Box Turtle Bulletin

Two year olds go to school? My, times have changed since I was a kid, going to kindergarten at age 5.

Liadan

Wow. Toe cancer. I have to admit, that at least is original.

Emily K

“It’s not God’s Word.”

What the hell does that have to do with our secular, NON-CHRISTIAN government???

Erica B.

@Patrick — She may mean preschool (or daycare) which lots of toddlers are in. Parents have to pay for that; I’m not aware of any state which has government-provided (e.g. free) preschool. More likely, she is just completely confused.

And Iâ€™m not anti- and Iâ€™m not gay bashing, but according to Godâ€™s Word, that is not the right kind of lifestyle.

“Really, I’d TOTALLY support gay people, but God said it’s wrong!” That excuse is so tired. If you’re such a believer in that mitzvah, then why delve into junk science? Or do you doubt your faith to the point you need to justify your God’s commandments?

Not everybodyâ€™s lifestyle is equal, just like not all religions are.

People like this shouldn’t be in government in a country with freedom of religion.

David

“As a matter of fact, studies show that no society that has totally embraced homosexuality has lasted more than, you know, a few decades.”

Where are these studies?

I’ve heard these claims before, even from as well-known a figure as Jay Sekulow of the ACLJ, who said it in a public forum. But no matter how many times the claim is made I never hear the evidence to back it up.

LaBarbera will certainly make Rep. Sally Kern a poster child on his website.

Elinor McLennon

The “studies” that are being referred to can be found in the book of Genesis. Have you ever heard of Sodom and Gomorrah?

Ben in Oakland

Somebody once took a couple of lines from Edward Gibbons’ “Decline and Fall of the roman empire” and I think a couple of lines from a history book by arthur Schlesinger, ground them up in their AGSM (anti-gay sausage machine) and came up with this garbage. Schlesinger said it pretty much as stated, but with no supporting evidence, and gibbons (whom i believe was somewhat ‘suspect’ on this subject)didn’t really say it at all.

The two really amusing observaitons about this idicy are these:

1) you won’t find this information in any high school text book on the subject

2) Rome actually never fell– not in so many words– but when it did, it had been an officially CHRISTIAN empire for 150 years. One could make the argument very easily– if one were as stupid and hateful as this swollen hemorrhoid of a legislator is– that Christianity caused the downfall of the empire.

It all goes to show what happens when you allow that kind of people to take over. There are just not enough lions.

David

Elinor,

To use the word “studies” when you mean the Bible would be disingenuous in the extreme.

It is quite clear that she meant actual historical studies. It is now her duty to cite them or retract her statement.

Dave

She taught school for 20 years? Oy, Christ. Too bad the English language wasn’t one of her specialties, “you know.” What an ignorant twit. A greater concern here when thinking of “our childern” might be, how did someone like this get and maintain a teaching credential? Maybe she was home-schooled.

Emproph

The â€œstudiesâ€ that are being referred to can be found in the book of Genesis. Have you ever heard of Sodom and Gomorrah?

OMGoodness, no I haven’t! But I Googled the story and found out that we should all be offering up our virgin daughters to be gang raped in order to protect ourselves from God’s wrath against the societal embrace of homosexuality.

Thank you Elinor McLennon, for this much needed elucidation.

Lee

Thanx for posting this, Jim!

Yeah, those “Studies” of hers. I wonder if she mentioned them to her audience? I wonder if she ever will? And I like to see what “indoctrination” is being done on 2 year olds. And yes, the Roman Empire “fell” not all that long after it made Christianity as its official religion.

Elinor – Sorry but the Bible ain’t a study. It’s a book of faith; one amoungst many. If you want to make the entire Torah and NT mandatory for morals and what is sin then follow it all. And S&G had nothing to do with homosexuality but inhospitality.

homer

What exactly is a “gay problem”?????

I wonder what problems they do have in Ms. Kern’s county?

