There's this YouTube video with part of an audio recording of Oklahoma Representative Sally Kern, and then there's pictures of people holding up signs that say stuff like "I'm listening", and then there's stuff like "This is what they say when they think we're not listening" But this is pretty much the same old speech I've heard for like thirty years. I guess they haven't been listening. It's not like a secret or anything.
I don't think she even said anything original. It's probably mostly bits taken from one of her husband's sermons. Somebody says this every Sunday. I'm thinking, am I the only one who has been to church in the last three decades? And I haven't gone that much recently, but it still wasn't like news to me or anything.
The only thing that usually isn't in the speech is the bit about "the very fact that I'm talking to you like this here today, puts me in jeopardy." I don't think I've heard that added bit of drama before. I wonder if that was the main reason for the recording being kept.
Like I said, I haven't been in church much recently, and I haven't heard this stuff in a while. I think the Islam reference was added after 911. And as for "studies show, that no society that has totally embraced homosexuality has lasted more than, you know, a few decades," I have more often heard it said that God will not bless the nation if we continue to allow this. But there's a lot of other things that God won't bless the nation for, like if we're not allies with Israel.
And, "gays are infiltrating city councils" sounds a bit weird to me now. I think that is the way it is usually said, but now I don't think infiltrate is the right term. I'm not sure what word to use instead, but when I hear infiltrate it makes me think of spies. I don't picture gays pretending to be straight so that they can win elections. I think that there just happens to be about 10 percent of them in various elected offices just as in anything else. Possibly they keep their personal business quiet, and possibly in small towns they prefer to keep that a secret, but usually I just don't think the people who voted for them care and that wasn't part of the criteria for choosing who would be good at the job. Perhaps in big cities with a higher percentage of gays they might even make that part of their campaigns. "I'm gay, and you're gay, or you know someone who is, so vote for me, cause I'm gay too." Hardly an infiltration.
Still, I know what she meant, and as the speech is usually given over and over again to people who have already heard it, she's probably used to talking to people who already knew what she meant.
Was this her whole speech? It's less than three minutes. Anyway, it was pretty mild. From the way everyone seemed to react to it, I was expecting something really bad. She was pretty civil. The Bible says you shouldn't do this and so you shouldn't do it, and we need to return to Christian morals and family values, etc.... That was about it. So it's kind of weird that everyone thinks she should resign or something. Isn't this is what she got elected for in the first place?
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18 comments:
She's preaching hatred against a group of people.
She compares gay people to terrorists and cancer and says they must be eliminated.
Who's next? The black people? The Jews?
This is a government official. She doesn't just represent the religious people in her community, she represents ALL the people in her community even the gay ones.
That's why there has to be a separation of church and state. The state has to look out for people of all religions, creeds, colors and yes sexual preferences.
She didn't say anything about hating anybody. She's against certain behaviors. You're reading hatred into it, but it just isn't there.
If this is the whole speech, she didn't say to elimate anybody.
I doubt government officials feel the need to support everyone. My state is more important than other states, the people who voted for me are more important than people who voted against me, etc...
And I still think you're reading a lot into this separation of church and state that the writers didn't intend. They certainly didn't look out for all people equally. Adult white men who owned property were the main people who counted. Blacks and Indians didn't even count as whole people.
It's weird that people don't think Sally Kern should have the freedom of free speech that everyone else has.
Freedom of speech has it's limitations.
You can't yell Fire in a crowded theater, you can't use "fighting words". You can't say, "Hey Dave, kill Bob for me."
When you compare a class or kind of people to a cancer and say you can't just let the cancer be or it will spread you are indeed implying that the cancer should be eliminated.
When you call a class or type of people more dangerous than terrorists, you are indeed trying to make people afraid of them and hate them.
And you are quite frankly wrong about the founding fathers and the separation of church and state. The people that founded America were fleeing religious prosecution in the country that they left.
They saw that when the state and religion became mixed that one religion eventually prevailed to the point where others were not tolerated.
That's why the separation is there so that one cannot become dominant and that everyone is free to practice the religion that they want.
And as for the government officials not feeling the need to support everyone, if they feel that way then thet're not qualified for the job.
A government official's job is to do the work that we the tax payers tell them to do.
Like I've said before, 376 years ago everyone thought the world was flat too, that doesn't make it right. Just because 231 years ago men didn't think that black men or Indian men didn't count as whole people doesn't make it right either.
This woman has a gay son by the name of Jesse that she has disowned.
