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In the smoldering heat of the last few days I’m sure that none of us have been tempted to take for granted the value of water. It parches our thirst and cools our bodies. It grows our food and greens our yards … and we know it can be fairly scarce during these dry summer months. But even in the driest of months here in Oklahoma, we have yet to experience the drought that inflicts impoverished and developing nations around the world. We can celebrate the blessings of well-developed water delivery systems and the convenience of the municipal authorities that provide them – and we should – but we are called as followers of Christ to remember our fellow human beings in Nicaragua, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Mozambique, Burma, and beyond who don’t share in our blessings.

Of course, we’re not only called to remember the needs of the water- insecure around the world, but to stand in solidarity with them and to help make a difference in their plight. You may remember that we took a stand during the season of Lent to collect funds during the H2O Challenge – an act of solidarity and support. This Sunday we’ll gather together to once more hold the thirst of our world in prayer and to dedicate the gifts of water wells that will be provided through Church World Service, a global mission partner of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).

However, we also plan to take another stand in solidarity with the impoverished and economically oppressed by collecting one final offering for the plight of water insecurity. Special envelopes will be available in the pews with a picture of a heart and entitled “Love Offering” that will allow you to offer another gift for the cause of safe and plentiful water. All special gifts collected this Sunday will be shared through Global Ministries with our mission partners in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where over 600,000 fellow Disciples live and worship.

So please plan on joining us as we dedicate our gifts and remember those who do not have that which we enjoy. As Jesus reminds us in Matthew 25, those who see the plight of the thirsty and offer them a drink are doing the work of the kingdom of God. Let’s join in sharing the abundance of God’s creation with all who lack, and carry the vision of the gospel from our sanctuary to the ends of the earth.

Seeking the path of God’s justice,
Clint

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The ongoing news of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico continues to be a source of consternation for me. As I listen to the ever-growing reports – 1,000 barrels per day leaking into the ocean has managed to grow to over 5,000 barrels per day – I am greatly concerned for the long term damage that this disaster will cause. The resulting oil slick, now estimated to be over 130 miles by 70 miles (roughly the size of the state of Delaware), could potentially cause an even greater disaster than the Exxon Valdez incident that coated Alaska’s Prince William Sound with roughly 250,000 barrels of crude oil.

I was heartened to see that Week of Compassion has already spoken on the issue of the oil spill. Sharing advice from a representative of our partners in the United Church of Christ, they asked people not to rush to Louisiana to volunteer their services, but instead to contact local agencies as to how they might best help. The expertise and specialized equipment required for oil spill cleanup makes it difficult to plug in volunteers without specialized training. It’s also a somber reminder of just how difficult the task will be as this massive oil slick continues to plague the ocean waters and drift toward our coastline.

This event should serve as a wakeup call to us in our country. In an interview on NPR, I heard about how oil spills have taken place in the Niger River delta of Nigeria on a yearly basis since 1969. If the connection to this being our problem isn’t immediately clear, the fact that the U.S. is one of Nigeria’s largest oil export partners should bring things into focus. Our nearly insatiable need for gasoline and other crude oil products indirectly contributes to the regular destruction of our earth’s already fragile ecosystem.

It’s one more reminder that our calling as Christians isn’t just to be, but to be good stewards. Our continued failures to extract and utilize the earth’s resources in a safe and responsible manner should sound a clarion call to more environmentally responsible practices and lifestyles. It’s never too late to start making a difference by limiting your vehicular travel or carpooling on trips with your neighbors, coworkers, and friends. Plain and simple: environmental justice is Gospel justice.

Living the hope of resurrection,

Clint

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All things are possible to those who believe. Mark 9: 23

Eva Chipenda challenged and inspired me to go to Angola. Let me tell you a little about her: As Eva closes in on 80 years of age, she has pushed with all her considerable might to open the Canata Preschool Program which currently enrolls nearly 100 children between the ages of 3 and 5. When you walk in the courtyard door, the children run to greet and embrace you – but, not with the same fervor that occurs when they see Dona Eva enter. They cry out her name and last week practically knocked her off her feet in their enthusiasm to hug her!

Read the rest of the story here.

