(I had taught just a few doors down from Oklahoma State Representative Sally Kern when she and I taught at North West Classen High School in Oklahoma City. What follows is my account of her attempt to remove Gay Friendly and “Homosexually themed” books from public libraries, and the administrators’ mistake in inviting her to a high school graduation that made them look good, but was an insult to any GLBT student, graduate, family member, or teacher. At the time we were attempting to have GLBT students openly included in policies on Bullying, Harassment, and Nondiscrimination so that their inclusion would not be left up to the individual views of teachers as school policies should be neutral and include all students.
Sally Kern was a prime example of why the words “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” needed to be included in any policy dealing with students, which they finally were after a 12 year battle with the School Board.
From my unpublished memoirs)
While people were advocating for the Gay students, another chain of events was put in motion that further showed the need to make it clear that Gay students had protection under District policy.
The woman who had been teaching Advance Placement Government, a class that was supposed to explain how our democratic system worked and, perhaps, interest students in a life of public service, was an extremely religious and conservative person. According to her web site she had wanted to be a celibate missionary for Christ until He introduced her to the minister who would become her future husband. She never made it clear on her web site or in personal conversation whether this introduction was done as a blind date, a simple introduction at a social event, or a tossing off from a horse on the road to some city. Although God never spoke to the woman who was to be the Mother of His Son, rather choosing to send an emissary, He not only spoke to this teacher that one time, but, seemingly to give in to the Yenta side of his Jewish-ness, Jesus then decided to go further and tell her to have babies and stay home to raise them; to get into teaching when they were grown so He could be brought back to the public school; and, having accomplished everything up to that point, but not being in a position to change public education from the classroom, run for the state legislature to accomplish this.
Students found out fast that even though an assignment called for the expressing of views on certain political and current events topics, the closer the report was to the conservative argument for or against any subject, the higher the grade; the opposite holding true for a more liberal stand point. Her classes usually dwindled over any given year as students chose not to be proselytized either religiously or politically.
She was a short, stocky woman who favored Dickie pants with polo shirts and comfortable shoes, and kept her somewhat curly hair in a short bobbed cut. She coached the golf team. Most people upon first seeing or meeting her assumed she was a Lesbian, often chastising themselves later for giving into accepting a stereotype. But if there was one, she was it. This misinterpretation of her outward appearance may have had a part in her beliefs about and annoyance with Gay people as others might have treated her as one.
It seemed that after she got into the legislature she needed to come out of the clichéd gate running, and she found her introductory issue.
Oddly, as it happened this way in every place in America where the book was condemned, locally two parents picked up their children whom they had left at the library unattended, and on the way home asked what books they had gotten. One of the children began to read from a book, King and King, the story of a prince whose mother while attempting to marry him off to a princess found he was actually in love with another prince and had no problem with it. After almost hitting a tree and potentially killing their own children in their horror, the parents called the new representative who then demanded that as the public library was tax funded, that this book be removed from all libraries, or those offending libraries which refused to do this would be denied funding from the state.
The bad parenting skills of the parents who simply dropped their children off unsupervised in a day in age when children were being abducted, or could be, never supervised what they intended to read at home, and upon seeing their own failing attempted to blind others to it by distraction was somehow lost to the expediency of the moment.
Attracting some very disturbingly conservative people, the legislator went to a Metro Library Commission meeting demanding any book with a “Homosexual Theme” or which might have spoken of Homosexuality as anything other than an abomination be removed from the system. Her assumption, apparently, was that as a legislator she would speak, they would listen, and there would be no question. I do not think she was aware that people would object to her attempted use of power, or that her wishes would not be so automatically obeyed.
A group of people including legal people from the ACLU, local Gay organizations, library workers, and concerned citizens, myself included, went to a Library Commission meeting at which she was to present her demand. We argued that parents, after instilling in their children their own family values, should view what their children intended to read before they checked out a book at any library, rather than demand that if they found something objectionable no one should be allowed to read it.
I felt a little naked at that first of many meetings when, in attempting to prove her action was not based on bigotry, but a concern for children, the legislator tried that old chestnut that she only objected to certain things of a homosexual nature, but she herself loved Gay people and knew many, and even worked with some very fine teachers who happened to be Gay, and, while making that last statement, swept her left arm in an inclusive arcing motion declaring as she did so that I was a wonderful teacher with whom she had no problem, and mentioning my name. Although she knew I was open at school, she took the liberty, or acted on the assumption that there would be no harm in using me in so public a manner.
The commission was to take things under advisement, or avoidance if you will, and hold a few more meetings before any decision was made.
