Monday, March 17, 2008

If this is the calvary, then Sally Kern can kiss her butt goodbye

So a week after Oklahoma Rep. Sally Kern made her ugly comments about the lgbt community, members of the anti-gay industry are slowly crawling out to defend her.

Kern and our friend Peter LaBarbera conducted an interview with Concerned Women for America member Matt Barber in which they did everything short of standing on their heads in attempting to defend her comments.

And now a Canadian so-called "pro-family" site tries to spin the story in her favor.

I give them all a C - for effort in trying to shift focus away from Kern's comments and to the responses she received.

They emphasized the possibility of Kern receiving death threats, omitting of course the fact that the claim of death threats were exaggerated.

I noticed also how they are trying to phrase Kern's comments as an example of a Christian "speaking the truth" about homosexuality without actually going into too much detail in terms of the comments, especially the one about gays "indoctrinating" two-year-olds.

Sorry, y'all but it's just not going to work. And I think you know that. After all, why did it take you so long to defend her?

No matter what your beliefs about homosexuality, you just can't skip over how Kern compared the lgbt community to terrorists.

While some people may not approve of homosexuality per se, many know a lot of gay couples who are maintaining a home and raising a family. In their eyes, comparing these families to people who will fly planes into buildings or carry strapped bombs into shopping plaza just isn't right.

And anyone who tries to gloss over this fact should really examine their belief systems.

And yes, I know that I am repeating the main point about this situation, but you see, it bears repeating. This thing should not be approached like an item on Perez Hilton's blog.

And the real story is just beginning. Gay Oklahomans are wanting to meet with Kern.

She has a duty to meet them. It doesn't have to be a large meeting or one in which the media is invited, but Kern has a responsibility to sit down with her constituents and explain to them why she feels that some are worse than terrorists.

This situation has never been about her, but them. Oklahomans, just like other Americans, elect people to protect their interests and look out for their well beings.

Kern has a right to her opinion but a duty to do her job.

Of course the ironic thing about her defenses is the headline on the Americans for Truth (in name only) page saying that Kern trusts God to protect her from alleged death threats.

I tend to think that if she had truly consulted God in the first place, she wouldn't be in this mess.


Where do these people come from?

Apparently the foot in the mouth disease that plagues Sally Kern is spreading.

And it is looking like the highest risk group are those who call themselves "Christian conservatives."

Mary Frances Forrester, the wife of North Carolina Representative James Forrester, wrote an absolutely ridiculous piece in which she did what the anti-gay industry does on a daily basis: accuse the lgbt community of trying to take over America and harm children.

And like the anti-gay industry, she uses the standard lies and junk science, including the "studies" of our friend, Paul Cameron (now there is a name I haven't said in a while.)

My gosh, she even distorts the infamous Michael Swift piece of 1987. Swift's piece was a satirical look at what the anti-gay industry actually thinks lgbts want to do to children and the country at large.

The problem is that many took it seriously, even though the piece clearly said at the beginning that it was meant to be satire.

In Forrester's trash, she omits that part and Matt Comer of Q-Notes calls her on it.

In fact, he even calls her out on many of her bad references, including this one:

What the great senator’s wife neglects to tell readers is that her statistics come from the debunked and APA-booted “Doctor” Paul Cameron. His lifespan “studies” have been proven to be methodically inaccurate and skewed. But Mrs. Forrester’s intellectual dishonesty doesn’t stop at where she gets her statistics from, or her failure to properly cite them. In her op-ed, Mrs. Forrester actually twists the twisted study from which she received her numbers.

Forrester and Kern seems to suffer from egotism. They are so sure of their Christian beliefs about homosexuality that they cite bad sources as proof of their arguments without even checking for truthfulness.

In Kern's case, when she was called to the carpet for her inaccuracies, she blames other people. She seems to forget that humility and admitting when you are wrong are Christian virtues.

And I have a feeling that Forrester may be the same way.

I would definitely recommend Comer's excellent deconstruction of Forrester's lies, but if you want more detail as to how these lies came into being, go to my web page Anti-Gay Lies and Liars and pan down to the time line.

For details about the Michael Swift piece, check out the year 1987. For information on Paul Cameron, pick any year from 1981 onward. Trust me on that one.

Yes, it's a shameless plug, but it needs to be said. What Kern and Forrester said did not happen in a vaccum. There has been an over 20-year accumulation of bad science, distorted studies, and urban legends about the lgbt community which the anti-gay industry now uses to beat us over the head.

And more attention needs to be focused on it.

Otherwise we are going to be up to our armpits with Forresters and Kerns.

That is if we aren't already.