Earlier this week, I criticized state Sen. Chris Elliott (R-Josephine) for not talking about the real purpose behind two recent bills.

Despite being urged by Senate Minority Leader Bobby Singleton to “address the elephant in the room,” he remained vague about his true motives for the library commission bill, SB10. Elliott continued to emphasize the board's “local control” and declined to discuss Republican efforts to keep “inappropriate content” away from minors in public libraries.

But I have to give him credit for actually speaking his mind during the floor debate on a bill to dissolve the board of the Alabama Department of Archives and History.

Perhaps Eliot is living up to Abraham Lincoln's old adage, “It's better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.”

Elliott's comments on the Senate floor demonstrate a significant lack of understanding of historical facts about LGBTQ people and rights in this state, or worse, reduce LGBTQ people to sexual activity. It shows that it is disgusting.

According to Elliott, history is not about “who someone had sex with last night.”

This phrase shows how immature Elliot's understanding of sexuality is.

Eliot's philosophy seems to be the “don't ask, don't tell” philosophy of history. You can praise people who build rockets “even if they're gay,” but their homosexuality isn't noteworthy.

If Alan Turing was an Alabaman, would Elliott have thought it should be archived?

Turing was literally the genius who invented the computer that cracked the unbreakable Nazi code and helped win World War II.

He was also gay and was charged with “gross indecency” for engaging in homosexual acts, giving him the option of imprisonment or chemical castration. He chose to be castrated, and just two years later, at the age of 41, he committed suicide with cyanide pills.

But under Chris Elliott's Office of Archives and History, there appears to be no room for the second half of the story. His version is simply that he was the man who invented the computer and defeated the Nazis, without mentioning the price he paid simply for being gay.

The people featured in this one-hour brown bag program are just a group of marginalized Alabamians fighting for the right to be treated fairly. That history seems more relevant now than ever, but perhaps Elliot's real concern is what would happen if he didn't control history.

Because the history he is now writing for himself is the history of villains.