Oklahoma state representative engages in intolerance

By Akilah Monifa, April 3, 2008

Elected officials should stop demonizing gay people.

Oklahoma state Rep. Sally Kern is the latest to fan the flames of intolerance.

Earlier this year, in a speech to the Oklahoma City Republican Club, she stated that homosexuality is “the biggest threat our nation has, even more so than terrorism or Islam.”
She also said, “They want to get our young children into the government schools so they can indoctrinate them. They are going after our young children, as young as two years of age, to try to teach them that the homosexual lifestyle is an acceptable lifestyle. … If you have cancer in your little toe, do you just say that I'm going to forget about it since the rest of you is fine? It spreads! This stuff is deadly and it is spreading. It will destroy our young people and it will destroy this nation.”

After her speech leaked out on the Internet, gay and lesbian rights groups demanded that she apologize.

She refused to do so, though she denied she was “anti-gay” or “gay-bashing.”

And she attended a “Rally for Sally” at the capitol in Oklahoma City on April 2.

Kern told the more than 1,000 demonstrators: “This is not about me. It’s about the church having the right to speak out about the redeeming love of Jesus Christ who died to set us all free from our sins.”

But that’s not the issue at all. Kern and her church can say whatever they want. And in their parochial schools, they can teach children whatever they want. But as an elected official, she has an obligation not to engage in hate speech. And that’s what her comparisons to terrorism and cancer are.

What she so despises about our public schools I applaud. We should teach tolerance there — and throughout our society.

There is too much intolerance going around.