18 Responses to “Oklahoma Lawmaker: “Fear Teh Gay!””

1. #1 |  Matthew Lee |  March 10th, 2008 at 8:12 pm

   She’s right, we shouldn’t tolerate homosexuality, they are worse than Al-queda after all. I say we drop a nuke on San Fransico, and mow down the members of “Gay Pride Parades”.

   Honestly, this woman is rather stupid no?

2. #2 |  Bad |  March 10th, 2008 at 8:30 pm

   What gets me is what a coward she is. She knew couldn’t say this stuff as boldly in public, but tried to get away with it in private. And now that the cat’s out of the bag, she’s trying to hide behind her religious beliefs as justification.

   And then there’s that wonderful chestnut of obfuscation: launching into a big thing about freedom of speech. Uh, no one questioned your FREEDOM to speak. People are criticizing what you said: i.e. exercising THEIR freedom to speak.

   It’s amazing how many of the people on the street use this maneuver as a defensive mechanism to avoid having to flat out say whether they agree with her comments or not.

3. #3 |  John Payne |  March 10th, 2008 at 9:39 pm

   It always amazes me that these people really seem to believe that America is just one more Gay-Straight Alliance away from turning into one giant bathhouse circa 1974.

4. #4 |  Burdell |  March 10th, 2008 at 11:20 pm

   Sounds to me like she made a pretty good argument for eliminating public education.

   Interesting comment about societies that “totally embrace homosexuality.” Aside from the fact that I have no idea what that means, it seems to indicate that the best course of action is just to remove sexuality from the public policy sphere completely.

   That way you’re not embracing anything, but you’re not actively persecuting people, either.

   I guess this “freedom” concept is too hard for most people to understand.

5. #5 |  Bad |  March 11th, 2008 at 12:19 am

   “Sounds to me like she made a pretty good argument for eliminating public education.”

   Frankly, I find that to be the weakest argument against public education.

   I don’t have a big problem with a country having a basic curriculum and mandatory educational standards. Even the idea that education is a public good worth taxpayer funding isn’t as all wet as some things we spend money on.

   But the really crazy thing is simply justifying why the government should actually own and run the schools. That’s what really makes no sense to me.

6. #6 |  JJH2 |  March 11th, 2008 at 12:35 am

   Really, the most loathsome part is that she actually attempted to pass a bill for the express purpose of encouraging bigoted parents to harass their children out of attending Gay-Straight alliance meetings. As if it’s not hard enough being young, gay (or questioning, or even straight and friendly towards gay kids), and isolated from your asshole parents in Nowhere, Oklahoma without the public school stukachestvo ratting on you and forcing you further into an isolating web of depression. I hope she slinks back under the rock she crawled out from.

7. #7 |  Tokin42 |  March 11th, 2008 at 5:38 am

   I’d like to know who the “they” are at the beginning of the video “this is what THEY say…” . Are we really surprised that there is a bigoted state rep in this nation? This isn’t what THEY say, it’s what SHE said. Sure it’s a disgusting position for her to hold but to suggest that it’s some kind of massive conspiracy is a massive reach.

8. #8 |  Eugene |  March 11th, 2008 at 7:57 am

   Not to sound too terribly supportive (Full Disclosure: I’m Catholic), but I’m curious as to how many people in that video are from that lawmaker’s district or even Oklahoma at all. It seems silly to post “You don’t speak for me” as some sort of retort when, in fact, she doesn’t speak for you. Also, there are a very large number of people who do agree with her, especially about the issue in public education. That the government teaches it as a “normal” or “healthy” lifestyle (without getting into whether or not this is so), co-opts the moral teaching authority of the Church (strong argument for the religious conservative) and the teaching authority of parents (strong argument for the libertarians). As much as some may dislike the way some religious bodies or parents teach the next generation, that doesn’t mean the state can then force what a majority thinks is the “correct” thoughts onto our youth.

9. #9 |  Tom |  March 11th, 2008 at 8:54 am

   This wasn’t a whole lot different than an anti-gay rant I heard this week in a church Sunday School class.

   What she says are the firmly held beliefs of a lot of well educated and prosperous members of my community.

   What it isn’t is “hate speech”. As an evangelical Christian my lifestyle is routinely criticized and the voting record of our “group” is routinely disparaged. Homosexuals disagree with our choices and we disagree with theirs- no hate necessary on either side.

   Time will tell if our current swing towards embracing the gay agenda will result in a better or worse culture and society. As she mentions, their are reasonable arguments that previous cultures that embraced homosexuality led to swift declines.

10. #10 |  JJH2 |  March 11th, 2008 at 11:57 am

    Tom:

    “As she mentions, their are reasonable arguments that previous cultures that embraced homosexuality led to swift declines.”

    This is completely and utterly absurd. Not only does this ridiculous argument completely gloss over historical reality (for example, in many cultures where homosexuality was allegedly “embraced,” such as ancient Greece, by which of course what is really meant is MALE homosexuality, large aspects of gay-sexual practice were in fact strongly looked down upon, such as being the recipient of male-male anal sex), and completely ignore the glaringly obvious issue of CAUSATION as opposed to correlation (we might just as easily argue the equally ridiculous claim that WEARING TOGAS or reciting epic poetry are responsible for “cultural decline”), as well as completely overlooking for more obvious historical contingencies that would be far more likely to explain the relevant problem (such as being attacked on multiple fronts by more numerous, mobile, and diffuse groups of people) — even overlooking all of that, even IF IT WERE TRUE that “accepting” (by which I can only assume given the context means not tolerating the overt harassment of gays, lesbians, bisexuals, etc), we would STILL be morally obligated NOT TO OVERTLY HARASS such people, because they have the perfectly legitimate right to __have sex with whomever they want__ without being harassed, assaulted, and ridiculed by bigots, regardless of whether it puts your supposedly precious culture (Left Behind and BibleMan?) “in danger.”