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I’m quoting from a page found on Facebook, the popular social networking site:

DEAR LORD, THIS YEAR YOU TOOK MY FAVORITE ACTOR, PATRICK SWAYZIE. YOU TOOK MY FAVORITE ACTRESS, FARAH FAWCETT. YOU TOOK MY FAVORITE SINGER, MICHAEL JACKSON. I JUST WANTED TO LET YOU KNOW, MY FAVORITE PRESIDENT IS BARACK OBAMA. AMEN.

I didn’t spend any time setting up this comment, because it’s not worth the setup. This type of language is crass and despicable, and what’s worse, it’s said in the guise of religious language that is presumably Christian. For those of you who may remember me making any comment in Sunday School class or even from the pulpit that other Christians are controlling the discourse about our faith and making us look bad, this is exactly the kind of thing that I was talking about. This behavior is hate speech pure and simple.

As you all know, I’m not interested in whom you support politically or what party affiliations you hold (and legally I can’t as your pastor), but I hope that this type of language is something we can all agree is pushing across the lines of both Christian morality and good taste. To wish death for anyone, even in what is supposedly a “joking” manner, is to be out of relationship with that person and others as well. This is not consistent with the Jesus who a) dined with tax collectors, b) defended allegedly adulterous women, c) touched and healed leprous people, d) learned from the example of foreign women … the list could go on and on.

We don’t have to like our elected officials, but this type of behavior lies clearly beyond the pale. If we want to make a difference in our public life, wishing for the death of our opponents isn’t going to cut it. We have to raise our voice and work to make a meaningful difference – something that we mainline Protestants seem to have forgotten how to do over the last couple hundred years.

If the tone of my writing sounds angry, then you’ve caught my drift. And you should be angry as well – as a Christian, this hateful “prayer” was delivered in your name, too.

Living the hope of resurrection,

Clint

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War is brutal and impersonal … If we really saw war, what war does to young minds and bodies, it would be harder to embrace the myth of war.

- Chris Hedges, columnist at TruthDig

Frame grabs from a video posted on WikiLeaks.org, showing a U.S. Army Apache helicopter firing on a group of people in Baghdad on July 12, 2007. UPI/WikiLeaks.org Photo via Newscom Content © 2010 Newscom

The fog of war has cleared to reveal a storm of controversy raging around the publication of a classified video footage of an attack by U.S. Army Apache helicopters against Iraqis in 2007. The air strike resulted in the wounding of two children and the death of at least a dozen people, including two Reuters employees, Namir Noor-Eldeen and Saeed Chmagh. In Dialogic’s News and Analysis section, we took a look at the discussion from around the blogosphere. However, the narrative begs further discussion as to what it says about our society and culture.

While the responses to the attack range from moral outrage to unqualified support, I want to highlight a middle voice. Anthony Martinez, writing at his personal blog, A Look Inside, gives us his response to events of the video. Claiming his experience as both an infantryman on the ground as well as hours spent at consoles directing aerial traffic in Iraq, he offers what I feel is a thoughtful and mediated response to the events of this helicopter strike:

All in all, the engagement clearly went bad. I would have objected when I was a private first-class pulling triple duty as an RTO, driver, and vehicle gunner. I would have objected when I was a sergeant working well above my pay-grade as the Brigade Battle NCO. My assessment is based on my experiences in that very theater of operations. I did not see a threat that warranted an engagement at any point. I did, however, see the elements indicating such a threat could develop at any moment. (note: As I did, in fact, already know several things about the situation when I viewed this footage I cannot say with any certainty that had I viewed the exact same footage at the time of the incident that I would not have concluded the camera was an RPG as well.) People can make their judgements however they wish, but what is clearly visible is not the entire picture.

In my non-professional tactical opinion, I tend to agree with Martinez. The threat wasn’t imminent, but there was definitely the potential for one to develop. This is the fog of war — the complexities of modern warfare* that this video reveals to us. The new battlefield fails to provide a clear enemy or even limit itself to a bounded “field of battle,” choosing instead to spill into the ambiguity of urban areas where combat zones and homes occupy the same place; where insurgents and innocents routinely wear the same clothing. War no longer takes place on the grand battlefields of some bygone “Stratego” age of Napoleonic armies facing off in remote locations with colorful uniforms and flags to clearly delineate friend or foe, civilian or military. Writing for The American Prospect, Matthew Yglesias puts the problem on the ground into perspective:

It’s not that our troops are bad people. It’s that war is dangerous. The consequences of not pulling the trigger when you think you see someone swinging a rocket launcher in the direction of your helicopter are extremely severe — you die. Your friends die. On the flip side, the consequences of being a bit too trigger-happy are, of course, terrible for the people who wind up dead and bad for the mission but not so severe for you personally.

