Defending Family Values and Representative Sally Kern

What follows is based on a transcript made by a homosexual activist website, www.equalrightsproject.com. Kern read through the transcripit and said she is almost certain that it was taken from a speech she delivered to a Republican club in January at the Boulevard Cafeteria in Oklahoma City. The event was open to the public.

We have fixed a few of the misspellings and typos (e.g., Thomas ‘Payne’ to Thomas Paine) from the pro-homosexual group’s transcription and added our clarifications of two points in brackets, based on a phone interview March 13 between Sally Kern and Americans For Truth President Peter LaBarbera.

NOTE: the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund Youtube excerpts last only two minutes and 52 seconds out of a much longer speech. Below, we have bolded only the exact portions of Kern’s that were strung together into the GLVF’s YouTube video, in the same (chronological) order that they are found in her speech. Readers will note that the GLFV did some creative editing, such as leaving out Kern’s comment that “I base my life upon … God’s word. And it says to love everybody and I try to love everybody,” and taking this single sentence out of a long excerpt: “And we had parents say, “If I knew my child was involved in that group [a gay/straight alliance club], I wouldn’t let them”:

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Full Transcript of January 10 Speech by Oklahoma State Rep. Sally Kern

Uh. . .well first, I have gotten some bills passed in to law, and secondly I was talking with Bill Graves once and he said, “I think you’re doing a good job and you kinda’ took up my program.” And I said, “Well Bill, thank you, but I’d like to think that it’s somebody-bigger-than-you’s program that I’m doing.” [i.e., God’s] But anyway, I am thankful to be here today and I am going to share a number of things so I hope your ears are turned on fast because I want to get through this quickly and I do have. . . [handouts] The teacher in me didn’t pass these out in advance because I know you’d look at them and read them and not listen to me and I want you to listen to me but I have some information you want to be sure to get, three handouts over there.

I like to call myself a social conservative, okay, and for me a social conservative is more than just being pro-life, and wanting smaller governments, and spending less. It’s whole lot more than that. To me, being a government teacher and a history teacher for about 20 years and loving the beginnings of our nation, I believe being social conservative [that] you have to embrace the principles upon which this nation was founded if you’re going to be a true social conservative.

Now I’d like to start by asking you a question and I’m not going to give you time to answer because I’ll probably, I’ll try to finish before one so if you have any questions you’ll have time to ask me. I have no trouble talking being a school teacher and a minister’s wife, talking just comes with the territory.

But if I were to ask you, “What is the one thing that has made America great, that makes us unique?” what would it be? And then if I were to ask you, “What is the one thing that is actually destroying this nation?” what would be your answer? Now I’m not going to let you give me an answer, Charlie’s already got his hand up. But I’m not going to let you give me an answer, ‘cause I’m just going to tell you what I think the one thing is. Actually what made us great and what is destroying is just like a coin, it’s a flip side. What made us great is that we were a nation founding on Christian principles. Okay, that’s just the bottom line. If you go to the primary sources and read our Founding Fathers, what they had to say, they gave preferential treatment to Christianity.

They believed, I’m going to share with you in just a minute, five practical benefits of Christianity. So what’s destroying this nation? The fact that we’re leaving the roots upon which we were founded. We are crumbling from within because of the bankruptcy that we have in the moral fiber of this nation and leaving the principles of our Founding Fathers. Now I’m going to give away this little book, and I don’t know how were going to do it, but you know I’ll let Tom figure that out. It’s by David Barton, “The Practical Benefits of Christianity.” It’s awesome. [Order Barton’s book HERE.]

