RACE TO BE GOVERNOR PUTS CORNETT IN ANTI-GAY FRENZY

MAYOR AND RELIGIOUS EXTREMISTS INTENT ON PACKING METRO LIBRARY BOARD WITH GAY FOES

 

December 3, 2008

Investigative Report

By James Miko and Wayne Fuller

UPDATE: DEC 10, 2008 - Following the story we've included a few documents we've obtained from the Nov 20th Library meeting...note the names. Headers for the documents are dated for Dec. 11th, which is tomorrow. They're copies to be presented at the next commission meeting.

 

A special investigation has revealed Oklahoma City Mayor Mick Cornett has his eyes on the state executive office and is working closely with religious extremists to fill the Metropolitan Library Commission of Oklahoma County with anti-gay members in order to court the fundamentalist vote.

 

        
MAYOR MICK CORNETT               PASTOR STEVE KERN

 

Cornett and Steve Kern, pastor of the Olivet Baptist Church and husband to State Rep. Sally Kern, are being accused of teaming up to rid the library system of all gay and lesbian materials, as well as those their church-based philosophies find objectionable. A source close to Cornett alleges, “The Mayor is looking to become Oklahoma’s next governor in 2010. With the conservatism rampant in the state, he feels now is the time to fully side with fundamentalist Christians in order to get their backing. He believes one way of doing that is going on an all-out assault on gay citizens. Even if things are done that would later be overturned in court at a great cost to the City, he will walk away a hero to certain people.”

 

The insider also stated, “The Mayor is aware that Ernest Istook is returning to Oklahoma to join the governor’s race again. Istook has the conservative base locked in, so the Mayor must shake loose Istook supporters if he is to get past the Republican primary. Gays are easy targets for him. He tried to use them in 2006, but it backfired. This round he wants to make it clear he is without a doubt against gay rights.”

 

Gossip Boy received other tips regarding Cornett’s ambitions and the scheme to appease Christian extremists, who sided against him in the 2006 race for 5^th District Congress, and began a covert ploy to expose it. A reporter posed as a citizen working with the Mayor to push gay and lesbian literature out of city libraries and contacted Steve Kern.

 

 

A call to the mayor’s office has not been returned.

 

Cornett became the mayor of Oklahoma City in 2004 after serving as a city council member.

 

In 2004 Oklahoma Lawmakers passed HB 2477 that allowed schools to display the motto
“In God We Trust” in classrooms. Here Oklahoma City Mayor Mick Cornett poses with
 a poster created for the law’s passage that can now be found in  classrooms across the state .

 

The Cimarron Alliance Group, a former LGBT rights political action committee that birthed the Cimarron Alliance Foundation, endorsed Cornett for his city council race in 2001. Cornett then publicly denounced and refused the endorsement.

 

During a failed 5^th District Congressional bid in 2006, a campaign ad of Cornett’s proclaimed, “Last year, he [Cornett] took on the liberals and made sure that our libraries would not allow children to have access to books that promote the gay agenda."

 

Cornett’s race opponents, however, claimed the mayor was attempting to take credit better due Rep. Sally Kern.

 

LIBRARY BECOMES BATTLEGROUND

 

In 2005 Rep. Kern sponsored House Resolution 1039, which was passed 81 - 3, in an effort to keep gay-themed books out of the hands of children. The resolution, which specifically targeted gay books, ordered libraries to “confine homosexually themed books and other age-inappropriate material to areas exclusively for adult access and distribution."  

 

Kern and other legislators threatened state libraries with massive cuts in funding, if they did not remove material like the popular children’s books King & King and Heather Has Two Mommies. Both the books deal with gay marriage and are considered age appropriate for children. This led to a 2006 policy by the Metro Library system to create special sections for such books.

 

On November 20, 2008, new restrictions were passed at the Metropolitan Library Commission meeting in Edmond, which requires librarians to place material in the ‘Family Talk’ section at least 60 inches off the ground. That section includes materials dealing with gay and lesbian subjects.

 

The library commission is composed of political appointees, who are often at odds with the system’s employees, who strive to follow standard library policies regarding countering censorship and public access to materials.

 

The ‘Family Talk’ area was created in February 2006 after the commission ordered that a special section in the children’s area of libraries be created that would house books dealing with homosexual marriage and parenting. This was the library’s solution to address Rep. Kern’s house resolution mandates.

