[The third paragraph from the end is new. I actually thought I had posted this on March 16, but I recently noticed the new graf wasn't there, so I fixed something else, too.]

My back hasn't been treating me all that well this past week, but I'm sure you've kept up anyway with the Sally Kern saga. I'm sure you heard that the Oklahoma GOP caucus gave her a standing ovation for not apologizing for her comments, that she has not backed away from them, and that the state (and, in fact, national) conservative communities don't just support her, but may in fact elect her Bishop of Something.

Over and over, her supporters say, "She's just exercising her right to free speech," and her detractors say that as a legislator, she has a higher responsibility. Her supporters then say that her detractors (or "liberal godless pinko commie heathens") are trying to take away her right to her own opinion because she's in office, and so on, and so on.

The entire "free speech" argument, emanating from Kern herself, is designed to obscure the true and serious problem—that Sally Kern, and those who agree with her, are statutorily and constitutionally unfit to be legislators, and have no place in United States Government.

Harsh? Yes, but true. Follow along.

As this adulatory article makes plain, Sally Kern's first, if not only, guiding principle as a legislator is "Reclaiming Oklahoma for Christ."

Kern said, as a pastor’s wife, she knows the most important thing is for a person to have a personal relationship with Jesus, but “if we don’t live in a society favorable to faith, we won’t be able to share the gospel message.”

She said she believes the world is becoming antagonistic toward the Christian faith.

“If God’s people don’t get involved, we will lose the freedom to open our doors and share our faith,” she admonished. “We will be limited in what we can do. There are things going on in this country where people’s Christian faith is being challenged.”

Reiterating that this country was founded on biblical principles, Kern said if the church today doesn’t learn the true meaning of the first amendment instead of a distorted view of separation of church and state, Christians are going to lose religious freedoms.

Sally Kern knows, of course, that this is a vicious lie. When she speaks of "Christians losing their freedoms," she means not having the "freedom" to bar behaviors for the sole reason that her religion does not like them. Sally Kern considers Islam a "threat to America," but while she demands absolute freedom not only to practice but proselytize her religion, her conservative allies rail against attempts by members of other faiths to adhere to their beliefs.

“Our founding fathers wanted to separate the institutions of church and state, but never intended to separate faith from the public square,” she said. “Politics definitely influences our everyday lives. Our beliefs should be influencing society.”

Many others have noted how delusional Rep. Kern must be to have even the slightest belief that Christianity is not "influencing" American society. It's so uninfluential, in fact, that only 43 of the last 43 presidents believed in Jesus Christ, and only 100% of this year's major presidential candidates identified as "Christian." A mere 99% of members of Congress identify as Judeo-Christian, too. (That's the right percentage: two House members are Muslim, two are Buddhist, and one is an atheist. The other 530 members, out of 535, say they are Jewish or Christian.)

But the problem is not that Sally Kern believes these things, which she is entitled to do. The problem is that she wants to enact laws to enforce these ideas.

“If Christians would go to the polls and vote biblical values, we would have a biblical society,” she said. “We have to exercise our right to vote and stand up for biblical standards, or we are going to lose our freedoms.”

Kern said, according to a Gallup survey, only nine percent of people who call themselves Christian have a biblical view of the world.

It should go without saying, but does not, that Sally Kern's idea of a "Biblical view of the world" means "agreeing with Sally Kern's interpretation of the Bible." When she says that people with this view should "go to the polls and vote biblical values" so "we would have a biblical society," she is stating in clear and unambiguous terms that she wants to enact laws that force her "biblical viewpoint" on the rest of the state, and probably the nation.

When Sally Kern talks about "Christians losing freedom," she means that Christians no longer have the "freedom" to fire gay people just because they're gay. She means the "freedom" to force her particular brand of prayer on a captive audience of public school children, while her allies protest and interrupt any government-provided prayer from other faiths.

In short, Sally Kern sees equal rights for gay people (whether Christian or not), and for people of other faiths, as "losing her religious freedom" because it means she won't be able to use the force of law to push her message and suppress theirs.

This was never about freedom of speech, something most people figured out quickly when they realized her only legislative claim to fame was an attempt to force the state to censor library books that her religion did not like.

No, what this is about—what this has always been about—is Sally Kern's singular, overwhelming, driving desire to enforce her religion with the law.

