Thursday, March 20, 2008

Fear-mongering and Hyperbole on the Right: Conservative Law Center Overstates Its Case

Rep. Sally Kern's big mouth and bad ideas got her into hot water.

Now the gay-bashing Republican legislator is ducking for cover, calling on a conservative legal organization, the Thomas More Law Center, to protect her from militant gays and their allies. The Thomas More Center is not exactly a local group either; it's based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, a liberal college town.

Despite the group's apparent failures in Ann Arbor, it is offering moral and legal support to Kern, even though no legal action has been taken against her.

The More Center, however, might be considerably more credible if it reconsidered its overheated rhetoric. In a statement this week, one of the center's spokesmen claimed that "radical homosexual groups" want to curtail Rep. Kern's free speech.

These groups, he continued, are pushing for "anti-Christian 'hate crime' laws." But that's not all. On, no! Their goal, he said, "is to criminalize Christians and Christian beliefs." (As we like to say, we are NOT making this up.)

Our question: Has this guy even been to Oklahoma? Has he ever even looked at the religious statistics of the Sooner state? If so, he'd know that this is utter nonsense, about as likely as Rep. Kern's instant conversion to Buddhism.

In other words, the attorneys at the More Center seem a lot more conerned about fear-mongering and gay-baiting than they do about protecting Sally Kern's speech rights.

No comments: