Friday, March 14, 2008

I’ll just apologize now: Reading this may make you dumber

This doesn’t really matter, I suppose. It involves an Oklahoma State Representative, Sally Kern (R–District 84 [Oklahoma City]).

Oklahoma has developed quite a reputation in the last several years for being—well, uh, crazy, at least as far as their most outspoken politicians go. Ms. Kern is merely competing for this year’s Oklahoma Lunatic of the Month Hat/Codpiece.

I’m not going to point you at the many audio recordings of this. They are tedious and idiotic, and I’m hoping you can read faster than she can talk. I’ll include the full transcript below of the recording I heard, but here are the highlights:

• The “homosexual agenda” is destroying the nation.
• Homosexuals are more depressed, kill themselves more often than heterosexuals, and have shorter lifespans.
• No society that has “totally embraced homosexuality” has lasted more than a few decades.
• Homosexuality is a bigger national threat than terrorism. Or Islam.
• Homosexuals want to impose early childhood education so that they can indoctrinate children as young as two years of age.
• Students are no longer being taught facts and knowledge, but are being taught indoctrination.
• Kern knows this because she taught for nearly twenty years.
• Gays are infiltrating politics by getting elected to public office.
• Gays are akin to a cancer—it has to be dealt with before it becomes a more widespread problem, presumably before it kills us all.

Kern’s remarks were not given on the floor of the Oklahoma legislature; they were made a few weeks ago outside the State Capitol building to (as she put it) “grassroots individuals who are Republicans.” The remarks were recorded by an individual with somewhat more modern sensibilities, and somehow found their way onto YouTube.

Since then, Kern has been deluged with email and voicemails and letters, some of them threatening, many of them using crude sentiment to voice displeasure with her remarks.

On March 10, she issued a statement that made clear that she was not going to apologize. (It also made crystal-clear that she still had no idea what she was talking about.) The same day, she said, “I said nothing that was not true, I said nothing out of hate and I don't believe my colleagues will censure me.” Later, she claimed that she got an ovation from other Republicans in the Oklahoma House.

Unfortunately, most of Ms. Kern’s assertions she made about homosexuals are simply untrue. I tend to believe that she believes she wasn’t speaking out of hate—and yet, it seems to me that voicing an intense, passionate aversion to a group of people based on some sort of harebrained rhetoric proves her wrong.

But she is absolutely correct on one thing: her colleagues are unlikely to censure her. This is Oklahoma, after all, and a depressing number of people there actually believe this sort of tripe.

The homosexual agenda?

You know, I keep hearing this phrase from the religious right, and it has never, ever made sense to me. Ever.

The idea is that because (a) one cannot reproduce via homosexual activities, and that (b) apparently, homosexuals want to have homosexual children, therefore (c) homosexuals must “recruit” new homosexuals from the ranks of heterosexual children.

There’s no other word for it. It’s stupid. It is so stupid that one must consider a way of clarifying just how stupid it is. Butt-stupid. The assumptions this line of logic takes is insipidly delusional.

Just a little information

First of all—and I hate to break this to those of you who are steeped in your own fear and hate on the topic—sexual orientation is a very difficult thing to change. While there is occasionally some ambiguous activity at various points in a person’s childhood and adolescence, generally by the age of 25, orientation is pretty much set—and most of the time, much sooner than that. If anything, homosexuals are far more aware of this than many heterosexuals seem to be.

Orientation doesn’t seem to be affected by upbringing, either. I count among my friends two gay men who are both children of preachers—they were steeped in the Gospels and their churches, but in both cases, they were each developing feelings for people of their own gender by early adolescence. Neither one were “indoctrinated” or “recruited” in any way toward their orientation; they both claim that they just knew. Both are now in stable, long-term relationships with men.

Second, of the couple of dozen non-heterosexual people I know, none of them are interested in indoctrinating or sexualizing children. This isn’t surprising, either—those with a sexual interest in children are known as pedophiles, not homosexuals. The two concepts are not even related. In point of fact, homosexuals make up a smaller percentage of the pedophiliac population than they do the population at large—which is another way of saying that a pedophile is disproportionately more likely to be heterosexual than homosexual.