I’m briefly going to go through the five practical benefits. You see the thing about religion, religion isn’t just spiritual, it’s practical. What we have in our society today is a dichotomy. If you’re a religious person, that’s personal beliefs and that’s [kinda’] like in, you know, private, that’s in the upper story. But if you’re in government, if you’re in school, business, that’s where facts are and you don’t mix the two. Well, you guys, truth is truth. It doesn’t matter what realm of society you are in, truth is truth, there’s cold truth. If you’ve never read the book by Nancy Pearcey called “Cold Truth” you need to read that book. Awesome book. “Cold Truth”, Nancy Pearcey. [The actual title is “Total Truth”]

But there are practical benefits to Christianity. Our Founding Fathers knew that and that’s why they chose Christianity, the principles of Christianity and most of our Founding Fathers were believers in Jesus Christ. That’s documented, it’s not just hearsay. It’s documented.

What are the five practical benefits? First is, a civilized society. And civilized, according the Webster’s Dictionary, 1828 dictionary, ‘civilized’ means decent, respectful, moral behavior. That’s what civilized means. And we can stop and look at our society today and we don’t have a very civilized society because we can see all kinds of depravity all the time. Our Founding Fathers believed that our government was a self-government and you can only have self-government if you have individual governance in your own life. And the less people are controlled by any restraints the more government you have to have to control them. That’s just. … we see that happening all the time. So they believed that we needed a civilized society. They also believed that Christian principles were the very reason for the way that our society was going to exist is because, and it goes back again to, you have to have self-governance.

One of our first Speakers of the House, and I never can remember his name, but he said men will be governed either by internal restraints or external restraints. Either by the bayonet or by the Bible. So we need to have the principles of Christianity for our society to exist.

Another practical benefit of Christianity is just good citizenship. Good citizens, okay. You know it doesn’t matter if we live next door to an atheist, an infidel, or whatever, if they believe in a basic principle of right and wrong, which used to always be the Ten Commandments, if they’re not going to come over and kill me or steal my stuff, or go after my husband and things like that, I can live next to them. No problem. People used to know what was right and what was considered wrong. Today, it’s left up to anybody’s, you know, discretion and that won’t work.

Another practical benefit of Christianity was the elevation of knowledge, of learning, of science, okay, of the arts. They believed, matter of fact, Thomas Paine who wrote “Age of Reason” where he tried to say you don’t need religion, you should keep it out of the public sector. Ben Franklin wrote him a letter — and Ben Franklin, arguably is one of our lesser considered religious leaders — but he said to Thomas Paine: don’t write that book, don’t publish that book. He said it will do you harm, it will do our nation harm. You know, he believed that we needed to have a society that was based upon Christian principles because elevation of science, elevation of knowledge is very important if you’re going to have an informed public. And I believe it was Thomas Paine also said, you know, you can look at a picture and it makes you think of the artist, you can look at some kind of invention and you think of the inventor. Why is it that we look at the creation and we don’t think about the Creator? You know, we don’t do that. And if we really had Christian principles our educational system would not be in the mess it is in today. I could give you lots of quotes about, oh Benjamin Rush and Noah Webster and Fisher Ames who actually penned the first amendment, the things they had to say about the main book in school should be the Bible. There’s a lot of stuff about that that’s really important and we certainly got away from it.

Another practical benefit, the last one, of Christianity is a cohesive value system. A cohesive value system. We don’t have that today. And you know we think, we hear this all the time, we are such a large society today, we have such diversity in all these different religions and ethnic backgrounds and everything, you can’t have a cohesive value system. Well, we didn’t just have that right now. You can go back read some of the writings of John Adams, and he talks about the diverse society that they had back at the beginning of this nation. So Christian principles are very important in order to have a cohesive value system. So regardless of what your faith is you can live together. We have gotten away from these principles and it is affecting our lives today.

One of the main ways, and this is something I’m going to talk about a lot today, that is affecting our lives, is in the gay agenda. Now I’m not a gay basher, okay. When I taught school three doors down from me was one of the most obnoxious gay people that you can mention. If I named him you probably have seen him. He writes in the paper all the time and everything. But you know, he has the right to practice that lifestyle if he chooses but he does not have the right to indoctrinate his classes. You know, that’s not what education is about. But what we see happening today is the homosexual agenda is destroying this nation. Okay, it’s just a fact. If you’ve never read, here’s another book, “The Criminalization of Christianity” by Janet Folger. Every Christian ought to read that book, “The Criminalization of Christianity.” It is an awesome book and if that doesn’t scare you and motivate you, something’s wrong.

