Republican state Senator Joseph Silk is defending his stunningly anti-gay comments by coming out with even more outrageous ones.
Joseph Silk has two anti-gay bills before the Oklahoma state senate. One bars same-sex couples from participating in covenant marriage, the other is an anti-gay license to discriminate so sweepingly broad it allows anyone to refuse to provide “any services, accommodations, advantages, facilities, goods or privileges,” or “counseling, adoption, foster care, and other social services” to anyone else, based on their “sincerely held religious beliefs.”
Not only does it remove the basic right to equal protection guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution to every LGBT person, it also removes that right from women and minorities, all based on the business owner’s personal interpretation of their chosen religion.
Senator Silk told the New York Times last week that gay people “don’t have a right to be served in every single store,” prompting an outcry across the nation. The response was so quick and intense Silk closed his Facebook page after The New Civil Rights Movement published our report.
Silk, who is 28, is a property manager who works for his father at a vacation property business. In a new post on his campaign website, he takes full ownership of his anti-gay comments.
“Yes I did say that homosexuals do not have the right to be served in every store, just as I do not believe that I nor my family have the right to be served in every private business,” Silk writes. “The right to provide services should be the decision of the business owners. We need to keep our country free and stop this radical, intolerant, movement.”
UPDATE:Â Senator Who Says Gays Have No Right To Be Served Now Fear-Mongering With Bryan Fischer
But that’s not the end of Silk’s attack on the LGBT community, which includes some of his constituents.
“The problem with the current LGBT movement is they have zero tolerance or consideration of other peoples rights,” Silk continues, adding this dangerous claim: “they are a threat to our freedoms and liberties in the United States and Oklahoma.”
Silk neglects to specify exactly whose “freedoms and liberties” gay people are supposedly threatening, nor does he offer up one iota of proof.
“I am not questioning the rights of the LGBT movement, I believe they have the right to live how they want to live,” he concedes. “They on the other hand, are launching a massive campaign that is attempting to strip other peoples individual liberties away if they hold different beliefs…this is complete intolerance.”
Clearly, it is the anti-gay lawmaker whose Oklahoma Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 2015 (SB 440)Â who is the one “attempting to strip other peoples individual liberties away.”
Silk acknowledges his bill “has outraged the LGBT community,” but says “they are crying discrimination and making themselves the only ‘target’, in reality it has nothing to do with them.”
If “in reality it has nothing to do with them,” why is he claiming “homosexuals do not have the right to be served in every store,” the LGBT movement has “zero tolerance or consideration of other peoples rights,” and gay people “are a threat to our freedoms and liberties in the United States and Oklahoma”?
Silk concludes the “intent of the bill is to protect private property rights and religious liberty. As a legislator, I will always fight to protect people’s liberty to live thei [sic] lives according to their beliefs and convictions.”
Just not the liberty and lives of gay people.
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Image: Screenshot via YouTube
Hat tip: Towleroad
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