It would be interesting to have dinner with her and share our lives. I’m sure we would have more things in common than she would ever expect or want.

TJ McFisty

I think a “gay problem” for them is a neighborhood or town with one too many Crate ‘n’ Barrels.

A “gay problem” for us is a neighborhood or town without any Crate ‘n’ Barrels. Certainly not within walking distance. Actually, I think that’s less a “problem” than a “shame” or “tragedy”. Depends on your mood or hair that day.

Jason D

*Elinor McLennon said: The â€œstudiesâ€ that are being referred to can be found in the book of Genesis. Have you ever heard of Sodom and Gomorrah?*

The Bible is not a study. If it were, it would collapse under the weight of it’s flaws. It is, as others have mentioned, a book of faith. Faith is opinion, strong opinion, but something that cannot be verified. If it could be verified, we’d call it fact.

Soddom and Gomorrah is not place to find your sexual morals. If it were the following would be true:

1) When faced with an angry mob of rapists, offer up your virgin daughters. Women are not nearly as valuable as men.

2) Incest is perfectly okay so long as it’s a drunken threesome between a father and his daughters instigated by the children.

Ben in Oakland

My two cents:SODOM-Wherein we find the origin of the word sodomy.

G tells Abraham he is going to destroy the cities of the plain because they are not righteous. Abraham manages to convince G not to do it if he can find one righteous man. Apparently, Abraham couldn’t find even one, because God destroys the cities,

Except that there were four saved, which is very confusing. Whom does G allow to be saved? 1) Lot, who apparently is an alcoholic, because he managed to preserve a sufficiency of wine from the destruction to get himself into a drunken stupor. 2) His wife, who disobeys a direct commandment from G not to look back at the city’s destruction. 3) His two daughters, who get Lot drunk and have sex with him. We’re not told whether it is together or separately, or even how Lot managed to get it up, given the amount of liquor, the destruction of all property, friends and family, and that THEY WERE HIS DAUGHTERS, for G’s sake!
It all goes to show once again that G helps those who help themselves.

We learn two things from this. 1) We have been defining the Hebrew translated as “righteous” incorrectly. The correct translation is “heterosexual, preferably incestuous, alcoholic, and disobedient.” And 2) It is all the fag’s fault.

Allowing the Good book to be its own best commentary on itself, we find nowhere in the bible any reference to homosexuality as the sin of Sodom. Even Jesus didn’t say so. It took Christian scholars somewhere between 300 and 1200 years after Jesus’ death to come up with that. And yes, dear Christians, I am aware of the angels. Lot offered his two daughters to the crowd to rape instead of his guests. 1) Wow, what a righteous guy he is. 2) Offering his two virgin daughters to a bunch of gay guys? What was he thinking? I’m sure it must have seemed to be a good idea at the time.

Jason D

Ben, that’s one of the things I don’t get….

If the crowd were, in fact, gay, rather than just rapists(rape is about power, not sexual orientation) why offer two virgin girls?

That’s like offering apple pie to someone who’s looking for tomato juice.

“So you’re looking for a motorcycle, how about this SUV?”

“You’re dyhydrated? Here’s some salt.”

“So you want to have sex with men, we’ll here’s some virgin girls –same thing, right?”

Which suggests to me that the crowd wasn’t specifically gay, just interested in raping. Obviously Lot knew this, otherwise he wouldn’t have offered up two girls.

I don’t believe anyone knew the two men were actually angels, but if they did, that would change things a bit further. Angels are not people, they’re a different species, so this would be sorta like beastiality, right?

Erica B.

I hope that Elinor was being somewhat sarcastic in her comment, which is why “studies” was in quotes. Anybody who believes legends/myths qualify as an objective analysis of the world is beyond reason :)

Lot’s family is part of the most screwed up story of the Bible. Those people were batshit insane by today’s standards — probably by their own society’s standards as well. Lot’s wife gets off easy by becoming a pillar of salt and getting out of that dysfunctional morass.

