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Fuming!Dateline: 12th December, 2004I'm a smoker. I've been a smoker since the age of fourteen - that's 47 years. I am, I have to admit it, addicted. I have also got used, in recent years, to having to go outside when I want a cigarette in a public building - although I would suggest that not providing an indoor area where smoking is allowed is an infringement of my human rights: if I get pneumonia, could I sue the government?- but what I still find difficult to accept is the fact that many people treat us smokers as though we are more Satanic than the Anti-Christ. I get fed up at the way in which some people wrinkle their noses at the smell of cigarette smoke even in the street. I experienced that the other day from someone whose BO was so rank she made a cess-pit smell sweet in comparison but, being rather better mannered than her, I refrained from pointing this out. Unfortunately for the anti-smoking lobby, they are most vociferously represented by those who behave like Homo Sapiens to our (smokers') Homo Neanderthalis. But I digress (already!). Producer Marc Sinden pointed out in a letter to The Stage recently that the proposed anti-smoking legislation which forbids smoking in enclosed public spaces will not only prevent audience members smoking in theatres - which is pretty universally the case already anyway - but will also prevent smoking on-stage, even when it is required by the plot. Predictably there was a letter in last week's issue which welcomed this: the writer seems to believe that because he objects to the smell of tobacco smoke, then the lighting up of a cigarette as part of a play in a theatre which is otherwise smoke-free should not be allowed. Leaving aside all other considerations - and I do not accept that they are as clear-cut as the anti-smoking lobby believes them to be - this smacks to me of a form of censorship: you mustn't do this play because it includes smoking. Let me quote a statement from an organisation called Christian Voice about a production of Terrence McNally's Corpus Christi at the Crawford Arts Centre in the University of St Andrews, Scotland: "Naturally we intend to protest outside the Crawford during the whole production run should this miserable event go ahead, and I am praying that Scottish Christians will come to St Andrews in numbers to show that blasphemy will not be tolerated in the ancient kingdom of Fife." The same organisation has a section of its website devoted to police forces which, in its words, "promote homosexuality" because their websites say that "hate crimes" (of a racist or homophobic nature) will be prosecuted with vigour. Fundamentalists of any stripe can never be argued with, for they believe that they are right and everyone else is wrong and, what is more, they have God on their side. Hence they believe that what they disagree with should be banned and they will take action - Christian Voice's website talks of taking "direct action" in the case of Corpus Christi - if their demands are not met. The politically correct have their censorship agenda too - I have heard it argued that it is perfectly acceptable for a disabled person to play someone who is not disabled (agreed) but not the other way round. We are moving into a new era of censorship as special interest groups fight to impose their ideas on others: the battlegrounds are no longer scenes of graphic sex or violence but a myriad of smaller areas of life. We must be on our guard and prepared to fight, even if it means supporting the rights of people to express ideas we don't like, or the ability of theatre to examine all aspects of life will be destroyed.
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