Source: AlterNet

Kern's anti-gay rant

The Legislators have passed xenophobic immigration laws, engaged in widely supported verbal gay bashing, spouted anti-Muslim bigotry, and encouraged gun-toting students. Through it all, Democratic legislators have often been too timid to resist, Fricker reports.

Sally Kern made herself into a local hero of bigotry by focusing on what she insists is the country's gravest danger: gays and lesbians. 

Anti-gay comments that Kern made to a local GOP meeting generated dismay and complaints from around the country, but were celebrated by many in her home state.  A recording of excerpts from the talk were posted to YouTube.

"Studies show that no society that has totally embraced homosexuality has lasted more than, you know, a few decades," she claimed on the tape. "So it's the death knell of this country. I honestly think it's the biggest threat our nation has, even more than terrorism or Islam, which I think is a big threat. OK?

"'Cause what's happening now is they are going after, in schools, 2-year-olds, and this stuff is deadly, and it's spreading, and it will destroy our young people, and it will destroy this nation."

Kern and Oklahoma's other Republican leaders held fast behind her anti-gay positions. Reports from inside the GOP caucus described Kern receiving a standing ovation from the party faithful a couple of days after her statements were made public.

Kern's supporters also staged two rallies at the Capitol Building, with one drawing nearly 2,000 people.

"I told the people when I was running for this office that I was a Christian candidate and that I believed we were in a cultural war for the very existence of our Judeo-Christian values," Kern declared.

But Kern has plenty of competition in the Oklahoma capitol in singling out groups for hatred.

Rep. Randy Terrill, Republican chairman of the Revenue and Taxation Committee, has emerged as a hero of the "protect our borders" crowd by authoring a law that makes it a felony even to give an illegal immigrant a ride.

His bill -- HB1804 -- makes it illegal to provide education, health care and many other services to undocumented immigrants, including infants. And, police are required to check the immigration status of anyone "suspected" of being in this country illegally.

Draconian? Certainly. But the bill sailed through the Oklahoma House, 88-9, with 35 of the 44 Democrats joining the Republicans, and then passed the Senate on a 41-6 vote with two-thirds of the Democrats lining up with Republicans.

But even the state's churches found some provisions of Terrill's law hard to take. It prompted virtual declarations of civil disobedience from the Southern Baptist Convention and the Episcopal, Methodist, Lutheran and Roman Catholic churches, which announced they would not curtail aid to anyone.

That didn't stop Terrill who called the Roman Catholic Bishop of Tulsa as "misguided," and said the bishop opposed it because he feared it would curtail a growth in population and thus revenues for the church.

Terrill followed up his legislative victory by floating a bill that would forbid the issuance of birth certificates to a child if one parent was an illegal alien. That bill also sought confiscation of property for anyone caught violating HB1804.

Meanwhile, the Oklahoma business community, which mostly sat on the sidelines as HB1804 was passed, is now having second thoughts, worrying that the new law has cut into the labor force and thus corporate profits.

A significant number of Mexicans, both legal and illegal, have left the state to avoid harassment, while other laborers are living in fear.

While Kern lashed out at gay activists and Terrill took aim at immigrants, Republican Rep. Rex Duncan concentrated on the "threat" from Islam, rebuffing a gesture of multicultural goodwill.

When American Muslims on the Ethnic American Advisory Council sent each legislator a copy of the Quran in honor of Oklahoma's centennial celebration, Duncan refused to accept his copy, saying, "Most Oklahomans do not endorse the idea of killing innocent women and children in the name of ideology."

Seventeen other House Republicans joined Duncan in spurning copies of Islam's holy book.

Though several interfaith groups expressed dismay at Duncan's denunciation of Islam, the Rev. Anthony Jordan, executive director of the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma, said he did not fault the legislators for their action repudiating the Quran.

The Oklahoma legislature also responded to concerns about mass shootings on campuses by deliberating on a proposal advocated by extreme elements of the gun lobby, to permit all university students to carry guns to classes so they could defend themselves in case a mad gunman went on a rampage.

However, the idea of turning colleges into a modern version of the Wild West died in an uncommon fit of sobriety among the state's legislators.

Still, the question remains: Why have these sorts of comments and such legislation gained traction in Oklahoma and other parts of the United States?

Some political analysts suggest part of the reason is that Democrats so dread coming under attack from the evangelical Right that they stay silent or acquiesce to proposals that otherwise might be transformed into campaign attack ads against them.

It remains to be determined if election 2008 could be a moment when this surge of theocracy tinged with white racialism might finally be turned back.

Full article: Xenophobia and Anti-Gay Legislation Galore: What's the Matter with Oklahoma? | AlterNet