According to The Greely Gazette, when local pastor Paul Blair spoke out in opposition to an Oklahoma City proposal to add sexual orientation to the city’s anti-discrimination policy, he and his church received death and bomb threats. But Blair refuses to be intimidated by such threats and has decided, instead, to take a stand by running for state office:
Paul Blair, Pastor of Fairview Baptist Church in Edmond, Oklahoma told the council that the law was unnecessary and would create an unfair burden on employers and could allow men to use women’s restrooms and locker rooms.
Following his remarks, Blair and the church have been threatened with violence.
…
Blair said it was amazing that the threats against his church and himself have been largely ignored by the national media.
“If I would have left these types of threats on the voicemail of the local ‘gay’ alliance, I would have been in jail before sundown. It would have been on the front page of the New York Times and the lead story on CNN.”
The threats have motivated Blair to further action. “On Sunday, I announced to members of the church I was going to be running for the Oklahoma State Senate. I received a standing ovation.”
This might all be more believable if Blair was not already a rabidly anti-gay Religious Right activist – that is him, second from the right, with Tony Perkins and Janet Porter at the Dominionist-infused May Day for America prayer rally in 2010:
Blair is also a close ally of Rep. Sally Kern and spoke at the “Rally for Sally” to show support for her after she said gays represent a bigger threat to America than terrorism.
He is also the head of the reborn Reclaiming America For Christ organization and was a participant in the self-aggrandizing anti-hate crimes “Rally for Religious Freedom” where various anti-gay activists vowed never to stop preaching against homosexuality and challenged the Justice Department to prosecute them.
In fact, Blair and his organization produced this ten minute video called “The Criminalization of Christianity” which warned that hate crimes legislation – which Blair called the “Pedophile Protection Act” – would “make it possible for a pastor to be prosecuted for doing nothing more than preaching a Biblical sermon on Sunday”:
So Blair is not just some local pastor mobilized to run for office because of supposed threats from gay activists; he’s a full-blown anti-gay Religious Right activist who is now seeking to turn his radical agenda into state law.
