Oklahoma state Representative Sally Kern is obsessed with gay people. Just last year she was caught on tape talking about how gays are more of a threat to the United States that “terrorism or Islam.” Kern is back this year, telling those gathered for a John Birch Society conference in Oklahoma City, that she has discovered the gay agenda.
According to Kern, the book, written by Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen and based on a musical adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s Lady Windermere’s Fan, documents a “public relations campaign to have gays accepted by the general public — step by step — with the final goal being not just acceptance of gays by heterosexuals but eventual triumph of homosexuality as a superior lifestyle.”
And how will gays and lesbians complete this diabolical plan to show they have a “superior lifestyle”?
“This theme of equality and freedom is the approach that the homosexuals are using today — totally perverting the true intention of what our Constitution meant,” she continued. “The homosexuals get it — it’s a struggle between our religious freedoms and their right to do what they want to do.”
Ah, there’s the old canard that always gets trotted out by those on the religious right — it’s gays vs. God! Those filthy gays and lesbians want to end our “religious freedoms” — which is the code phrase for “they want to pass hate crimes laws that make it illegal for us to call them the filthy sinners they are.”
As a Christian, who just also happens to be a lesbian, I take offense at this continuing campaign on the religious right to promote this false dichotomy of gays vs. God. No one in the gay and lesbian community wants to curb anyone’s “religious freedom.” What our community is fighting for is our freedom to not be abused in the name of religion and to not have our freedoms curtailed or denied in the name of religion.
The ultimate goal of gay and lesbian people, in my opinion, is to call us all to a “superior lifestyle” — a lifestyle that recognizes the inherent worth and humanity of every human being, whether we agree with them, or like their choice of life partner, or not. What the fight for gay and lesbian equality – or any group’s equality for that matter – calls us to is a “superior lifestyle” that leads to full inclusion of anyone on the margins, and grants them fairness in housing, hiring, and yes, in marriage.
The “superior lifestyle” that we are all called to engage in has been outlined by some of the greatest religious leaders in our history, including a guy from Nazareth who insisted on extending grace, love, and mercy especially to those most despised by the powerful and super religious of his day. If gays and lesbians can lead our society to that kind of “superior lifestyle” then Kern has nothing to fear — even she will find grace and mercy in that society.
