Rep. Perryman Advocates For Anti-Catholicism Plank of Oklahoma's Constitution

In the very liberal publication, The Oklahoma Observer; Rep. David Perryman(Democrat-Chickasha) presses for Oklahoma to retain the bigoted language in our constitution known as "The Blaine Amendment".
In some of the darker days of Oklahoma's history, there were many anti Roman Catholic sentiments. These were nothing more than ignorant fears residing in the predominantly Democrat political environment.
This Summer, Oklahomans suffered some of the vestiges of that era, because we ignored our past errors and hid them, rather than confront the bigotry we had tolerated and promoted.
As we wrote in July, the Blaine Amendment language failed to be adopted to the US constitution. It was a blatant attempt to project the anti Catholic bias of many Americans.

 But many states did adopt the language into their own state constitutions. Oklahoma is one such state.

Rep. David Dank; D-Chickasha

Our judiciary frequently ignored the language in rulings which would have produced stark results.
But this summer, the Oklahoma Supreme Court acted as strict constructionists and narrowly ruled that because a historic document of civil law was connected to a belief system, the legislature can no longer publicly acknowledge the document as a shaping force of western civil government.

Chairman Costello discusses Anti-Catholic bias in Oklahoma history (4 minutes into his speech.

  The late Commissioner, Mark Costello, decried this latent bigotry in an address to a civic group. We have that tape. At 4 minutes into his address to OCPAC, he recounts some dark forms of religious bigotry which still exists toward Christians, and yet has no problem with Satanism on public grounds.
  Why would Oklahoma be LESS tolerant of things associated to some faith groups, than the US Constitution is? But that is the position Rep. Perryman is advocating.
  The Capitol architecture does have gargoyles which serve no mechanical function and do add stress to the aging and deteriorating building. *There are many theories has to how and why medieval architects and stone carvers developed gargoyles. It is believed that they were used to ward of evil and to act as guardians of the church to keep the terrible spirits of evil away and were inspired from a passage written in the bible.*http://goo.gl/sboVTr

David Van Risseghem