She wants to block access to information she does not like, but since she realizes she can't get away with that, she casts it as "protecting the community." When it's pointed out to her that it would also "protect the community" to be tolerant of everyone's viewpoint, and that gay people in Oklahoma might not get murdered if important people like Sally Kern didn't say they were the single biggest threat to America, she literally cannot understand what you are talking about.

Sally Kern believes that the universe was created by a loving God, who wrote down His rules for living in His universe in a book called The Bible. She believes that exactly one interpretation of that book is not only correct, but also infallible and unquestionable. She believes that the one true interpretation of the Bible says that homosexuality is a sin (and that all the other things listed as "sin" in the same book of Leviticus are, somehow, not sins anymore), and that God will not only punish those who commit this sin, but also punish those who let this sin go unchecked.

When you try to tell Sally Kern that she should be tolerant of other people's point of view, her internal monologue tells her that "tolerance" is the work of the devil, and that if she lets up even for one day in her crusade to implement God's Word on Earth, then all that love she professes for Jesus Christ will do no good. When the Rapture comes, she'll be "left behind." When the Day of Judgment arrives, she will be found wanting, and condemned to burn in horrible pain for all eternity for not keeping The Word, just like you will for proposing that maybe, just maybe, her interpretation of the Bible might not be the only one, or might not be accurate at all.

And she is, and should be, completely free to believe this. I would take up my pen to support her right to believe that, just as I take it up here to support the rights of other people to believe differently. But it doesn't stop there. Sally Kern is a legislator in Oklahoma, for the sole reason that being a legislator gives her a chance to pass laws that enforce her religious beliefs on the rest of the state.

The entire purpose of statutory proscriptions on activities is to make sure that people who engage in those activities face penalties. If there's no penalty for ignoring a statute, the statute might as well not exist. When Sally Kern wanted all public libraries in Oklahoma to remove material that might portray gay people as healthy and normal, she proscribed the penalty for failure to comply: losing all state funding, effectively closing the libraries that didn't obey. In Sally Kern's "reclaimed" Oklahoma, your local library would not have the "freedom" to decide that there was nothing wrong with being gay, because Sally Kern's religion has already decided for you that being gay is wrong. If you choose to act on your beliefs, you lose your library. You only get to keep your library if you act on her beliefs.

This is the only reason Sally Kern ran for the Oklahoma House of Representatives. Sally Kern wants to create laws that promote her religion and punish those with other beliefs. The penalty may be a loss of state funding for something like a library, because not a lot of people seem to care about libraries anyway (for better or worse). But Sally Kern and her allies strongly support laws recriminalizing gay sex, including sex offender registration for everyone caught doing it. They want all mention of topics they dislike, from homosexuality to Islam to reproductive rights, banned from public schools, public libraries, and ideally from public discussion. The only way those laws would have any teeth at all is to provide penalties ranging from fines to imprisonment for those convicted of breaking them.

That's what this is all about. Sally Kern wants to create laws that punish people who act on beliefs other than her beliefs, up to and including imprisonment. She wants to use the power of the state to ban those things that do not fit her "biblical worldview" and allow only those things that do. This, by her own admission, is her entire reason for becoming a legislator.

In short, Sally Kern openly and proudly wants to make Oklahoma a fundamentalist theocracy. Her "free speech" is not and never has been on the line. Yours, however, is squarely in her sights, as is anything else you do that she and her church find objectionable.

This is why rallies, protests, and other such attempts designed to shame Sally Kern into renouncing her words will never work. To her, asking her to admit that the law should treat gay people equally is like asking her to renounce Christ. This is who she is. She may, in her heart, not hate gay people at all, but her public life is devoted solely to using the power of the state to enforce her religious beliefs on everyone else. Nothing will ever, ever change her mind. The Oklahoma House of Representatives will not expel her, so the voters of District 84 must do it.

“Our founding fathers wanted to separate the institutions of church and state, but never intended to separate faith from the public square,” she said. “Politics definitely influences our everyday lives. Our beliefs should be influencing society.”

Sally Kern has made it abundantly clear that, as a legislator, she will not stop until her views are controlling society. She and any others who would attempt to enforce their beliefs on others have no place writing, interpreting, or enforcing the laws in a nation and state where all people, regardless of any beliefs they hold, have equal protection under the law.