Third—and perhaps Ms Kern is unclear on this as well (since she seems to be confused by the entire topic of sexuality)—so far as I know, virtually all homosexual people in the world were the product of heterosexual encounters. (This has changed somewhat in the last thirty years, with advances in in vitro fertilization, sperm banks and the like, of course. But certainly, homosexuals were being born prior to the 1960s.) There are children being born at this very moment to church-going, God-fearing, heterosexual Bible-thumping right-wingers that will turn out to be homosexual, and no amount of pressure, guilt, agonizing condemnation, threat, exile or disavowal will change that.

Of course, that sort of behavior on the part of “Christian” parents is a significant contributing factor to one of the grain-of-truth items in Ms Kern’s screed: that high suicide rate. In short, there are gay adolescents who are at greater risk of suicide—not because they are gay, but because their pig-blinkered families are unable to accept them as they are, and willing to pile on intense pressure to force their child into a mold that is impossible for him or her to fit into.

That’s often what passes for Christian charity among such people.

In any case, the “homosexual agenda” (youth “recruitment”) is bogus on a number of fronts—it’s a red herring, a false accusation. It’s a lie. There is no homosexual agenda.

(Editor’s note: I called my friend Aaron during the course of writing this article, and he has informed me that he, personally, has a homosexual agenda. I won’t explain it in depth here, but it apparently involves the appalling state of men’s business-casual wear.)

The homosexual threat?

Let me put this in Aaron’s words: “Okay, so let me get this straight. This lady thinks that someone likely to drive a truck bomb into a building is preferable to having an actor-slash-waiter making a snarky comment about her tatty dung-colored jacket over her pancakes at Denny’s?’

Well, yes, it would seem so.

Unlike Ms Kern, I do not believe that homosexuals are a greater threat to this nation than terrorists. This is because I am not insane.

Indoctrination?

It’s an interesting word, isn’t it? It used to mean to teach. Now it means to teach a person or group to accept a set of beliefs uncritically whether or not those beliefs have any basis in reality.

Like the belief that homosexuality is destroying this nation.

Indoctrination is often tied to the word propaganda—biased and misleading information intended to promote a particular political cause.

In short, this is what Ms Kern is doing—not, so far as I know, those she has in her sights.

Destroying this nation?

Now, walk through this with me. Sally Kern believes that what someone does with their own genitalia, in private, with another consenting person, has the power to destroy America.

Does that seem insane to you? Sure does to me.

First off, what business is it of ours what consenting adults do in private? Second, how can her scenario possibly come to pass?

If Ms Kern would have the courage to answer either of those questions, this would be a more interesting debate. Instead, it’s merely a misinformed, idiotic and cowardly point of view.

Though I have to admit: the idea of, say, Andrew Sullivan bringing about the downfall of civilization by being in love with his partner is amusing, at least. (Step 1: Andrew falls in love with his partner. Step 2: Andrew marries his partner. Step 3: THE APOCALYPSE.)

Should she resign?

Many of those who are asking her to resign are missing the boat here. There is no reason she should step down from office. She is the duly elected representative from District 84—there were 8,815 people who wanted her in office in the 2004 election (4,215 votes went to her Democratic opponent, Ronald Wasson). Presumably, there are several thousand people in Oklahoma that are comfortable with their state representative speaking foolishly, and espousing this sort of insane bigoted conspiracy stuff about homosexuals.

Does that surprise anyone? This is Oklahoma we’re talking about.

But let me put this into some perspective. Here’s Sally Kern’s district:

See that tiny red speck in the middle of the state? That’s it. A bit over two-thirds of the voters in this tiny gerrymandered speck want this short-sighted pseudo-Republican, pseudo-conservative paranoid twit to represent them.

Ms Kern also thinks that evolution should not be taught in public schools, that science is inherently anti-Christian, and any of a number of other amusing theocratic views typical of the modern GOP.

When Oklahomans get embarrassed enough by their elected representatives, they’ll vote them out. That’s how it’s supposed to work.

Sadly, this may take a while. In the meantime, they have the right to appoint any voice they want.

Including a deluded Falwell-groupie like her.

The full transcript

My heartfelt condolences on what you are about to introduce to your brain.

Actually, what’s more likely to destroy this nation is determined ignorance. I even suspect that’s a more insidious, inexorable threat than terrorism.