And here’s the problem, the gay people are motivated. If we as, whether you’re a Christian or not, if you’re just a good conservative, if we were as motivated as the gay people were, the contest would be over. That’s just all there is to it. It would be over. But we aren’t motivated. I think we’ve been suckered by this lie of separation of church and state. But there is a new phenomenon going on, has been going on since the last four years in the gay movement and it’s been headed by a gentleman by the name of Tim Gill. He’s a software mogul guy who sold his [corporation] Quark, Q-U-A-R-K, however you say that, he sold it for billions of dollars. He contributed $30 million in ’06 to races. He contributed that money to local races, state races and governor races. He gives money, yes to, on the federal level but primarily it’s on the local level because his philosophy is this: if we’re gonna really make changes, we’re going to have to do it locally. And what’s the saying we always hear and we know, all politics is local. And he along with a lot of other gay activists are very disappointed in the national Democratic party because they’ve not, you know they say, they promise all this stuff, you know we’ll acknowledge gays and etc., etc., but when it comes down to really doing policy in Congress, what’s always the first to go? The gay agenda stuff, because those Democrats, they don’t want to alienate their base. So Tim Gill along with a bunch of other people, some other millionaires, billionaires have decided that the way to handle it is on the local level. And they contributed last year over 30 million dollars to state races. They targeted 13 states. They targeted 70 local politicians. They took out 50 of them. Tim Gill’s goal is within 10 years to change the face of politics to make to where there is equality to all people, all lifestyles.

Now, I don’t know about you, but the book that I base my life upon is God’s word. And it says to love everybody and I try to love everybody but not everybody’s lifestyle is equal. Just like not all religions are equal. Okay. All money isn’t equal. You know, we have this dumb idea now days, that tolerance means that everything is equal. Well, everything is not equal. We see that in many areas of our lives. You know, all things are not equal. All religions are not equal.

But, uh, let me just read you some things. Tim Gill along with four other, three other people, let me find this here. I’ve got so much information, there’s no way I can get all of this to you today, but I have it for you to read yourself. Along with a woman by the name of, I think it’s Pat Stryker, and then her brother John Stryker. . .I know I’ve got them right here, I’ll try to fish them out. . .Pat Stryker, Jared Polis and Rutt Bridges, they all right now are in Colorado and they have changed the face of Colorado. For 40 years, Colorado’s legislature was in the hands of Republicans; in ’06, it changed to hands of the Democrats. And the main reason is because they’re pushing, these four people, along with other people, and I have a list of them here, the top ones, that you can see, , , and this is important because when you start looking at who’s contributing to races, say that particular statewide race we’re all concerned about, look for some of these names. They don’t give more than a $1,000 because they don’t want to draw attention, okay, but they will give up to a $1,000 and so you start looking for these names. And what they do, their strategy is very under-the-table, very stealth, and their goal is to find state legislatures that are very tight in their, you know, Republican/Democrat [breakdown], and if just a few races can make the difference to switch it from Republican to Democrat, they’re going to target that. And their goal is, in doing that, to intimidate Republicans.

