By Henry Johnston, Partisan Staff Reporter
A Tulsa legislator burst into flames last week
during debate on legislation that would nullify job
protection for homosexuals. Roger Williams, a
spokesman for the state fire marshal, said Rep.
Daniel Sullivan, R-Tulsa, ignited following an
accidental exposure to logic.
“It appears that Sullivan’s temperature rose
rapidly during debate of HB 1756. We suspect that
the heat may be have been released due to a sudden
collapse in the integrity of the lawmaker’s reasoning,”
Williams said.
At the time of the ignition, Williams had just
explained that the bill “was not discrimination,
from my point of view.”
He said that the bill actually
supported equal rights,
by denying “special
rights” for homosexuals.
At this point,
authorities suspect the
argument collapsed from
within. The invocation
of “special rights” jargon
collided head-on with
the numerous rights that
are “special” to heterosexuals,
most notably the right to marry in a civil ceremony.
“For the lawmaker to argue in favor of
equality, he would have had to support gay marriage.
Unfortunately, empirical evidence suggests
that Sullivan does not support any recognition
of homosexual unions, and therefore
believes in ‘special rights’ for heterosexuals,” said
Williams. “This damaged the credibility of the
source, making it especially easy for logic to
enter the argument.”
Normally, Williams said, such bills are
encased in a layer of homophobia, which protects
them from exposure to common sense. Williams
said that, in his haste to pander, Sullivan had forgotten
to stress how homosexuals were the single
greatest threat to Oklahomans’ way of life.
“Had Sullivan couched his arguments in
more hysterical, reactionary terms, it would have
been impossible for logic to enter the room,” said
Williams. “Unfortunately, outside observers
were able to see that HB 1746 didn’t create any
jobs, lower any taxes, or in any way raise anyone’s
quality of life.”
In addition, Williams said Sullivan’s arguments
were weakened by their inability to be
reconciled with Republican political theory.
This left his reasoning especially flammable.
“The Republican platform favors smaller
centralized government and more local control.
By denying county and municipal governments
the ability to determine their own policies, (Sullivan)
was in complete contradiction with the
foundation of his party.”
Had the lawmaker put
forth a position consistent with this platform, he
might have been able to survive an analytical
assault, Williams explained.
Some have theorized that Sullivan’s reasoning
was so self-contradictory that the inherent
paradoxes actually ripped a hole in the fabric
of space. “Traditionally, it was the Oklahoma
Democrats that favored these types of policies,”
said Jim Wiley, associate professor of history and
quantum physics at the University of Oklahoma.
“Seeing an Oklahoma Republican propose the
bill might have been more than the time-space
continuum could bear.”
In any case, authorities are urging caution
as the bill advances to the Senate. Williams and
Wiley both suggested that lawmakers place the
bill aside until it can be supported with something
more than paranoid ranting.
