aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

Thursday, April 10, 2008

Sally Kern: lying homophobe exposed

I think I have been fairly generous towards Sally Kern. Appalled at the outset as any self-respecting gay person would be, I thought her son made a decent case that his mother might come around one day.

While the meeting with Oklahoma PFLAG was hopeful, things turned sour quickly. From PFLAG’s National Blog:

Oklahoma Representative Sally Kern just doesn’t seem to learn:  Tape recorders are decidedly not her friend.

It’s been just over a week since the midwest’s favorite homophobe told her local paper, The Oklahoman, that PFLAG supporters from the state took her “statements and have spun them” to misrepresent her views on anti-gay job discrimination and her vow to at least consider an ongoing dialogue with us.  Her comments followed a meeting at the state capitol with Oklahoma City PFLAG president Rev. Loyce Newton-Edwards and two other local supporters.

PFLAG applauded Kern for agreeing to the sit-down . . . only to be on the receiving end of a mad Sally slap-down.  Kern and her supporters went so far as to refer to the three members of the clergy who took part in the meeting as “false prophets,” and attacked the credibility of our Oklahoma PFLAG families.  And even though we weighed in with our own fact-check of Sally’s allegations, she continued to insist that she did not say what she said.

So now it’s time to get out the audio player again.  Sally Kern, meet yourself on the YouTube.

That’s right.  Sally’s staff consented to having her meeting with PFLAG recorded, and her words speak for themselves. . . listen in as Sally pontificates on job discrimination . . . gay millionaires . . . lesbian golfers . . . and a little boy named “Jimmy.”

As the full 40-minute audio recording released this morning by PFLAG proves, Kern said not once (at about 15 minutes and 30 seconds in) that she does not believe GLBT people should be fired from their jobs . . . but she said it twice (again at about 33:15), confirming her stance when Rev. Kathy McCallie recaps the meeting near its end.  [...]

In fact, if you look at PFLAG’s characterization of the meeting last week, and Kern’s version of the encounter in the local press, there is no question that Sally flat-out lied to reporters. [...]

Kern also weighs in on “the homosexual agenda,” which, she explains, is a lot like a “to-do list.” And to-do lists are suddenly all the rage, for sure.  According to Kern, everyone has one these days, Jesus and Tim Gill included.

But perhaps Sally’s most poignant moment is one that exists only in her head.  Midway through the conversation, and clearly an hour or so before her next round of medication is due, Kern waxes philosophical on the awesome power of teachers . . . to convince our children they’re gay.

It is the story of little Jimmy, a theoretical Oklahoma school boy who leaves home one day, presumably heterosexual, and heads off to learn his ABCs.  But little Jimmy is unaware that his teacher has an entirely different “to-do list” for the day.

The teacher, Kern explains, lines the children up on the playground and begins to count off:  1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 . . . and then, abruptly, declares little Jimmy to be a little bit gay.

Yes, it’s all included - in five parts, kind of like the Star Wars saga - in the long awaited Sally Kern sequel.  Our lady of the perpetual audio tapes answers all of our burning questions.

Via PageOneQ.