I Listen to Sally Kern So You Don’t Have To

Recently, conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart released a heavily edited video that showed Department of Agriculture official Shirley Sherrod supposedly bragging about denying assistance to a white farmer on the basis of race.  The controversy cost Sherrod her job, got the African-American woman condemned by the NAACP, and eventually turned out to be completely fabricated when the full video was released.

With this on my mind, I was skeptical when I saw the above video featuring an audio clip of Oklahoma's controvesial representative who made pro-Biblical statements hatefully biggoted statements about homosexuality.  I mean, how could a person running for office in the United States of America in this day and age snidely complain about people seeking "freedom and equality for everyone?"  Those ellipses had to be omitting some important context, right?

They weren't.

As my service to you gentle reader (TM-Marisa), I listened to every freaking second of the speech the above video was based upon.  Then, when I was finished vomiting, I decided to report the highlights so that you could know what she's saying without having to attend a Baptist church that somehow maintains tax-exempt status.

Through more than forty minutes the state rep whined about her lot in life, taught about the "real history" of our founding fathers, bemoaned the seperation of church and state (so long as Christianity is the only religion intertwining with government), and spoke of her infamous 2008 tirade against gays.

Of course, before she could do any of that, she had to get something important out to her minions about her oposition:

Back when Britney Novotny, a transgendered woman, first announced her candidacy against Representative Kern, I wrote a post complaining that Novotny--regardless of how qualified she was as a candidate--would have no hope of battling Sally on issues.  The people of House District 84 who have voted Sally in overwhelmingly throughout her career--largely because of her anti-homosexuality stance--are not going to understand the nuance of transgender versus cross-dressing and vote her out in favor of someone whose life choice frightens them.

This is a shame, because I certainly think Novotny could be a welcome addition to state government and a breath of fresh air in destroying stereotypes of Oklahomans being backward hicks in national opinion.  If the campaign were strictly related to issues, that could have actually happened.

Sally's plea here, though, proves my point.  She isn't going to overtly make the issue specifically about her opposition being formerly a male, but she makes it clear any assistance her minions can provide in doing so would be much appreciated.  And if you think I'm exaggerating, go ahead and listen to the speech yourself and see if she makes any other mention of her opposition.

As for the 2008 controversy, two quotes summarize her view of what happened perfectly.  First, she explains what she said, then why she still feels justified in saying it:

First of all, nothing I could write could more succinctly explain the agenda of Sally Kern and her band of homophobes better than that bit of bolded text.  In an election cycle where her Republican brethren are tossing around the word "liberty" because it tests well in focus groups (not to mention that she spends a good portion of this speech deifying the founding fathers), she specifically states that freedom and equality are something to fight against.

Before you get all hot and bothered enough to argue with me in the comment section, this was not Sally speaking off the cuff.  This speech was, like her original polarizing oratory, one she gives regularly.  It was one she's written out and rehearsed.  The line about freedom and equality is one she expects to draw applause.

And if that is not awful enough, she continues to maintain her belief that terrorism is less of a risk than homosexuality, even going so far as to belittle the deaths that occurred in New York.  I anticipate Rudy Guliani will be campaigning against her--I mean, if he wasn't such a party lackey.

Of all of this, though, the part that offends me the most is that Representative Kern wraps her bigotry in The Bible.  Like the racists who claimed the Christian scripture said that people of African decent were sub human or the mysogynists that argued the good book did not want women voting (or participating in state government), Sally perverts religious doctrine for her own hang ups.  She did it in the pull quote at the top of the post, and she did it when she compared herself to Jesus in saying, "When you tell the truth they are going to hate you--but they hated Jesus, too."

If there is one person in all of society that has lost the right to compare their plight to the messiah, it is Sally Kern.  There is no scripture in the New Testament that supports Kern's contention that homosexuality is a problem, and while the Old Testament calls it an "abomination," it uses the same language to discourage the eating of shellfish and mixing different types of fabric.  If being gay was a sinful as Kern insists, I think in at least one of the six instances documented in the gospels of people asking Jesus how to get into Heaven, Christ would have answered, "Love the Lord your God with all your might, and love your neighbor as yourself--unless they're gay--and give all your possessions to the poor."

It is that failing that makes Kern's crusade so much worse.  Instead of loving her neighbor, she attempts to crucify them under the guise that her faith tells her it must be that way.  Because, as Sally tells it, "God is a conservative, he really is."  Her proof lies in Ecclesiastes chapter 10, verse 2:  "The heart of the wise inclines to the right but the heart of a fool to the left."

That was a line that brought the house down for Kern.  If she'd kept reading the same chapter, though, she may have found scripture that might actually help her.  When you get to verse 8 of that same chapter it reads:

Keep digging, Sally.