In a way, this video reminds us of the brutality of the wars in which we as a nation are engaged. A caller’s comments on Talk of the Nation highlight the unfortunate surprise we seem to receive every time the gruesome experience of war comes home to confront us and our relative safety. When asked by host Neal Conan what he had learned from the video, the caller responded:

Well, I guess I – what I think mostly, it’s how far removed we are from that world and how it isn’t on our radar and basically, how I feel we bury our heads in the sand and we don’t hear about it. And when something like this comes out, it’s very clear that things are going on that we’re not really tied into.

What the caller describes as a type of head-in-the-sand ignorance, Tom Engelhardt at Tomdispatch.com equates to a form of Olympian arrogance. Noting that we as a nation have not lived the experience of war in our own neighborhoods, he discards the argument that we suffer from a failure of imagination, describing it instead as a failure of empathy, driven by romantic notions of our role in the world:

We prefer to think of their deaths as so many accidents or mistakes — “collateral damage” — when they are the norm, not the exception, not what’s collateral in such wars. We prefer to imagine ourselves bringing the best (of values and intentions) to a backward, ignorant world and so invariably make ourselves sound far kindlier than we are. Like the gods of Olympus, we have a tendency to flatter ourselves … while creating a language of war that suits our tender sensibilities about ourselves.

Military personnel are trained to create psychological distance between themselves and their enemies, providing them with the ability to override their natural refusal to kill a fellow human being. Perhaps we at home suffer from our own form of distance, removed from the harsh realities of warfare. Aided by Yglesias’ charge that this new type of warfare shields the public from its harsh reality, we may be seduced by a more sanitized understanding of combat, where terms like “collateral damage” damage hide the stark reality that people are dying. Chris Hedges, a veteran war correspondent elegantly describes the inelegance of war and how it is represented to us back at home:

Filmic and most photographic images of war are shorn of the heart-pounding fear, awful stench, deafening noise and exhaustion of the battlefield. Such images turn confusion and chaos, the chief element of combat, into an artful war narrative. They turn war into porn … This is why we are given war’s perverse and dark thrill but are spared from seeing war’s consequences. The mythic visions of war keep it heroic and entertaining. And the press is as guilty as Hollywood.

It is this artful narrative of war that is undermined by the ambiguous reality presented in leaked videos such as this one. We are allowed to see the messiness of the battlefield, a place where cameramen mingle with combatants, that frustrates the myth of war as a glorious and good. Instead of a necessary evil that occasionally leads to “collateral damage,” we learn that war is always marred by indiscriminate violence. This video reminds us that we cannot neatly package our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan into a simple, sanitary box and push it into the recesses of our minds. Instead, videos like this remind us that the price of war is always more than we bargain for.

The question that confronts us now is: how do we respond?

Will we continue to bury the real price of war between our incessant debates between left and right, hawk and dove, conservative and liberal, as people continue to die in our name? Will we chastise these helicopter pilots for making crude jokes and callous remarks in order to ignore the thought that day in and day out, our soldiers, marines, sailors, and airmen continue to suffer the dehumanization of combat because we sanction it – or worse, because we demand it? Will we continue to deny the connection between our national self-interest and our rapacious appetite for resources and wealth that implicates us in the deaths portrayed in this video, along with countless others?

Or will we overcome our ignorance, set aside our arrogance, and grasp our inherent agency to become peacemakers and work toward a just and equitable world where we might put an end to our need for violence and war?

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* In reality, we should probably be using the term postmodern warfare given that combat now blurs the clear boundaries of the modern nation-state. Combat takes place between large, militarized nations and small, covert insurgent groups that claim no certain political nationalities and do not play by what they see as the arbitrary geopolitical “rules” of the modern era.

First off, on the home front I want to remind everyone that the Regional Assembly is taking place this weekend in Enid. The opening activities begin on Thursday afternoon and continue all day Friday and into the early afternoon on Saturday. It’s not too late to sign up – you can find registration information at www.okdisciples.org.

