Things That Make You Go “Wow”

Every once in a while I run across things that are just so bizarre that there is nothing I could possibly add.  This article by Ben Fenwick from the OK Gazette about Oklahoma Rep. Sally Kern’s appearance at the John Birch Society’s recent “Clouds Over America” conference is one of those things:

The crowd in the banquet hall at the Character Conference Center, housed in an old Holiday Inn in downtown Oklahoma City, sat packed, rapt with attention as Oklahoma state Rep. Sally Kern, R-Oklahoma City, told them she’d found it: the gay agenda.

Kern said the agenda is in a book called “After the Ball,” by Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen, a book named after a musical adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s “Lady Windermere’s Fan.” She recounted the bullet points of a secret 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.

Among the items in the agenda, Kern said, was getting the public to view homosexuality as a matter of taste, like a preference for strawberry or vanilla ice cream. She quoted the text: “The masses should not be shocked and repelled by premature exposure to homosexual behavior itself.”

“You know,” Kern said. “I’ve done a lot of reading on this. I wish I could describe to you their behavior. I will not because I would be redder than this suit. It’s their behavior that we oppose.

“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. … The homosexuals get it — it’s a struggle between our religious freedoms and their right to do what they want to do.”

Around the banquet hall, Kern’s speech met with applause and calls of “Amen!” from a crowd stoked in a crucible of conspiracy and intrigue. For the whole day, the “Clouds Over America” conference, run and organized by the John Birch Society, held lecture after lecture Jan. 23 and 24 dedicated to explaining their various conspiracy-laden tenets. Here’s one — that a godless secret society, the Illuminati, has been battling against the founding of the United States of America and decent citizens to live in peaceful, worshipful freedom.

Kern called for a new “Great Awakening,” referring to a period of religious revivals from the 18th century considered precursor to the American Revolution.

“The solution is another Great Awakening, folks,” Kern said. “We need a spiritual revival, and that will only come if God’s people, especially you pastors, will stand in your pulpits and vocally preach the word of God and thus declare the Lord this sin, and preach it in love, only then does our nation have a chance of overcoming the scourge of AIDS, HIV and the devastating destruction that the homosexual lifestyle is bringing on your children and our grandchildren.”

Be sure to read the whole thing, because it just gets crazier from there, with speakers explaining that America is not really at war with Islamic fundamentalists, but rather a vast Communist conspiracy that includes the Council on Foreign Relations, the World Trade Organization, the Federal Reserve, the United Nations, and every US Secretary of State.