The media was mixed in their reaction to Kern’s move, but most often questioned it. Although the media tried mightily to report in a balanced, neutral way, some of her statements which bordered on fanaticism came across that way. As the meetings progressed and the foolishness of her demand became more and more apparent, she modified her demand from removing the books totally from libraries to placing them in a restricted area for books that were controversial in nature without actually describing who would do this, or on what it would be based.
The commission, for its part, knowing that as libraries are funded by all tax payers, was reluctant to choose and place books apart solely on the opinions and desires of any one group. Even the Bible had its unsavory parts, and fairy tales were rife with negative references to step-mothers that would certainly offend those families that had one. It was conceivable that since quite a few books with anything anyone might find objectionable would be put in a totally separate place, there just wasn‘t enough separate space in any library to accommodate all the books that might need to be moved.
Wherever the legislator went with her message, people from the other side of the argument were there too. If any parent did not want his or her child to read something it was up to them to establish limits within their family and be with the child at the library. It was wrong for someone to force their own personal family values on others by deciding what other people‘s children should be able to read.
There were rallies in front of libraries, interviews in the various media, and a presence at all Library Commission meetings.
As we had not been unfriendly when we taught a few doors from each other, Sally Kern and I would have friendly conversations before the meetings where I filled her in on what was going on at school, and any news about anyone with whom she had worked, only to retire to our sides to argue our points when the match began.
The final compromise of the Library Commission to the legislator‘s demand was far from a total seclusion of these books in a separate room. They would be placed on an easily findable shelf, but separated from other books. Instead of the desired effect of making them hard to find, these “controversial” books were made more easy to find because they were on a separate shelf in the children‘s section, like the enticing bawdy magazines are separated from sports and news magazines in a newspaper store.
Her greatest threat of withholding public funds from non-cooperating libraries was shot down in the state legislature, and the matter died.
In all fairness to this former teacher, when Kern fought for schools and for making sure programs were funded and materials available for the classroom, she was a good ally. It was her religious mission that caused difficulty and made her look a little too quirky.
Just a few weeks before graduation that year Sally Kern wrote a letter to her constituents which stated she had been divinely placed in the legislature to return much needed reality to the state.
Gay people were the biggest problem.
“I ask for your prayers that God’s will be done. We, the Christian community, have set [sic] idly by for too long and let this perversion get out of hand. The homosexuals are wanting us to accept their behavior as normal and natural. It is not. It is sin and unless Believers stand up and be heard it will continue to spread like a cancer and destroy our society. I believe that with all my heart. I am not a particularly valiant person but God has put me in the position of State Representative for such a time as this.”
If this attitude of divine anointing, and her attitude toward Homosexuals as stated above were brought into her Government classes especially during the time she was a candidate for office what, other than the wording of school policy, could have protected Gay Students from her negative attitude toward them and homosexuals in general?
Although I could understand the political expediency of having the Representative invited to attend the graduation of a school in her legislative district, and although I could see that as she was a former teacher it was nice to have invited her to attend the graduation of some of her former students, I questioned why she sat up on the stage with administrators and honored students. I saw this as a little insensitive toward the Gay students who fell into her perversion category.
Again, without regard for our Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender students and family members, some sitting among the graduation class, and others either as siblings or parents in the audience, and ignoring the demeaning and dismissive attitude expressed in her email and comments made while she attempted to ban Gay books, and the damage done to our past and present students by the actions she had taken and the expressed reasons for them, she was given political advantage. Someone thought it would be a feather in the cap of the school if a Representative was an honored guest. Her hurtful comments did not apply to them.
Had I known the Representative, who had on more than one occasion spoken of me as less than human and by my very nature vile and repulsive, although she would throw in that I was a good teacher and nice person, was to be so honored, I would have had a problem of conscience concerning my own attendance. As it was, with her showing up at the last minute and unannounced, beyond withholding applause, the impulse to leave had to be greatly subdued.
I was responsible for some segment of the education of those graduating, and I had attempted to give them the best education I could. For GLBT people, some being graduates, their family members, and myself, to be publicly described by the Representative as pedophiles, a lower form of creature, sexual predators, recruiters of youth into a condemned “life-style”, pornographic by our very nature, a danger to the welfare of youth, and a cancer on society that needed to be removed like a cancer from one’s little toe so it does not spread at Library Commission meetings, rallies of conservatives at the state capitol, or at political gatherings where such statements could be heard by my students, only to have her presented as a good and totally acceptable and honored role-model was extremely insensitive toward those to whom her ignorance was directed, again, some of whom were members of the honored graduates and their families.
I wrote to the people responsible, telling them why this was wrong and what message had been sent to Gay students, parents and Faculty, but the only response I received was from another teacher telling me to shut-up as I, and those like me, where not wanted in his world.