I personally think she's just flipped out because she's been conned into this belief that being gay is something you chose or are talked into instead of a genetic happenstance. She's racked with guilt because she thinks she caused her son to be gay somehow and this is how she's dealing with it.
The last theory I heard, guys are born gay because of something that sounds more like an antibody than a gene. The more older brothers you have (from your birth-mother) increases the chances of a man being gay. In the case of my brother-in-law, he has four older brothers. I haven't polled anyone else on their family trees, so I'm still mostly in the genetic theory.
In either case, they still choose who they have sex with, and they can still choose not to have sex, same as anyone else. And if we're not supposed to have sex outside of marriage, which is what Baptists believe, then you don't get out of it by saying that you're gay. If you can't find someone of the opposite sex to spend your life with, then no sex. End of story.
I would rather go after the straight people first, but there are a lot more of them to deal with.
And you don't get to decide who is qualified for the job. The voters who put her in office already decided that. If they have changed their minds, they can elect someone else next time. But for now she's going to do the job that she feels she was hired to do. And we can discuss it, but our opinions don't really count since neither of us can vote in Oklahoma.
And I think that I might have studied a thing or two about religious prosecution that led to the English colonies. They wanted everyone to be free to worship God in their own way. But seriously, they wouldn't have counted half of this stuff we have now as religions. And I really don't think that you'd find any of them defending gay people.
I'm truly sad that people think like this.
LATS,
I have to ask, do you think that black people and Indians don't count as full people?
Don't you see the parallels between the hatred and persecution of gays compared to that of black people and Indians?
And as for the sex outside the marriage thing, that's your religion. Why should anyone else be forced to capitulate to tenants of your religion?
I know damn well the founding fathers weren't this group of superheroes that pissed gold and shat diamonds. But just because they didn't necessarily mean blacks and Indians should be part of the all men being equal thing doesn't negate the fact that 200 years later we know this is how it should be.
200 years from now society is going to correctly look down upon the people who persecute gays as being as wrong as the people who wanted to enslave blacks and kill Indians.
All men are equal, even those that fuck other men.
And it still isn't a hate speech, and she's still allowed to say what she thinks should be done.
I hear worse than this from my inlaws, and they don't hate their brother and sister.
W.Dave: Please show me how it is a church/state issue. I don't recall this representative saying she was speaking for a church. She was expressing her personal views. "Separation of church and state" is not even in the Constitution, but it does have a large overlap with part of the First Amendment.
If we went to get as extreme to bar politicians from expressing views because some church or other happens to have some of these same views, we'd probably shut down and silence Congress, because churches/etc do express official views on all sides of issues of the day. We could start with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, because it was pushed by a certain Christian preacher and other religious figures.
@Dmarks
Excellent point.
I did not mean to pigeonhole it as only a separation of church and state argument.
To me this is more a first amendment issue based on what is and what is not hate speech or "fighting words"
To me these are "fighting words" and not protected under free speech.
But along the lines of the separation of church and state, when do personal opinions based on religious teachings start to cross that line?
I know very well that the words "separation of church and state" don't ever appear in the constitution.
The First Amendment guarantees that Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.
If we start making laws based on religious views (homosexuality is a sin and bad and evil in the views of this woman's church it seems) then are we not establishing that the laws of that religion are now governing the people and creating an ad hoc establishment of religion?
But where else do you think that the laws come from? We try to think of what is right and wrong and what is fair and such based on how we were raised and our religion and such. That's not the same thing is making a law that says you have to go to my church.
That ties in to what I think that "The First Amendment guarantees that Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion" means.
It prevents laws forcing people to go to a church or pay money to it (or religious requirements for public office, receiving welfare, etc). It does not ban people from acting on their conscience and morality because somewhere along the line a church inspired it, or a church is preaching the same thing as that view.
@LATS
You act as if all laws were based on religious teachings. This is not the case. Most laws are reactionary.
Somebody does something that most other people in the community don't like, they can't do anything about it because there is no law against it, a law quickly passes to prevent it from happening again.
Before that laws were made to enforce the will of the people in power, mainly the monarchy.
@Dmarks
I disagree with your interpretation of the amendment.
I believe the way it is worded is also to prevent religious edicts as getting passed off as laws.
People have to realize that different religions (or lack thereof in my case), establish different views of what is and what is not moral.
While not a binding legal document, another important document in this country's history is the Declaration of Independence that makes it clear that the unalienable rights of each man include life liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
This means that unless your fellow man is harming you, you shouldn't be making laws to limit what he does as this infringes upon the liberty and pursuit of happiness thing.
