Lesbian Debauchery in Oklahoma

By Mubarak Dahir, AlterNet. Posted October 13, 2004.

Lesbians of America, pack your bags! There’s a new lesbian capital of the world: Oklahoma!

It may at first be hard to believe that this modest midwestern state is a breeding ground as a lesbian Sodom and Gomorrah, but we have it from a good source that the state is in fact cultivating lesbian debauchery.

None other than former ultra-conservative Republican Congressman and the current Republican Senate candidate Tom Coburn says so.

In a tape recently released by Brad Carson, Coburn's Democratic opponent for the Senate race there, Coburn is heard warning the good clean citizens of Oklahoma of the great lesbian threat to their state.

On the tape, Coburn tells how a campaign worker form Coalgate, Okla., told him that lesbianism is “so rampant in some of the schools in southeast Oklahoma that they’ll only let one girl go to the bathroom.”

Well, I think he really meant to say they all only let one girl at a time go to the bathroom. It’d kind of be a mess if they really only ever let that one girl in the school go to the bathroom.

But back to lesbian debauchery.

This is, of course, a matter of grave concern and alarm for the good citizens of Oklahoma. Imagine, girls pretending they have to relieve themselves, then going to the bathroom to relieve themselves.

On tape, Coburn warns his fellow Oklahomans to think about this issue. How has this catastrophe happened to us?

When contacted by the Associated Press for follow-up, Coburn's spokesperson, John Hart, had an answer. Lesbian debauchery has been allowed to happen, he said, because “our kids are getting mixed messages about sexuality.”

Southeast Oklahoma teachers are denying this wave of lesbian depravity is of much concern. And when Joe McCulley, the superintendent of schools in Coalgate, heard about Coburn's remarks and concern he just chuckled.

But this really isn’t a laughing matter.

Because Tom Coburn is a reason for lesbians and gay men, wherever they live, to be concerned.

Coburn has been identified by the national Republican Party as one of the key candidates who could help them hold onto their slim majority in the U.S. Senate in the November elections.

The seat is being vacated by Republican Sen. Don Nickles, who has held the position for 24 years.

Coburn was previously a Congressman from Oklahoma, who got swept in with the right-wing conservatism of the 1994 Congress. He quit Congress after three terms (as he said he would), but he didn't fade from the national spotlight, or from national controversy. In 2001, President Bush named him to co-chair the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS, a position he still holds.

Early on, the former doctor made a national reputation for himself as a die hard right-winger.

And he has long battled what he sees as the threat to America from the “gay agenda.”

While in Congress, Coburn was one of the leaders in the fight to keep the District of Columbia from implementing its domestic partnership program, by refusing to fund it. And he fought to keep gays and lesbians in the District from being allowed to adopt children.

His staunch opposition to and constant harping against same-sex marriage has been credited by some as a pivotal reason for President George Bush's endorsement of a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage.

Coburn is known as much for his dramatic antics as for his ultra-conservative viewpoints. When he was first elected to Congress, he lured young interns to his office with free pizza and sodas for lectures on abstinence and sexually transmitted diseases. His presentations were complete with slides of people and body parts infected with the various ailments he was railing against.

He has been equally controversial on AIDS policy and AIDS education and prevention efforts. In 1997, he proposed a bill that would have required states to have named, rather than anonymous, HIV reporting as a condition for receiving federal Medicaid money. He also authored a bill encouraging mandatory testing of infants for HIV.

Heas a staunch supporter of abstinence as the primary form of HIV/AIDS prevention, and has used his training as a doctor to undermine condom use. When he was appointed to the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS, he told Reuters his mission would be to really talk about the science that's out there on HIV.

Yet despite the mountains of scientific evidence that prove condoms help prevent the spread of HIV and save lives, Coburn dismissed them.

“A condom will work for you and for me if we use it perfectly and use it every time,” he said. “The problem is that the majority of people just don’t use them like that.”

Just this last spring, Coburn’s office wrote to cancel his office’s subscription to Poz magazine, the premiere magazine on HIV and AIDS issues.

For its 10th anniversary edition, Poz gathered more than 80 people with HIV and AIDS to pose in a naked group shot for the magazine's cover. Coburn was so offended by the photo that he wrote the magazine and asked he be removed immediately from the mailing list.

And according to the online magazine Salon.com, at a political meeting held just last spring, Coburn warned his fellow Republicans that “the gay community has infiltrated the very centers of power in every area across this country, and they wield extreme power. [The gay] agenda is the greatest threat to our freedom that we face today.”

And what could be better proof of our power and reach than the great lesbian bathroom scare in schools all across the state of Oklahoma?

Freelance writer Mubarak Dahir receives e-mail at MubarakDah@aol.com

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