Now the problem we have, I think it’s a problem, we’ve got some moderate Republicans who think it doesn’t matter what your lifestyle is, it doesn’t matter if you’re gay, it doesn’t matter if you’re for “civil unions,” you know. And you notice, the goal is, they’re pushing “civil unions” right now. That used to be unheard of, but now that’s pretty much acceptable. A lot of Republicans are going for “civil unions,” okay. So you know what’s going to happen next, ten years from now, it’s going to be gay “marriage.” Okay, they’re taking little by little, they’re taking ground little by little but they’re doing it quietly, under-the-table. They’re going into states where the races are close; they’re putting in lots of money; and not only that, they’re putting people on the ground. Let me read you this. Here this was really, I thought really interesting, I just want to read it. “The key” — this is from a guy by the name of Ted Trimpa, he’s kinda’ like the Karl Rove for Tim Gill — “The key to success is real grassroots, organizing, knocking at the doors, and knock on them again and don’t go turn out the gay vote, go knock on the swing doors as well,” he says. “Knock on every door and knock day, after day, after day.”

They took out in Iowa a guy by the name of Danny Carroll who was the [Republican] Speaker Pro Tem in the House. He thought his race was safe. He lost, a surprise loss. They put people on the ground, young college kids with their iPods going from door to door. Not just Democrats, though, also Republicans, trying to find those swing voters but they do it time and time again. They say it’s expensive and time-consuming but it is the absolute right way to do real grassroots politics, door to door, talking to the voters, having gay people go to them, allies of ours go to each of them, walk them through and you flip votes one by one. It’s a strategy that works both in the legislature and in the field. They quote Tim Gill on another aspect of their political strategy. Tim says, “You have to turn down the volume of opponents’ ‘anti’ rhetoric. They can’t just say and do everything with license. They have to know beforehand that it’s going to cost them some votes and some serious money to play like that. It certainly doesn’t stop it, but it turns it way down, and then when they do spew any ‘anti’ rhetoric, they look extreme. You have to create an environment of fear and respect,” said Tim Gill. ”The only way to do that is to get aggressive and go out and actually beat them up politically. Sitting there crying and whining about being victims isn’t going to get us equality. What is going to get us equality is fighting for it.”

What they’re trying to do is send a message of intimidation to those people who are taking a stand for traditional marriage and against the homosexual lifestyle. They want to silence us, [that] is what they want to do. And it’s happening all over the state. You know, the very fact that I’m talking to you like this, here today, puts me in jeopardy. Okay, and so, so be it. Okay, and I’m not ‘anti’, I’m not gay bashing, but according to God’s Word that is not the right kind of lifestyle. It has deadly consequences for those people involved in it. They have more suicides and they’re more discouraged, there’s more illness, their lifespans are shorter. You know, it’s not a lifestyle that is good for this nation. Matter of fact, studies show that no society that has totally embraced homosexuality has lasted more than, you know, a few decades [Kerns told Americans For Truth’s LaBarbera that she meant to say “generations” here rather than “decades”]. So it’s the death knell for this country. I honestly think it’s the biggest threat even, that our nation has, even more so than terrorism or Islam which I think is a big threat, okay. [Kern told AFTAH that here she was talking singularly about radical Islamic terrorism]. Because what’s happening now, they’re going after, in schools, two year olds. You know what they’re trying to get early childhood education? They want to get our young children into the government schools so they can indoctrinate them. I taught school for close to 20 years and we’re not teaching facts and knowledge anymore, folks, we’re teaching indoctrination. Okay?

We’re turning out a citizenry who are learners but not thinkers. By that I mean, they take whatever is thrown at them. They don’t question it. A thinker listens to what’s given to them and then goes and researches and reasons about it and figures out if this right or wrong. We aren’t developing students like that today. We’re developing students who will do whatever the elites want. That’s what we’re headed toward and they’re going after our young children as young as two years of age to try to teach them that the homosexual lifestyle is an acceptable lifestyle. And there are programs they’re going after in school. It just, uh, I’m not going to say anymore about that because I have the material over there. You really need to read this article, seven pages, but read it. It has some interesting stuff in it. It will show you their strategy and we need to be forewarned.

