Sally Kern

Yesterday, David Barton and Rick Green hosted Oklahoma State Representative Sally Kern on WallBuilders Live to discuss her new book, The Stoning of Sally Kern, and caution listeners about the dangers of saying “something disparaging about homosexuality.” Kern’s book details her political activism and the fallout of her claim that the “homosexual agenda is destroying this nation ... it’s the biggest threat that our nation has, even more so than terrorism or Islam,” a sentiment she recently repeated, telling anti-gay activist Peter LaBarbera that homosexuality is “more dangerous” than terrorism.

Barton said, “If you touch homosexuality, be prepared to pay a price,” warning that it “may cost your life.” Later in the interview, Green said Kern must have experienced a “physical fear” of the “militant” gay-rights activists, and Kern told her story of how she was prepared to lose her life over the issue.

Listen:

Barton: With all of the protection we have for free speech, there’s still a number of areas where you’re not free to speak out on certain things. If you touch homosexuality, be prepared to pay a price, not just attacks, it’s gonna cost you economically, other things as well, may cost your life. This is, the way people respond to what you say about homosexuality if you criticize it and we got Sally Kern today, State Rep from Oklahoma who experienced that first time, what happens if you exercise your right of free speech and happen to say something disparaging about homosexuality.

…

Kern: I have to be honest with you Rick, when I was sitting there in my car that day and when she told me that those emails were coming from homosexuals, honestly, fear gripped by whole body, because I was very aware of the homosexual lobbyists and the power that they have. And people say, ‘oh you’re so brave, so heroic,’ but I’m not, I’m just a sinner saved by grace and I was gripped with fear that day. I just said, ‘Lord, what have I done?’

Green: And not just I would think not just fear, not a political fear, physical fear; there’s a militant agenda out there as well.

Kern: It entered our mind but honestly, and I mentioned this in the book, the Saturday night when my husband and I sit down and really talked about this and prayed about it, when we asked ourselves the question, are we willing to even lose our lives over this? I can’t tell you, Rick, how liberating that was, it really was.

Oklahoma Republican state legislator Sally Kern spoke on August 31st with Peter LaBarbera of Americans for Truth About Homosexuality to promote her new book, The Stoning of Sally Kern. Kern is best known for saying that homosexuality is “the biggest threat our nation has, even more so than terrorism or Islam.” Kern has tried to explain that her remarks were taken out of context and distorted by the media, but she repeated her claim that homosexuality is “more dangerous” than terrorist attacks while speaking with LaBarbera, lamenting that young people are “bombarded” with the message that “homosexuality is normal and natural.” “It’s something they have to deal with every day,” Kern said, “Fortunately we don’t have to deal with a terrorist attack every day.”

Listen:

You know if you just look at it in practical terms, which has destroyed and ended the life of more people? Terrorism attack here in America or HIV/AIDS? In the last twenty years, fifteen to twenty years, we’ve had maybe three terrorist attacks on our soil with a little over 5,000 people regrettably losing their lives. In the same time frame, there have been hundreds of thousands who have died because of having AIDS. So which one’s the biggest threat? And you know, every day our young people, adults too, but especially our young people, are bombarded at school, in movies, in music, on TV, in the mall, in magazines, they’re bombarded with ‘homosexuality is normal and natural.’ It’s something they have to deal with every day. Fortunately we don’t have to deal with a terrorist attack every day, and that’s what I mean.

…

It’s more dangerous, and yes I think that it’s also more dangerous because it will tear down the moral fiber of this nation. We were founded as a nation upon the principles of religion and morality, if we take those out from under our society we will lose what has made us a great nation, we will no longer be a virtuous people, which we see happening already. And without virtue this nation will not survive.

Oklahoma Republican legislator Sally Kern joined the American Family Association’s Tim Wildmon on American Family Radio yesterday to discuss her new book, The Stoning of Sally Kern. Kern, who previously argued that homosexuality is a greater threat to the US than terrorism and should be criminalized, and Wildmon agreed that the real “hateful” people are those who do not believe that gays and lesbians can change their sexual orientation and become straight:

Wildmon: Now Sally as you just said, nobody hates the individual homosexual. We want to see them come to repentance and know the Lord and have their lives changed, that’s what we want to see. So we have compassion for people like that

Kern: To me what is hateful is when those people who say ‘you’re born this way, there’s no hope in change, you’re stuck in this, deal with it,’ that is hate. There’s no hope in that

Kern ended the interview with a rallying cry for “God’s people to stand up” to gay rights advocates, who she called the “tip of the spear” of the movement “trying to tear down the moral fiber of America”:

Kern: We’re losing our freedom of conscience. And if the homosexuals get what they want, and as you said it’s not just homosexuality, its immorality or adultery, all of that, but in my opinion the homosexual movement is the tip of the spear. They’re the ones who right now are beating down the door, have their foot in the door, trying to tear down the moral fiber of America. We have to stand up to that. The reason it’s the tip of the spear you don’t see ‘Adulterers Victory Fund’ out there trying to promote adultery. God’s people got to stand up to this.

It took me just about two hours to make it through "The Stoning of Sally Kern: The Liberal Attack on Christian Conservatism - And Why We Must Take a Stand" which pretty much tells you all you need to know about this vapid amalgamation of right-wing cliches that Kern cobbled together and tried to pass off as a book.

Kern's book reads like a greatest hits collection of right-wing talking points as she fear-mongers about everything from Kevin Jennings to ENDA to the Department of Homeland Security while mixing in references to the works of David Barton, David Horowitz and even full-blown Christian Reconstructionists like Gary DeMar.

[As it turns out, Kern more or less has Barton to thank for turning her into a national pariah as it was at one of his Wallbuilders ProFamily Legislators Conference that she first learned about the insidious homosexual agenda that was a bigger threat to this nation than terrorism and decided to begin speaking out against it.]

In the book, Kern claims that her original statement was poorly worded and then taken out of context and misrepresented ... and she then proceeds to clarify by saying the very same thing:

One of the snippets from my now infamous speech that has been replayed endlessly by my critics on the Left is the sentence in which I say that the homosexual lifestyle and its agenda are "a greater threat than terrorism." If I hadn't been in such a hurry to hit all my points, I would have elaborated on that thought in a way that wouldn't have left me so open to outrage and demagoguery ...

Terrorists seem to do damage to our nation and to its people. Yet we, the American people, are bringing the wholesale destruction of our nation upon ourselves as we wholeheartedly embrace homosexuality, a lifestyle proven to be dangerous and deadly. We are currently very vigilant against the terrorist threat against us. We seem oblivious to this more pervasive inner decay.

My hope and prayer is that this book and the hate-storm I've been through will in some way help to change that dangerous complacency.

I haven't felt this cheated by a Religious Right author since Matt Barber conned me out of $30 by surreptitiously stitching together a bunch his columns and then selling it as a book.