Our liberties are being eroded one by one and people are blindly letting it happen and even contributing to the cause when they start talking about establishing amendments to the constitution forbidding gay marriage.
When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.
When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.
When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.
When they came for the Jews,
I remained silent;
I wasn't a Jew.
When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.
What are you going to do when they come for you?
@wmc:
"I believe the way it is worded is also to prevent religious edicts as getting passed off as laws."
But what is a religious edict? Some religious groups are passionately in favor of gay rights. So pro-gay stuff could be called a religious edict. See also my previous reference to the religious roots of Dr. King and his religious colleagues pushing for the Civil Rights act. Unitarians favor gay marriage, so the Unitarian stance must be kept out of government, right? It's a religious edict?
"Declaration of Independence... means that unless your fellow man is harming you, you shouldn't be making laws to limit what he does as this infringes upon the liberty and pursuit of happiness thing."
So, we can factor religion out of it entirely, can't we? That's what I've been trying to do here. This part of your argument supports that idea. And just evaluate laws against what you just said? No having to stretch the 1st Amendment to imply that it is OK to censor those who don't have the same religion you do.
And then you end up evaluating Sally Kern's statements simply on what she said, instead of saying she has no right to say anything because of her religion.
"When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist."
If the Nazis had left with the Communists and left it at that, imagine how much better we'd have been without both of these movements.
@Dmarks
The only reason I ever bring religion into any argument about law or morality or ethics is because the people I am talking with try to use religion as a shield to justify what they are doing.
Sally Kern cites all these wonderful studies about the gay lifestyle and how no society that has completely embraced it has lasted more than 2 decades.
Who did all these studies she cites? What culture has ever completely embraced the homosexual lifestyle?
As for communism, it's an awesome dream. Unrealistic as hell but an awesome dream. In a true communist society, everyone contributes for the good of the society and gets an equal share of the contributed pool. Everyone's labor is valued equally. The labor of the lowly janitor is valued at the same rate as the doctor performing open heart surgery.
There's nothing wrong with that. It's the ultimate form of mutual respect. Hell I want to open a commune with a slightly different structure. The only problem with communism is that it has never existed.
But getting back to Ms. Kern. She denounces Islam. She calls homosexuals a bigger danger than terrorism.
This is hate speech. These are fighting words. It is not protected speech.
Her denouncing of gays comes from her religious views which is how the conversation of religion enters the picture.
As for what is a religious edict, let's take Judaism as an example. It is forbidden as a religious edict for Jews to eat pork.
Say I live in a predominantly Jewish neighborhood. (I did for a time in Toronto) Now what if since it's a predominantly Jewish neighborhood, most of the city council turned out to be Jewish? Not a far fetched scenario.
Now what if they enacted a city bylaw forbidding the sale of pork in the neighborhood?
Enough people voted for the religious people to get on the city council and enough votes passed the bylaw. Should it stand?
I say no.
You are forcing a law down my throat that is only there by reason of your religious beliefs.
Your religious edict is intruding on my liberty to sell pork chops or at the very least forcing me to go a long way out of my way for bacon.
While this example is on a local level feel free to knock it up to a federal level.
"The only problem with communism is that it has never existed."
It exists alright. Just ask Southest Asians who fled to the US whose relatives were killed by communists back home. That's just for starters. But that's a side point. I'll give LATS a chance to catch up on the rest of it, if she wants.
Sorry guys, but I've been at school all day and I am quite tired.
My fellow man is hurting me.
They have come for me already.
I wrote about some of this stuff a long time ago. I didn't think any of it was going to apply to me personally, but I did think things were getting out of hand. Maybe I should have done more than write about it. But that's what I do. I write and I make art. So I hoped that someone would read what I wrote and maybe think of something to do. That didn't happen.
Things are bad. Sally Kern is trying to do something that she thinks will help, and people who don't agree with her suddenly think she's shouldn't be allowed free speech. It is such a small thing compared to what I would like to do, but if she lived here I would try to do something to support her anyway.
@Dmarks
When I said "The only problem with communism is that it has never existed."
I meant that what is called communism in the world as it is today is not true communism, they are brutal dictatorships that call themselves communists in an attempt to make themselves sound better.
North Korea and China and Cuba call themselves communist countries but not everyone gets the the same slice of the pie so it's not real communism.
That's why I phrased it like I did. Communism is a great form of government on paper but it has never been applied in real life.
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