 

That policy says, “That a special section be created within the children’s area of all MLS locations. Materials for easy readers, readers and tweens will be shelved in this section. The collection within this section would include all books/materials identified as: child abuse prevention, child sexual abuse, child sexual abuse prevention, domestic/family violence, drug abuse, substance abuse, medication abuse, alcoholism, homosexuality, premarital sex and extramarital sex. Other subjects identified as useful to families based on requests, patterns of use or, in the judgment of staff, which are thought to support our patron’s needs in parenting may be included.”

 

The commission’s minutes for the November 2008 meeting are 67 pages long with things heavily detailed. However, the part of the meeting dealing with reshelving books, which received substantial media coverage and was addressed by several commission and audience members, is suspiciously lacking detail. Besides the historical notation about the special section designation in 2006, the commission minutes only refer briefly to the controversial measure.

 

The entry in the minutes reads as follows: At the request of commission member Ralph Bullard and joined by 7 other commission members a request has been made to reconsider the physical shelving of the “family talk” section.

 

That is followed by the mention of the special section and its vote in 2006, but nothing else.

COMMISSION CHAIR RAY VAUGHN

Oklahoma County Commissioner Ray Vaughn is the reigning chairman of the commission, due the virtue of his office. Vaughn’s family helped found the Westwood Church of Christ in Edmond. He is on the board of trustees for Oklahoma Christian University and a former professor of law there.  

 

The library chair was part of a 2007 Ethics Commission probe into the campaign donations of several Republicans, who claimed the contributions they made to the Oklahoma Republican Party were diverted to the Oklahoma County Republican Committee instead.

 

Vaughn’s records show he made a $5,000 to the state party, but it ended up in the county groups coffers instead, which is a direct violation of ethics rules. Vaughn claims he made no contributions to the county committee during that period.  

 

It was widely circulated in political circles that Vaughn’s wife Suzanne, was behind the redistribution of several emails claiming President Elect Barak Obama was a Muslim, linked to terrorists, and not a citizen of the United States. 
 

THE TIN DRUM CONTROVERSY

 

Library materials in Oklahoma City were previously targeted in 1997 after the fundamentalist group Oklahomans for Children and Families turned over the library system’s sole video of the movie The Tin Drum to police, who then requested a judicial ruling. District Attorney Bob Macy filed a suit alleging the film contained child pornography. District Judge Richard Freeman after viewing a single scene involving a boy licking powder off a teen’s navel declared the film obscene and announced it portrayed child pornography. He then banned the movie from Oklahoma County.

 

The judge claimed the scene showed a six or seven year old involved in oral sex. No explanation was given as to how he mistook an 11-year-old for someone half that age, a belly button for a vagina, or why he only reviewed one scene when federal law requires the work be evaluated as a whole.

 

OKC police officers complied with Freeman’s censorship crusade and seized copies of the film, which had won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film in 1979, from libraries, video stores, and even private homes, where citizens were listed as having checked out or rented a copy. Those actions, as well as Freeman’s decision, were later declared unconstitutional.   

 

Oklahomans for Children and Families no longer exists and their website OCAF.net now redirects to ads for “sexy latin singles” and “meet married women”. In the past the group was criticized for distorting Biblical passages in an attempt to promote the death penalty for homosexuals.

 

RALPH BULLARD

 

Library Commission member Ralph Bullard, who introduced the reshelving policy, was appointed to the board in 2006 - at the urging of Mayor Cornett.

 

Bullard is associated with the Christian Heritage Academy, a private school in Del City. He now serves as the school’s ambassador after being its headmaster since 1973 – the year after he founded it. In 2006 his son, Josh Bullard, a graduate of Bob Jones University, took over the position.

 

The stated goal of the academy is to create Christians who will “restore our American Christian republic to its historic, Biblical foundation.” This is a dominionist belief shared with Sally Kern, Paul Blair and Reclaim Oklahoma and means that select Christians will take public office, which would include library boards, in order to replace laws and practices with old Biblical Code, while claiming the separation of church and state is a myth. 

 

The academy’s information also says their desire is to produce Crusaders who will be sent out to restore what they feel is Christianity’s heritage in U.S. government and to combat those who would subvert it.  

