Oklahoma's Sally Kern: No Apology for "Not Gay-Bashing" Hate Speech

Kern now claims she received a GOP 'standing ovation' on speech that also called Islam a threat to the United States

Oklahoma State Representative Sally Kern, District 84 Republican. Best known, now nationally, for hate-speech and anti-gay legislation and anti-Islam rhetoric and she is apparently a darling of the state GOP. Image Credit: okhouse.gov Accessed 2008-03-11.

BBSNews Editorial 2008-03-11 -- Does Senator John McCain, the presumptive GOP nominee, agree with Republicans who yesterday applauded Oklahoma State Representative Sally Kern's offensive speech against gays and Islam? No word yet, but when McCain yesterday declared himself "cancer free" he probably did not know that another Republican lawmaker from the heartland had a "cancer" of another kind on her mind and spilling from her lips when she compared gays to a cancer [of the toe no less].

Republicans have long been lumped with anti-gay bias, even though it seems a lot of them get accidentally get caught up in the "gay agenda" in airport bathrooms or outside Congressional page dorm rooms. And it's been reported that they have an unusual liking for episodes of Will & Grace.

According to the Oklahoman she has verified the remarks posted by the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund in a video release and she does not plan to apologize saying, "I said nothing that was not true, I said nothing out of hate and I don't believe my colleagues will censure me."

Given the GOP's history of extreme anti-gay rhetoric and outright war against equal rights and treatment under the law for America's Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender population she is, sadly, probably right. Many Republicans simply don't consider speeches like this "hate". And it's a sure bet that they won't likely touch her remarks about Islam. Simply reading the near-violent undercurrent in anonymous comments on right-wing news sites shows that there is a seething visceral hatred being fomented in America against Gays, Muslims and of course Hispanic immigrants.

It is an underbelly of fear and loathing and ignorance that must be rubbed by today's GOP candidates just to get elected, so they must throw out carefully couched anti-gay, anti-immigrant, and anti-Muslim "red meat" to satisfy it, and that is in itself a "death knell" - not for America - but for the Republican Party as it is currently presenting itself at every opportunity.

GOP Standing Ovation

In Tulsa world it was reported that during a closed (Is it any wonder?) Republican caucus meeting yesterday she related some of the "5,000" emails, apparently some with language she had "never heard before", to the attendees of the meeting, her Republican colleagues, and they gave her a standing ovation. Is it any wonder that so many Americans are finding that the Republican Party has become dinosaur-like and completely out of touch with the values of real people as opposed to those, like Sally Kern, who would force their narrow and twisted view of Christianity on the rest of the country?

She looks so sweet, like she could be serving a nice, fresh, hot out of the oven, batch of cookies and glasses of cold milk in a poignant scene from Middle-America. (Sure that sounds vaguely sexist, but look at her.) Looks however can be deceiving. Her confirmed remarks in the video presentation that has received hundreds of thousands of views so far, proves that this is no woman who values all American citizens equally.

When it comes to agendas there is no mistaking hers. Republican darling Sally Kern seeks to stop in its tracks any effort for fair representation of gays in government, and she takes a scathing view of them; and also Islam in the bargain.

This Oklahoma legislator, wife of Dr. Steve Kern, pastor of Olivet Baptist Church, shows that bigotry exists in the American heartland against not just one class but two classes of Americans, gays and Muslims.

This did not become a national issue because a gay rights group made a video presentation using her recorded comments. It became a national issue because of her calling out various other states, Arkansas, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Florida. She did so by claiming that various city councils in those states have been "infiltrated" by gays.

And this is an election year, a time when Americans will decide if they want real change or do they want a continuation of American domestic and foreign policy based upon some twisted version of evangelical values that have impeded and retarded America's progress and standing for more than seven years?

No word yet on whether John McCain supports these divisive and extreme remarks by Sally Kern, so we have prepared a full transcript of the remarks Kern made for his, and his campaign's, perusal:

Full transcript of a speech by Sally Kern on the "gay agenda" with a backhanded slap at Islam

The homosexual agenda [Loud snap] is destroying this nation. OK? It's just a fact. [Volume increases] Not everybody's lifestyle is equal, just like not all religions are equal.

You know, the very fact that I'm talking to you like this here today, puts me in jeopardy. OK? Uh and I'm not anti, I'm not gay-bashing, but according to God's word that is not the right kind of lifestyle, it has deadly consequences for those people involved in it, they have more suicides, uh and they're more discouraged, there's more illness, their uh lifespans are shorter, you know?

It's, it's, it's not a lifestyle that is good for this nation.

'Matter of fact, studies show, that no society that has totally embraced homosexuality has lasted more than, you know, a few decades.

So it's the death knell of this country.

I honestly think it's the biggest threat even, that our nation has, even more so than terrorism or Islam, which I think is a big threat. OK?

Because what's happening now, they're going after er uh in schools - two year-olds!

You know why they're trying to get early childhood education? They want to get our young children into the government schools so they can indoctrinate them! I taught school for close to twenty years and we're not teaching facts and knowledge anymore folks, we're teaching indoctrination. OK?

And they're going after our young children, as young as two years of age, to try to teach them that the homosexual lifestyle is the acceptable lifestyle.

You know, gays are infiltrating city councils.

Do you know? Eureka Springs [Arkansas], anybody been there, for the [Great] Passion Play? [A "Creation Truth" production] OK, have you heard that the city council of Eureka Springs is now controlled by gays? OK?

There are some others. Uh, Pittsburgh, Pa.; Tacoma, Md.; Kensington, Md.; in Vermont, Oregon, West Palm Beach, Fla. and a lot of other places in Florida.

What's happening? And they are winning elections. One of the things I deal with in our legislature, I tried to introduce a bill last year, that would notify parents, uh schools had to let parents know what clubs their students were involved in.

And the reason I did that bill, primarily, was this, we had the Gay-Straight Alliance coming into our schools.

Kids are getting involved in these groups, their lives are being ruined, their parents don't know about it. So I introduced a bill that said you have to notify all clubs, and things. And one of my colleagues said, "Well, you know we don't have a gay problem in my community, so that's why I voted against that bill."

Well you know what? To me that is so dumb. If you've got cancer or something in your little toe, do you say, Well you know I’m just gonna forget about it, 'cause the rest of you's fine?

It spreads! OK?

And this, this stuff is deadly, and it's spreading and it will destroy uh our young people, it will destroy this nation.