Give me a gay agenda teaching my toddler about loving penguins co-adopting an egg any day.

Ben in Oakland

There is a passage in 2nd timothy (I think) which makes a reference to ‘going after strange flesh’ which was indeed about sodom and sex with angels. Someone with a stronger background in Scripture oculd say more about it.

McVicker

This woman’s ugly remarks reflect horribly not only on the state of Oklahoma, but on our nation.

The only people I have ever known to push an agenda or a lifestyle are the right-wing Christian fundamentalists. What they too often seem to forget is that all Americans are not Christians who believe that the bible is the word of God.

As for her equating homosexuality with terrorism? Tell that to the families of the victims of the Oklahoma City bombing and September 11.

Sally Kern is a perfect example of what is wrong with America. She is a disgrace to our nation.

Shame on her!

Ben in Oakland

http://www.topix.net/forum/source/kwtv/TU394HSP1PO8RVLS5

This just in,

I went to this link, and according to posts there, this lady has a GAY SON. Whoopsey!!! I don’t know if it is true (See what Tallulah Bankhead said about Tab Hunter), but if it is, then I just can’t fathom how these god-fearing, thoroughly hetero, homo hating, bible-loving, fabulous parent true American heroes can…

KEEP CHURNING THE MO’S OUT OF THE BABY FACTORY.

It makes me just want to knock on their heads and answer the echoes with, “Hello? Anybody home? Anything there besides your hate, fear, and disappointment? Have you ever heard of projection?”

As I once said to a nice Christian lady who said she would never accept her gay son: “Ma’am, your attitude is never oging to make your son sorry that he is gay. It’s just going to make him sorry that you’re his mother.”

Sad. Family values. now there’s a concept for you.

Timothy Kincaid

Ben,

The reference to Sally Kern having a gay son is nothing more substantial than an anonymous posting on a topic board. Let’s not assume that this has any merit whatsoever.

Ben in Oakland

Timothy, you are quite correct. We cannot assume it has any truth value.

Damn, I’m sitting here spouting stuff about that might not be true about someone i don’t know, and whom I know nothing about.

How could I do that?

meghan

she says “eureka springs, anybody been there, the passion play?” (not “you read this phrase, and you write it in there, this passion play?”)

she is awful.

Jim Burroway

Thanks Meghan. For some reason, I had trouble making out what she said. I’ve corrected the transcript.

Frank Kameny

Sodom and Gomorrah, in their usually assumed location were the victims of one of two possible purely geological catastrpphes. Set out here very briefly: Plate Tectonics: That location is squarely on a slip fault functionally identical with the San Andreas Fault in California. The Arabian tectonic plate is moving straight north, as it has been for some 50 million years. There are frequent eqrthquakes and other volcanic manifesttions along it (the city of Petra, destroyed many centuries later, is also on it) including sulfur emissions (sulfur is brimstone).

Thera. The southern Aegean island of Thera (now called Santorini) exploded in one of the most catastrophic volcanic explosions known to have occurred in all of human history, in the autumn of 1628 BC. It affected climate the entire world over (bristlecone pines in the American west coast show thinned annual rings at the time). A layer of volcanic ash was deposited over much of the Mediterranean, extending eastward at least to Syria, which means that “fire and brimstone” certainly descended upon Sodom and G. This was probably the origin of the Platonic legend of Atlantis

Obviously the intellectually primitive peoples of that time knew nothing of this and interpreted what happened as the wrath of god. And so some 3600 years later, we are supposed to be governing our lives by the ignorant interpetations of intellectual pri8mitives of perfectly natural events.

meghan

No problem, Jim. Thanks so much for taking the time to transcribe her speech. As an Oklahoman, I am incredibly ashamed.

Ben in Oakland

Hello, Mr. kameny. thanks for all you’ve done over the decades. Everyone here owes you a debt. I remember as a boy seeing a newspaper report about you and the protest in front of the White House (I think) and thinking– brave man.

