Back in the mid 1990’s, when I had first arrived in Oklahoma City, I wanted to learn about my new home. In the past I had found one of the best ways to do that was to get involved in the community, and as I had been a Gay Rights Activist elsewhere, I figured getting involved in Gay Rights activism there would work.

I joined a group, Simply Equal, that seemed to fit the bill, and because of that group I had ended up on a committee that was going to help fine tune the city’s Equal Rights Ordinance.

There was a swearing in and everything, so it was an official committee, not just a concerned group of people seeking change.

Besides cleaning up any language that already existed, the committee thought it would be a good time to add “sexual orientation”. No one on the committee had a problem with that, but some members of the city council did as did many Baptist ministers in town.

When the new language was presented to the city council, not only did the members object to the inclusion of “sexual orientation”, they also decided that in order to avoid any further discussion or any problems that might result from the rejection of this term, they would simply disband the city’s Human Rights Commission thus becoming the first, if not the only major city and capitol of a state to do away with such an existing commission.

Just as some red states are now finding the most convenient way to avoid same sex marriages by not having the state involved in performing any marriages, the city of Oklahoma City decided that in order to avoid having to deal with the human rights of its GLBT citizens, it would not be involved with the human rights of any of its citizens.

Basically, this was as a result of the actions of the Baptist ministers of the local Baptist Convention.

At the City Council meeting when all this happened the people sitting in the public seats were divided with the GLBT community members and their supporters on one side of the chamber and the ministers on the other.

While those from the GLBT side, which included at least one Rabbi and a few open minded Christian clergy, presented facts, figures, and studies to illustrate the need for the inclusion of “sexual orientation”, the Baptist ministers based their objections to the inclusion in a civil ordinance on their interpretation of the Christian religion.

One minister, the main Baptist minister in town, stood up at one point and claimed his objections were based on the lewd things that all Gay people engaged in. To illustrate that to which he objected, he explained to the city council that he had driven across the border to Texas where he had purchased some Gay pornography so he could show the council members and his fellow ministers the horrible sex acts that all Gay people, to his way of thinking, enjoyed.

He not only followed up this part of his story by describing in great deal some of the lewdest acts he had found, but he held up opened copies of the magazines he had purchased for all to see, including those at home watching the council meeting on local cable.
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As a modern day parallel, his claiming that all Gay people committed the sexual acts it had taken him time to choose after browsing the shelves of the adult bookstore would be equivalent to saying that all heterosexual couples enjoyed the practices contained in Fifty Shades of Grey.

I found this rather ironic since it was a Baptist minister who not only went into great detail about some pretty lewd and specialized sexual acts, but had driven across state lines to buy pornography that, while legal in Texas, was illegal in Oklahoma, and then had held up the open magazines for people at home to see including any children who might have been watching with their parents.

Before he passed his “evidence” up to the council dais, he first passed it to the minister to his right, and the magazines then made a slow progress from one minister to another as each flipped through them to see what they contained.

Pornography that was purchased in a state where it was legal had been brought across state lines where the possession of such pornography was illegal, was first held up so it could be seen on cable, and was then passed around the City Council chamber.

And, no one, not even the City Council members, objected to that, especially none of the ministers who seemed fascinated by what they were viewing.

I was renting a room in the house of a friend’s grandmother at the time, and when I got home that afternoon, she told me she had been watching the council meeting and could not believe what she had seen on her television.

I thought I would recount this because in Representative Sally Kern’s original iteration of her conversion therapy bill clergy played a prominent role in the therapy she wants protected, as did shock therapy.

The role of the clergy has been lessened, and shock therapy was totally removed, but, pornography, which plays a role in the therapy, as does intimate touching, has been left in.

However, in light of my experience, and as things are getting more radically conservative in the state of Oklahoma, there seems to be plenty of room for malpractice.

And I have to wonder that if the clergy is too involved in conversion therapy, will pornography play too major a role.

And will the ministers ever get around to showing it to the patient.