, and universities. How much training does it take to have human beings, sexual creatures, participate in sex? This is ludicrous. This is dangerous. This is destructive …
These programs, which try to indoctrinate our children, must be completely defunded, and those who use tax dollars in such a way should be fired.
Meanwhile, Leigh Hendrix, the South Carolina native who wrote and performs “How To Be A Lesbian In 10 Days Or Less,” says she is “really surprised” by the backlash to her show, noting that “the title is far more provocative than the piece.”