Ben in Oakland

Keeping in mind Timothy’s very justified comments on repeating unverifiable stateents form miscellaneous websites, I just saw this on Pam’s Houce Blend.

“been monitoring the News9.com Oklahoma online news source that seems to be covering this story extensively? It seems that some people who have commented on their topix forum have mentioned that Sally Kern has a gay son. The News9.com people asked Sally about it and her answer was, “I don’t think so . . . he’s never said that to his father, he’s never said that to his brother. You need to ask him that.”
The reporter goes on to say they have tried to contact the son with no success.”

I have been unable to find any video extracts that show this alleged conversation. This still does not reach any standard of evidence that would be acceptable.

But to me, it raises several questions that I think ARE legitimate to ask. Let us assume for a moment that this alleged report IS accurate.

“I don’t think so . . . he’s never said that to his father, he’s never said that to his brother. You need to ask him that.” This is the deniability equivalent of damning someone with faint praise. Maybe the boy isn’t gay, but she doesn’t say that, when she could. Methinks I smell a rat.

But I also have questions about the rat. Phyllis Schlafley has a gay son, and she has spouted much of the same vitriol. Brief news stir, then nothing. She says she loves her children, he says (as far as I know) nothing. So what does it mean if Kern has a gay son? Brief news stir, then nothing would be my guess. The son denouncing his mother? It could be a great film, him challenging every single bit of venom she’s dripping from those fangs of hers, including the obvious affront to family values. The mother realizing that she os projecting her issues onto gay people, claming them for her son’s unnatural choice? Mom apologizing, or even seeing that she needs to apologize.

I don’t think we can count on any of them happening.

On the other hand, this could get very interesting.

Timothy Kincaid

Rumor (and it is only rumor) says that the son is named Jesse Kern.

Ben if you do find better confirmation, please let me know.

werdna

If the son is gay, he might denounce his mother, or maybe he’ll just try to get her to hire him…

Phyllis Schlafly’s son John works as a lawyer for his mom’s Eagle Forum. He avoids the spotlight, but seems to basically hold the same views as his mom. I think he’s in his 50s now but he was reportedly living with his mom at least at least as recently as the early 90s (when he was outed by Mike Signorile). I can’t even imagine what kind of crazy lived in that house.

Oh yeah, and Tim and Beverly LaHaye have a gay son Lee who works for Concerned Women for America. No word on where Lee lives.

Who needs to worry about being fired for being gay when you can get a job at your mom’s right-wing foundation?

Timothy Kincaid

It always amazes me how many uber-phobes have gay kids. It proves to me that God has a huge appreciation for irony.

Ben in Oakland

I wish he had the same appreciation for caring what goes on his name. If Iam going to have a deity, I just wish it owuld be one that takes the job seriously and is NOT one who thinks he’s a comedian, ironic or no.

Jason D

Ben, there’s a futurama episode where Bender gets shot out of the ship and they can’t catch up wit him. While floating in space, he’s pelted by meteorites that have little alien people on them. They think he saved them and he becomes a “god” to them.
1st he tries to fullfill his selfish desires and the people suffer. Then he tries to help them directly, which goes horribly wrong and the people suffer. He tries not helping them and they are consumed by infighting on the best way to worship bender and end up annhialating each other.

Bender then meets the real God who explains that the best way to work is through indirect and subtle ways. God says, “if you do things right, they won’t be able to tell whether you’ve done anything at all.”

Look at the way we worship and destroy our own politicians and celebrities, I doubt God would fair much better.

Ben in Oakland

Well, Jason, there is that to consider.

What if you have a deity that is all knowing and all powerful, but at the same time is, by deitical standards,not particularly competent?

James Branch Cabell explored that theme repeatedly in the many books comprising the biography of Manuel. Sadly, no one reads Cabell anymore.

Heather Haney