Secondly, with graduation approaching and some of you asking, I want to get the information on the PTS Commencement ceremonies out there again. It will take place on Saturday, May 15 at 11:00 am in the sanctuary of First Christian Church in Tulsa. The church is located at 913 S. Boulder Ave., and you can also find directions on the church website at www.fcctulsa.org.

I also wanted to share some exciting news from around the denomination, so I’ll add that here as well.

Living the hope of resurrection,

Clint

Two Disciples Meet With President Obama At Easter Prayer Service

General Minister and President Sharon Watkins and Cynthia Hale, pastor of Ray of Hope Christian Church in Decatur, GA, were among religious leaders who met yesterday with President Barack Obama for an Easter prayer breakfast. The event, held at the White House in Washington, D.C., was organized to highlight the important role that Christian organizations play in serving their communities, their country and the world.  (Read the entire news release here.)

Butler University Has Historic Ties to Abolitionist Disciple

Butler University’s amazing run through the National Collegiate Athletic Association 2010 Men’s Basketball Tournament was an awesome achievement, especially considering that the Indianapolis college has only about 4,200 students. Not to be forgotten in all of the excitement over the team’s success, is Butler’s historic ties to the Stone-Campbell movement.

Butler University takes its name after one of its founders, Ovid Butler, an attorney, newspaper publisher and social activist. Butler’s family moved from Augusta, N.Y. to Jennings County, Ind., where his father, Chancey Butler, became one of the first Stone-Campbell movement preachers in the state’s history.  (Read the entire news release here.)

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The announcement of Justice John Paul Stevens’ retirement has led to a flurry of media activity around the beltway. The news has been greeted with praise from his colleagues on the court along with nearly everyone else in the political establishment, including his ideological opponents. But perhaps the more important question left to us is: what will happen next? Tom Goldstein at SCOTUSblog thinks that it will be a “pretty efficient” process that will ultimately lead to the irony of a more conservative court under a Democratic president. Jack Balkin agrees that Obama’s first priority in will likely be to avoid expending too much political capital in a midterm election year; however, he goes on to offer what he views as a potential second priority:

Associate Justice John Paul Stevens posing for photographs at the Supreme Court, September 29, 2009. UPI/Gary Fabiano/POOL Photo via Newscom Content © 2010 Newscom

Second, and equally important, President Obama will nominate someone who is likely to sustain the President’s policies while he is in office, first, on the issues he cares about most at the time and, secondarily, the issues necessary to keep his political coalition together … [These might include] support for the constitutionality of the recently passed health care bill, preservation of Roe v. Wade (as modified by Casey), and support for robust (but not necessarily unilateral) Presidential power in surveillance, detention, military commission, rendition, and other war on terror issues.

This will present an interesting scenario according to Michael Kinsley at The Atlantic. He wonders if the Republican’s desire to expend political capital isn’t also at question. Noting their care to avoid the term “conservative” in the discussions surrounding Stevens’ replacement, he raises questions as to where their priorities might lie in the upcoming nomination process:

Since they don’t control Congress or the White House, conservatives are avoiding the term “conservative” as they gird for battle over a replacement for Justice Stevens. Instead they say “mainstream” or “centrist.” But this resolves none of the contradictions in their general position on Supreme Court nominees. Do they want someone who respects precedent, or someone who will vote to overturn Roe v. Wade? Do they want an “originalist,” or do they want to poison President Obama’s health care victory? Do they really believe in “judicial restraint,” or do they want “activism” in their own favor?

Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight seems to agree:

The risk to Republicans is that they overplay their hand, either by filibustering someone whom the public deems to be reasonable and qualified (which I think they will not do: they can read the polls as well as everyone else) or by basically looking like a bunch of jerks (more risk there: the Senate Republicans are not the most charismatic bunch, although those on the Judiciary Committee are savvier than most).

Yet he downplays the possibility of any real drama in the nomination hearings:

In general, I’d tend to tamp down expectations surrounding the potential political fallout from Barack Obama’s nomination of another Supreme Court justice later this year, which he’ll have to do in the wake of Justice Stevens’ retirement. As important as the Supreme Court is, Congressional hearings are still Congressional hearings, and are for the most part inside-the-beltway affairs that won’t penetrate into the zeitgeist in a year where most voters have things like the economy on their minds.