11. #11 |  Michael |  March 11th, 2008 at 12:13 pm

    Gays were always friendly to me. And, I am an over-sexed hetorsexual! Why do people think they have a duty to punish others life styles? I guess they want to be the judge and not leave it up to God! The way I see it, the gay in a homosexual relationship is not different than a heterosexual couple living to gether out of marriage! (“sin is sin”) I still like the scripture “judge not, lest you be judged”. Mr pertfect can leave me and my friends, alone. At least my gay friends were not uneducated hillbillies!

12. #12 |  Bad |  March 11th, 2008 at 12:29 pm

    Tom:

    This is exactly the sort of thing I’m talking about: basically calling for the eradication of homosexuals from public life, and then turning around and insisting that it isn’t hate speech because it’s an common in some area, or because it’s part of someone’s religion. That’s just… welll… lame. None of those things make it not hate speech. Your group is criticized for being intolerant, not for simply existing and being part of society. No gay group I’ve ever heard of has tried to get Bibles banned from school libraries or demand that Christianity not be mentioned in history class. There aren’t entire think tanks of gay researchers drawing up bogus statistics to try and show that evangelical Christianity is a deadly lifestyle that our kids should be protected from. The worst you guys face from even the most militant of atheists is criticisms of your arguments and claims.

    And simply put, there are no modern cultures that have “embraced” homosexuality and fallen into swift decline. None. Of the few that have actually embraced homosexuality all are still around and doing fine. Some of the most tolerant are actually among the wealthiest most peaceful and happy in the world. And as JJH2 notes, even with historical examples of ancient cultures, there isn’t even a surface plausibility to the argument in the face of much more obvious sources of decline.

13. #13 |  Tom |  March 11th, 2008 at 1:32 pm

    Commenters here are not very tolerant of my view that embracing homosexuality within public policy is not a good thing.

    In three posts above I have been referred to as:

    1. a bigot
    2. an uneducated hillbilly
    3. lame

    What is so sacred about the gay lifestyle that it can’t stand up to a little criticism without y’all coming back with personal attacks?

14. #14 |  JJH2 |  March 11th, 2008 at 1:57 pm

    Tom:

    There is nothing objectionable about ‘personal attacks’ per se. Personal attacks are a problem when they are used as an argumentative fallacy, or when they are false. To be clear, I think you ARE a bigot, although my post did not refer specifically to you, and I do not think your arguments are wrong BECAUSE you are a bigot — I think your arguments are wrong because they are based on obviously and fatally flawed arguments (your civilizational decline bit), or completely indefensible moral premises (that magical sky fairies are legitimate moral authorities). I will note, in addition, that Bad did NOT call _you_ “lame” — he called your ARGUMENT lame for _entirely independent reasons_ (ie: that appealing to certain types of reasons for a belief makes a belief less or not bigoted). In fairness, while it’s not entirely clear to me that Michael was referring to YOU as an uneducated hillbilly, assuming that he was, I would grant that that is probably an unfair characterization.

    Finally, I will note that your use of the idea of “tolerance” is so ambiguous as to be useless as an analytical tool. There is no particular reason to be “tolerant” of bigoted views, if by “tolerance” you mean (as you seem to do), being critical of your arguments on an internet weblog. I would argue that nobody has any kind of obligation to tolerance of that kind (tolerance, I would argue, is the wrong word for that). On the other hand, the “tolerance” that the gay rights movement asks for — say, not having your school snitch to your parents about what groups you belong to so they can harass you back into the closet, or not punishing teachers for talking openly and treating with respect all families, regardless of whether they have one mommy and one daddy or two mommies or two daddies, or all students, regardless of whether they will find love, sex, and emotional satisfaction in the arms of someone of the same sex or the opposite sex — well, people have legitimate reasons to expect (and to extend) that kind of tolerance to all people for legitimate and independent moral reasons.

15. #15 |  Dan Brown |  March 11th, 2008 at 3:02 pm

    “What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church?” — Paul of Tarsus, 1 Cor 5:12

16. #16 |  Bad |  March 11th, 2008 at 7:29 pm

    “What is so sacred about the gay lifestyle that it can’t stand up to a little criticism without y’all coming back with personal attacks?”

    Characterizing your evasive tactics as “lame” is a not “personal attack” that demonstrates an inability to stand up your criticism.

    And lo and behold, what you just did was yet another evasion: instead of responding to anything substantive anyone said, you used the fact that people called you names as an excuse to avoid the thrust of their criticism. This “oh, poor persecuted me” tactic of trying to change the subject really deserves its own name as an informal logical fallacy.

17. #17 |  Adam W. |  March 11th, 2008 at 7:31 pm

    I think this says it best:

    “Oklahoma Rep. Sally Kern is a stupid bitch!”

18. #18 |  The Agitator » Blog Archive » Morning Links |  March 13th, 2008 at 8:09 am

    [...] like that Oklahoma legislator caught going off on an anti-gay rant a couple of weeks ago may have a gay [...]

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