Okay, now, where are the social conservative billionaires? I want to suggest to you that they are few and far between. Okay. We’ve got some, but they don’t give money the way the gay philanthropists are giving their money, okay. And unfortunately I see a lot of our millionaire conservatives are really bought into big business and even big government and they don’t support social conservatism. And I think that’s a mistake. But in 10 years time our whole landscape, political landscape, could be changed if we don’t start giving money, we social conservatives, people who have it, start giving money to candidates who will stand up for what is right, instead of buckling under this. So, it’s just happening to us right and left.

You know gays are infiltrating city councils. Did you know, Eureka Springs, anybody been there to the Passion Play? Have you heard that the city council of Eureka Springs is now controlled by gays? Okay. There are some others, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Tacoma, Maryland, Kensington, Maryland, in Vermont, Oregon, West Palm Beach, Florida, and a lot of other places in Florida. What’s happening? The homosexuals are getting involved politically on the most local level there is — city council, city government — and they are winning elections and the first thing they’re doing is passing, uh, laws, anti-discrimination laws and hate [crime] laws and things like that and, uh, you know, one of the things I deal with in our legislature is, I tried to introduce a bill last year that would notify parents, [so] schools [would have] to let parents know what clubs their students were involved in. And the reason I did that bill, primarily, was this: we have the gay/straight alliances coming into our schools. And we had parents say, “If I knew my child was involved in that group, I wouldn’t let them.” Kids are getting involved in these groups, their lives are being ruined, [and] their parents don’t know about it. So I introduced a bill that said you have to notify [parents of] all clubs and things. And one of my colleagues said, “Well, you know, we don’t have a gay problem in my community and that’s why I voted against that bill.” Well, you know what? To me that is so dumb. If you got cancer or something in your little toe, do you say, well you know, “I’m just going to forget about it because the rest of me is just fine.” It spreads, okay, and this stuff is deadly and it’s spreading and it will destroy our young people and it will destroy this nation.

But they’re going after city councils, they’re influencing schools’ sex-ed at schools. Respect for differences in human sexuality is a big sex-ed program they’re trying to get into all the schools. And basically what [it] is, it’s teaching that you have to be tolerant, you have to accept homosexuality.

This brings in our libraries. Okay, you know I believe in the principle as a person thinks, as a man thinks, so is he. That’s why we have to be careful about what we read, what we watch, things like that, what music we listen to and stuff because what goes in is what comes out. Garbage in, garbage out. We know that with computers. You know, what you put in is what you get out. Okay. You take our young minds and the garbage that they’re reading in our libraries and I mean it’s garbage. I should have thought and brought you some excerpts of some of the stuff that, uh, I mean there’s no literary value to it at all. It is pure filth. The language, the acts, the things that are going on and yet our kids are reading it, I mean, they are reading [it] in the droves. Okay. Kids go home and I see some high school kids couldn’t wait to get out so they could go home and see their favorite soap opera. And I tell them, look, that is not real life. They do anything they want and don’t suffer consequences. In real life you got consequences.

So, uh, hate crimes, this leads to hate crimes. If we have hate crimes [laws], our free speech will be silenced. Okay. You know I’m not a lawyer, but I think I know enough about this. Law should be dealing with our actions, not with what we are thinking. Nobody can read my mind; nobody can read your mind. Okay. If two little old ladies are both murdered, you know, and one’s gay and [the] other isn’t, why should the one that was gay, [why should] her murderers receive a harsher crime than the ones who murdered the other little old lady? They’re both dead. You know, murder is murder. So we’ve gotta watch; they are coming after these kinds of bills.

Another thing that I’m real big on that is a real detriment to this society is evolution. Evolution undermines Christian principles. Period. That’s all there is to it. You either believe there is a Creator or you believe there isn’t. Some people say well I believe there is a Creator and He used evolution. There’s a lot of problems there, folks. When does sin come in, when does the spirit come in? You know, it’s evolution. You read God’s Word and you will see the word creation all through it, Old and New Testament. And it [the theory of evolution] undermines people’s faith. They have trouble reading or believing the Bible.