Perhaps that is why Matthew Yglesias offers a seemingly gloomy assessment from the politically progressive point of view:

Note that evaluating the nominee on the merits doesn’t seem to be an option. I think it’s pretty clear that there’s no political reason to think a moderate nominee in the Breyer/Sotomayor/Ginsburg vein would actually fare any easier than someone from a more robustly progressive tradition. The decision about whether or not to launch a no-holds-barred campaign against the nominee will be undertaken for other reasons. But as best I can tell, Barack Obama (and many other leading Democrats) don’t actually think that reviving old-school judicial liberalism would be a desirable outcome. That, rather than any political calculus, seems likely to me to drive a moderate pick.

All of this ultimately serves to raise the question of the how the Supreme Court nomination process has evolved over the years. Peter Grier, writing for the Christian Science Monitor, explains how the confirmation hearing is a relatively new invention on the U.S. political scene. Dating back to Eisenhower’s nomination of John Harlan in the 1950’s, the hearings gradually shifted their focus from questions of personal shortcoming to the partisan grilling of nominees over judicial philosophy and ideological positions. This shift was pointedly marked by the nomination of Robert Bork by President Reagan in 1987, who ultimately failed to be approved by the Senate in a vote of 58-42. This has led to what Grier describes as the current climate with regards to the national judiciary:

But since Bork both parties have learned that there is possible advantage in trying to portray nominees as people who are out of the nation’s political mainstream. Interest groups have discovered that there is lots of money to be raised and attention to be gained by leading the fight against nominees with whom they disagree.

Meanwhile, Washington itself has become more and more partisan.

What’s that led to? A situation in which almost every Supreme Court nomination will be deemed “controversial” by a president’s political opponents.

And if Grier’s logic holds true in the wake of Justice Stevens’ retirement, are we doomed to another bitter nomination bout in spite of our earlier commentators’ perhaps unwarranted optimism? Given the experience of then nominee Sonia Sotomayor, I find little room for optimism, especially in the ever growing hostility of this midterm election year. The “hateful heckling” of health care reform protesters, the ”nuclear option” debate in the Senate, the fallout surrounding Senator Evan Bayh’s retirement – all of these and countless other examples leave me with little hope for a tempered nomination battle, much less a debate marked by civil discussion. It’s past time for calmer heads to prevail on issues of such national significance, but I fear that until we as citizens hold our legislators and leaders, our political action groups and non-profits more accountable for the dialogue in which they engage, we’re not going to see any measurable change in the climate or the discourse for this nomination.

In his dissenting opinion to Bush v. Gore in which the 2000 presidential election was declared for George W. Bush, Justice Stevens ended with these final words:

One thing, however, is certain. Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year’s Presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the Nation’s confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law.

I respectfully dissent.

It is a shame that the retirement of such an outstanding Supreme Court Justice will likely stand as yet another moment where we as a nation fail to see that we all lose because we have set aside the ability to respectfully dissent.

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For an overview of the media coverage of Justice John Paul Steven’s retirement visit the following links:

• Tuesday round-up – part one | SCOTUSblog
• Monday round-up – part one | SCOTUSblog
• Examining Justice Stevens and Discussion of Court’s Makeup, Future | ACSblog

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Cross posted at Dialogic.

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These past few weeks and months have been interesting on the political scene. The national picture has witnessed massive legislative and foreign policy shifts that will likely mark significant changes in how we understand ourselves as a nation. And while this may turn out to be a good thing, in the short run it may leave us feeling uncertain, unsettled, and perhaps even confused. For some, this is already the case, and the results have become chaotic.

The recent reports of violence should be quite disturbing to us as Christians. Vandalism of congressional offices and private homes – even a potential anthrax threat to a U.S. Representative – mark a rise in what can only be described as hateful acts. While I am sympathetic to the idea that many people have great concerns about the changing political landscape (meaning most specifically health care reform), I find myself in disbelief every time I turn to the news and receive yet another report of violence in response to a Congressional bill.

