Oklahoma's Kern: Raging against the dying of the light

By Rob Howard
Associate Editor

Articles deriding Oklahoma state Rep. Sally Kern continue to roll in from across the nation. Kern is the homophobic author of several (but not all) of the anti-LGBT legislation proposed in the state’s legislature. The number of bills, at 27 and counting, appear to make Oklahoma the “winner” in the anti-gay legislation sweepstakes for 2016. However, Kern doesn’t limit herself to hateful anti-gay legislation.

The most pointed headline was from DallasVoice.com, the website for Dallas’ LGBT newspaper. It read, “Okla. Rep Sally Kern introduces what may be her stupidest legislation yet.” The website said, “Earlier this week, she introduced new anti-gay bills that would prevent LGBT kids from seeking help from a counselor that might help them.

“Now she’s introduced legislation that would allow science teachers to make up their own facts if they don’t care for the scientific facts.”

The website concluded, “Kern consistently sponsors anti-gay and anti-science bills. Since entering the Oklahoma Legislature, she’s basically passed nothing.

“Someone in the Oklahoma legislature should introduce legislation that requires the state’s science teachers to believe in science.”

Mark Joseph Stern, writing in Slate.com, came up with a headline that read, “The Latest Anti-Gay Oklahoma Bills Are Almost Too Crazy to Believe.”

Stern writes, “Outrageous anti-LGBTQ bills are now a fixture of the American legislative landscape. At the start of each year, extremist legislators come forward with a slew of discriminatory proposals, ranging from cleverly underhanded to openly deranged. Oklahoma’s latest bills fall on the latter side of that spectrum. In addition to some typical “religious liberty” legislation that would let businesses refuse service to gays—par for the course at this point—Oklahoma Republicans have cooked up some fascinatingly cruel bills.”

He then lists the bills “ranked in terms of sadistic ingenuity.”

His list includes Kern’s HB 1598, which would protect and promote ex-gay conversion therapy, which has been condemned by mental health professionals, and declared torture by a UN agency; and HB 3044, which would prevent depressed and suicidal queer youth from seeing a gay-affirmative school counselor.

Stern writes, “For these kids, public school counselors provide a critical lifeline, connecting queer youth with LGBTQ groups and gay-affirming therapists—often without the knowledge of their parents, who would surely forbid their child from seeing an enlightened counselor.

“HB 3044—which Kern also sponsored—would rip away this lifeline. The bill states that no public school ‘counselor, therapist, social worker, administrator, teacher or other individual’ can ‘refer a student under the age of eighteen’ to any ‘individual, organization or entity’ if the referral ‘pertain[s] to human sexuality.’”

RawStory.com’s article on HB 3044 was headlined, “Oklahoma Republican wants to forbid suicidal LGBT kids from meeting gay-friendly therapists.” The article calls the bill “expressly cruel.”

Out.com featured Kern in an article, saying, “It's a sad day when the LGBT community needs to be updated about the push for anti-LGBT laws in 2016. Gay marriage was legalized in June 2015, but one state in particular—Oklahoma—is holding on tight to the discrimination.

“Don't blame the entirety of Oklahoma for the scarily conservative legislation. Look no further than Representative Sally Kern, who has tried to do the exact same thing in January 2015.

“In reference to last year's bill proposals, Rep. Kern told KFOR, ‘They [the LGBT community] are on the wrong side of the moral issue, so yes they are going to seem like they are attacked.’"

It’s probably not the last we’ll hear about Kern and her bigoted (and anti-scientific) pieces of legislation, or the anti-LGBT legislation proposed by a small group of ultra-conservative representatives and senators.

“What are we to make of these ridiculous bills? Asked Stern, in his Slate.com piece. He concluded, “Presuming they are not avant-garde performance art—something we mustn’t rule out—I suspect they represent the last gasps of a lost cause.

“For decades, state legislatures could pass vulgar anti-gay legislation and simply get away with it. Now that federal courts are vigorously enforcing constitutional protections for gays, legislators like Kern are left to impotently rage against the dying of the light. The results are bizarre, humiliating, and pathetic. That, it seems, is what losing a culture war looks like.”

The Gayly – February 1, 2016 @ 5:35 p.m.