Since late August, the three-person selectboard of Littleton, New Hampshire has been threatening to ban all displays of public art from the town in order to keep their neighbors from seeing a mural on the side of a local restaurant sponsored by North Country Pride and the United Way. The selectpersons are also objecting to their local theater’s current production of “La Cage Aux Folles,” on stage through Nov. 12, and have tried to close the show.
Reports the Boston Globe:
It began with three paintings that make up a mural on the side of a private building in Littleton, N.H.
One showed a white iris in front of a rainbow color wheel. Another showed two birch trees in front of blue mountains and a white crescent moon. The third depicted dandelions growing from the pages of a book, with their roots below and stars twinkling in the sky.
While the mural on the red brick wall of the Jing Fong restaurant building looked innocuous to most viewers, Carrie Gendreau looked through the lens of her extremely conservative Christian faith and saw something dark: demonic symbols and, since the paintings were sponsored by North Country Pride, an indication that LGBTQ+ art in town had gone too far.
A state senator and a member of the town’s three-person Select Board, Gendreau spoke out against the paintings during an Aug. 28 Select Board meeting.
“I’m not even sure how to broach the subject,” she said, “because when it’s private property, there’s nothing we can do. But I really think we need to be very careful about what kind of artwork goes up. This last artwork that went up on the side of the Jing Fong building, I would encourage anyone to research what that really means.”
Reports the Los Angeles Blade:
The board, which leans conservative even though the town voted nearly 50-50 Biden-Trump in 2020, wanted to ban all LGBT art, but found that there wasn’t a way they could do that without running afoul of anti-discrimination and free speech laws. So instead, the board announced they would consider banning all art in public places.
As soon as the bans were floated, [North Country Pride organizer Kerri] Harrington says she contacted the ACLU of New Hampshire, which is now monitoring the town in case the ban is put into law.
The proposal has understandably created tension and division in the small town. The September meeting where the ban proposal was first discussed drew 300 people – from a town of just over 6000 – to speak against it.
Although the ban has not advanced, Harrington says groups opposed to it are ensuring that 25 to 30 people attend all monthly town board meetings to ensure that board doesn’t try to introduce it without notice.
“People are upset,” Harrington says. “People are starting to say, ‘Well, I don’t want to visit your town.’”
The murals aren’t the only queer art in the town board’s sights.
A local production of the classic gay musical La Cage Aux Folles in the town Opera House has also been the target of attempted censorship by the town board.
The 1983 Tony Award-winning musical by Jerry Harmon and Harvey Fierstein tells the story of a gay couple who own a drag nightclub and try to pretend to a be a straight couple when their son becomes engaged to the daughter of a conservative politician. It was adapted into the 1996 film The Birdcage.
Theatre UP President Courtney Vashaw says the company was inspired to put on La Cage after far-right protestors disrupted a drag queen story hour at the local library.
“It was very ugly. White supremacists were getting involved, 80-year-old librarians were being threatened in their homes. We thought, how can we bring voice to this issue in a way that was palatable to the North Country public?” Vashaw says.
Read the complete Boston Globe story here. Read the complete LA Blade story here.
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