Transgender woman to challenge anti-gay Okla. lawmaker

A Story by Renee Baker, EDGE Publications, Sept. 14, 2009

Oklahoma City lawyer Brittany Novotny plans to formally announce her candidacy to unseat three-term state Rep. Sally Kern [R-Oklahoma City

American author and political activist Susan Sontag once used cancer as a metaphor for the unknown. She said when politicians want us to fear something, they compare it to a disease such as cancer. We will then want to “cut it out” and get rid of it. Representative Sally Kern [R-Oklahoma City] knows this trick well.

Oklahoma City voters have elected Kern to represent House District 84 three times. She ran once unopposed, but a transgender woman has emerged to challenge Kern.

Brittany Novotny, 29, is a lawyer with her own law firm in Oklahoma City. She earned her Juris Doctorate from the University of California’s Hastings College of Law. And the Oklahoma bar admitted her in 2005.

Novotny is expected to formally announce her candidacy later this month. She declined to disclose the details of her campaign, but she provided EDGE a brief statement.

“I am laying the groundwork for my campaign and getting the tools together to make sure we run a winning campaign,” Novotny said.

Novotny faces an almost certain uphill battle against the three-term incumbent.

Kern remains a staunch advocate of so-called traditional marriage and opposes what she routinely describes as the homosexual agenda. She has compared homosexuality to a cancer that starts in a toe or another innocuous place, and then it spreads slowly and insidiously throughout the whole body. Kern privately shared this belief with a group of Republicans, but her comments homosexuality “is destroying this nation” and “it spreads.” were caught on tape.

“This stuff is deadly, and it will destroy our young people,” she proclaimed.

These comments sparked an immediate firestorm of controversy. And even talk show host Ellen DeGeneres jumped into the fray.

Log onto www.brittany4hd84.com for more information.

For more on this story, click the EDGE link.

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