All of this has only served to turn me back to my bible and reread the words and stories of Jesus. I’m reminded of that great commandment, where Jesus reminds us to love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength – and the equally important second part, to love neighbor as self. It seems that this should speak with clarity to the present situation: we’re not always going to agree, but we are all children of God, and we need to recognize that in one another.

However, as I was contemplating this even further, I was struck by another aspect of Jesus – his numerous associations with tax collectors. There are perhaps no better examples of someone becoming that dreaded “other” than a fellow Hebrew who would “turn traitor” and work for the Roman occupational government. Yet even here, Jesus defied the going discourse of distrust and made friends with tax collectors. (Matthew and Zaccheus come quickly to mind.)

It occurs to me that we are in a period of cultural instability and political change, and this is becoming uncomfortable for everyone, both for and against. And as a religious leader, I’m reminded on a daily basis that this climate of hostility and sometimes even hatred calls for us as Christians to live out our faith principles even as we live out our political principles. We don’t all have to agree with one another about health care, or immigration reform, or whatever the issue of the day may be, but we are called to disagree with one another in a manner that respects our common dignity and humanity.

Living the hope of resurrection,

Clint

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God of this abundant creation,

We present to you this afternoon but a mere portion of the blessings you have shared with us.

We offer them in the hope that you will bless their use to the greater good of your people.

For just as you promised the people of Israel a place to call home,

We know that it is your Divine desire that everyone have a place they might call home.

So guide our actions that we might demonstrate the love and teachings of Jesus,

Give words to our voices so that we might advocate for those in need of shelter,

Place in our hands the tools to build and renovate decent and affordable homes,

Lead our hearts to honor the dignity of our homeowners and all people,

Guide our footsteps into the community to create inclusive and diverse partnerships,

And in sharing your message of hope, provide for a transformed and sustainable community,

In Tahlequah and throughout your created world,

As we pray in the name of your holy and gracious love,

Amen.

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Senate Bill 1965 was born on February 1, 2010 in the Oklahoma State Senate to Senator Harry Coates.  It passed from this life around April 4, 2010 in the House Judiciary Committee with numerous family members by its side.

The Oklahoma State Senate in session. (Photo by Becky J. McCray/Flickr, used under Creative Commons 2.0)

Senate Bill “SB” 1965 entered the world as an Open Meetings and Records Act, filled with hope for providing transparency in government and the freeing of information.  Showing great potential, “SB” was quickly enrolled in the Senate Education Committee where it excelled in athletics, maturing into an “An Act relating to schools; creating the Task Force on the Oklahoma Secondary School Activities Association.”  With a bright future before it, SB 1965 graduated, eagerly looking forward to life after education.

However, this new life proved difficult for SB 1965.  Shortly after graduation, it entered into a period of turmoil where it questioned its identity and future.  “SB” was taken in by Senator Steve Russell, a quixotic former military commander who longed to joust the menacing windmills of Federal hate crimes legislation.  With his own child, Senate Bill 2165, dying an agonizing death in the Senate Judiciary Committee, Russell convinced SB 1965 to give up its promising athletic career and join his dubious quest to protect freedom of religion and speech for privileged, straight, peoples.  Looking more and more like Russell’s now deceased bill, SB 1965 emerged from its midlife crisis set on perpetuating injustice in Oklahoma.*

Yet it was in this new chapter of life in the Oklahoma House of Representatives that Senate Bill 1965 finally found redemption.  Coming under the tutelage of Representative Mike Shelton, SB 1965 acknowledged its misspent youth and retired to the obscurity of the Judiciary Committee, where it remained until death on or about the 4^th of April.  Senate Bill 1965 was preceded in death by his adoptive brother, Senate Bill 2165.  It is survived by a host of other Senate Bills that legitimately serve the good of the people of Oklahoma.

No memorial services are planned.  In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to The Equality Network.

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* The original bill was modified on the Senate Floor by a substitute bill offered by Senator Russell and voted do pass by a count of 39 ayes and 6 nos.  I stand in admiration of the courage of six senators who voted against this unjust bill: Tom Adelson, Johnnie Crutchfield, Richard Lerblance, Andrew Rice, John Sparks, and Jim Wilson.

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Related Posts:

• SB 1965: Destroying Dialogue, Destroying Lives  |  Xenia Institute
• Hate Crimes in Oklahoma: Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell  |  Xenia Institute