For an ordinary citizen like me, drawing hasty and poorly-thought-out conclusions from statistics would be stupid. However, for someone who governs others based on her views, this deficiency in understanding is dangerous.

In this aspect, Rep. Sally Kern, R-Oklahoma City — who is up for re-election in November — is dangerous.

I met with Kern in September to speak with the woman who has famously spoken out against a number of social issues during her tenure in the Oklahoma House of Representatives.

For example, Kern has long been a critic of the teaching of evolution in schools and even introduced a bill earlier this year that would have made it illegal for teachers to penalize students for expressing creationist views in science tests. The bill was vetoed.

Evolution, as any first-year biology student will tell you, is the process by which the genetic composition of a population alters,

generation-by-generation.

Kern defined evolution to me as “the process of wanting to create something or have something be perfect. Get rid of that which is not healthy and strong.”

Kern told me she associates the acceptance of evolution with Adolf Hitler, despite the fact that, under the Nazis, libraries were specifically instructed not to stock works promoting “the false scientific enlightenment of primitive Darwinism.”

Whichever side of the issue you stand on, it’s clear Kern has no idea what she’s talking about.

Kern’s most notorious hobbyhorse is undoubtedly homosexuality. Earlier this year, a surreptitiously-made recording of her was leaked onto YouTube, in which she derided homosexuality as a “cancer.”

Anyone can say something foolish off-the-cuff if they don’t realize someone’s taking note, but Kern later defended the absolute truth of her remarks.

Whether or not you support gay marriage, it’s undeniable that Kern’s statements further illustrate her failure to grasp reality.

In her leaked YouTube speech, Kern claims “studies show no society that has totally embraced homosexuality has lasted for more than, you know, a few decades.”

I’d be interested to see the data collected by these studies and to see how they account for cultures like the ancient Chinese, who seem to have been positively blasé about the phenomenon of homosexuality.

Nearly every emperor of China’s Han Dynasty is recorded as having had male lovers, and that line alone persisted for 426 years, somehow managing to escape the fire and brimstone of the Bible’s Old Testament god.

Another statement made by Kern in her YouTube speech, and on many other occasions, is that homosexuality has “deadly consequences” because it is linked to higher incidences of illness and of feeling “discouraged.”

One wonders exactly what other disease statistics would imply the demographics they apply to.

For example, the majority of AIDS infections in the U.S. is currently taking place in the black population. Does this make being black inherently unhealthy?

And what about the fact that there has never been a single confirmed instance of a woman contracting HIV through lesbian sex?

Is this God’s way of telling us that he wants to see more hot girl-on-girl action?

Or, to draw a more relevant comparison, what about the fact that a 2006 study conducted by Vanderbilt scholar Gary Jensen shows a strong correlation between homicide and dualistic belief (i.e., belief in both a god and a devil)?

Would the correct response to this information be an attempt to legislate dualistic beliefs out of existence? Of course not.

In campaigning, Kern has made much of her Christian pedigree, even claiming that God directly instructed her to run for office and to become a “cultural warrior.”

It quickly becomes apparent, though, that her views on the Bible are as misinformed as her views on biology.

“There’s more proof to verify the Bible than there is George Washington, Chaucer and Shakespeare,” Kern told me.

“The actual time that Jesus existed until when people started writing and talking about him is just not a whole lot of years.

And the actual time people start talking about Shakespeare and Chaucer and the things that we find about them is a lot farther years apart.”

Obviously, Jesus’s historical existence has no more relevance to the evaluation of his moral teachings than the historical existence of Socrates does on the legitimacy of the Socratic method.

However, if one wants to justify their homophobia through belief that God at one point torched a city full of Sodomites, the historicity of the Bible takes on a new significance.

Kern’s claims about Biblical history are so wrong I almost don’t know how to rebut them.

The Gospel of Mark, the oldest gospel mentioning Jesus, dates, charitably, to 40 years after Jesus’s alleged death. George Washington, Geoffrey Chaucer and William Shakespeare, on the other hand, have all left extensive contemporaneous documentation.

When I met with Kern, her sincerity in these statements was undeniable.

These are no sound bites deployed to cynically manipulate evangelical voters; Kern really believes these fantasies.

Kern’s actions and statements as a state representative reflect on us all, even if you are not a Republican, a conservative or a Christian.

When my meeting with Kern concluded, she warned me that, when I returned to OU, I would find that 90 percent of my professors were anti-Christian.

“Not anti-religious. Anti-Christian.”

I’ll keep an eye out.

Zac Smith is a University College sophomore. His column appears every other Monday.