 

Bullard currently heads the ‘Ralph Bullard Heritage Foundation’, which is listed with the Oklahoma Secretary of State’s office as a domestic not for profit corporation established in 1998. However, no non-profit tax returns are on record for any year of its decade long existence.

 

The foundation plans a tour of historic American Revolutionary landmarks in September 2009 that is meant to “To encourage, equip, and inspire each participant to become active in the restoration of our Christian Republic.”

 

PAUL BLAIR

 

In March 2008 the Christian Heritage Academy expanded into the Edmond area, which some are claiming is being taken over by religious extremists. CHA joined with Fairview Baptist Church to provide private schooling in the area. The facility is called Christian Heritage Academy North and Ralph Bullard will be on site every morning of each school day.

 

Fairview’s pastor is Paul Blair, a close associate and friend of Sally Kern. He was the keynote speaker at the ‘Rally for Sally’ earlier this year and defended Kern’s controversial homophobic remarks. Lately, Blair has become very vocal in attacking gays. During the Join the Impact protest at City Hall on November 15, 2008, where members of the LGBT community and their supporters gathered in an action for equal rights, Blair appeared in two television news reports lambasting the effort.

 

Sitting the stage for a battle between church and state, Blair was one of 32 religious leaders nationwide, who violated federal tax rules, by doing political sermons and endorsing John McCain from the pulpit prior to the November Elections. Participants, like Blair, are hoping to be charged with the violations, so they can enter federal court and challenge IRS rules that prohibit pulpit politics. 1954’s Johnson Amendment states that churches and other non-profits cannot participate in political campaigns for or against candidates for public office.

 

Blair is founder of Reclaim Oklahoma a fundamentalist group whose function is "To educate our pastors, legislators, educators, students and all citizens as to the truth about America's Christian Heritage and the role of fundamental, Biblical Christianity in the establishment and function of our legal, legislative and educational systems; and to work towards the successful reestablishment of these values in our society today." 

 

Two sources attending last month’s Library Commission meeting saw anti-gay force members Blair, Bullard, Steve Kern and Michael Jestes huddled closely together after the meeting. Blair, Jestes, and Kern sat together at the session.

 

MICHAEL JESTES

 

Michael Jestes is an associate pastor at Western Hills Baptist Church in South OKC and the executive director of the Oklahoma Family Policy Council, which is a division of Dr. James Dobson’s Focus on the Family.

 

Jestes and the OFPC are, also, associated with the Family Research Council.

 

That group’s public statement on homosexuality is: Family Research Council believes that homosexual conduct is harmful to the persons who engage in it and to society at large, and can never be affirmed.  It is by definition unnatural, and as such is associated with negative physical and psychological health effects.  While the origins of same-sex attractions may be complex, there is no convincing evidence that a homosexual identity is ever something genetic or inborn. We oppose the vigorous efforts of homosexual activists to demand that homosexuality be accepted as equivalent to heterosexuality in law, in the media, and in schools. Attempts to join two men or two women in "marriage" constitute a radical redefinition and falsification of the institution, and FRC supports state and federal constitutional amendments to prevent such redefinition by courts or legislatures.   Sympathy must be extended to those who struggle with unwanted same-sex attractions, and every effort should be made to assist such persons to overcome those attractions, as many already have. 

 

Oklahoma court records show that in 1995 Michael Jestes was accused of improper behavior by a family member of the late Anita Sneed. Probate records indicate that Jestes was believed to have held undue influence over the woman, whose daughter claimed was mentally unsound at the time. Jestes ministered to her prior to death and was the only one at the woman’s death bed, when she abruptly changed her will and named him as beneficiary. After her death Jestes rushed to initiate probate proceedings prior to the family. The altered will written by Sneed with Jestes’ assistance listed him as a nephew even though it was determined later there was no blood relation.  A ruling against Jestes was overturned on appeal and he was able to walk away with a substantial inheritance that an earlier will had dedicated mostly to real family members and the decedent’s church.

On April 2, 2008, during the ‘Rally for Sally’ event at the state capitol, Jestes stated, “the rally was successful in its effort to encourage Kern. It was a chance for her to be with people who supported her and her freedom of speech.”

Rep. Sally Kern told a Republican group in January 2008 that the gay agenda to redefine marriage and mainstream homosexuality is "destroying this nation." She went on to describe the continuing push from militant homosexual activists as the "biggest threat our nation has, even more so than terrorism or Islam."