Oaklahoma State Senator Joseph Silk has stirred up a hornet’s nest inside the LGBT community after introducing a bill (SB440) in his home state that would ensure business owners to retain the right to serve whomever they please. That is not sitting well for some in the homosexual community, who are now sending death threats to the state senator and his family.

In an interview with TruthRevolt, Silk said that since he was quoted in The New York TimesThursday saying homosexuals “don’t have a right to be served in every single store,” he has received hundreds of angry e-mails and phone calls from LGBT activists who believe he is sanctioning discrimination. “A couple of them have been death threats against me and my children,” Silk said.

But what the NYT failed to do was include the entirety of Silk’s statement — the part where he said he also doesn’t have a right to be served in every store. Silk clarified what he told the paper in a statement at his campaign website:

Yes I did say that homosexuals do not have the right to be served in every store, just as I do not believe that I, my family, or anyone else have the right to be served in every private business.

The threats even targeted a private cabin rental business Silk manages for his father. Silk said that LGBT activists were alerted in order to flood the business with angry messages promising boycotts. But as Silk explained to TR, the business has served homosexual customers before and will continue to do so in the future.

“This bill is about protecting the rights of private business owners to make their own decisions for their business and to ensure their religious beliefs are protected,” Silk said. “Business owners should not be forced to serve someone if it violates their beliefs,” he added.

Silk indicated that SB 440 is not unique and is based on a similar religious liberties law in nearby Kansas. So far, he said, the bill has yet to be heard in committee and has been dead for weeks. Silk explained that he went as far as reaching out to the executive director of the LGBT group Freedom Oklahoma and invited him into the office while the bill was being written as a show of transparency.

“I had Troy Stevenson to my office to try and let him know this bill was not an attack on the LGBT movement, but rather to protect people’s individual religious liberties and right to live that out,” Silk said.

Silk said Stevenson expressed his problem with the bill saying that a private business owner does not have the right to refuse services because of religious convictions and the meeting ended. Silk strongly suspects that Stevenson was responsible for leaking the cabin business information shortly after they met in order to encourage activists to send harassing messages. Silk said he is “very certain” it was Stevenson because “he has family ties to that community in our same industry [and] that is the only way people could know that.”

The backlash unleashed on Silk and his family is largely based on the missing half of his statement, courtesy of the narrative designed by the NYT. But what the media is failing to  report — they’re too busy mocking — is the violent threats and vitriolic language employed by LGBT activists. Silk made it clear in the interview that as a person with homosexual friends, he isn’t painting his accusations broadly, but pinpointing those radical activists who will stop at nothing short of shutting down anyone who disagrees with homosexuality.

“This incident and the way it exploded into death threats should wake people up to the fact that the LGBT activist are the single most significant threat to religious and personal rights in the United States,” Silk said. “They do not want people to have the right to live out their religious conviction if those convictions do not agree with their behavior.”

He continued:

The LGBT activists have shown time and time again that they want to persecute, trample on people’s rights, and take people’s businesses if for any reason their behavior and choices are not agreed with. My family and I, like many others before, are testimonies to their hate, intolerance, and forceful nature of this movement. The sad thing is, no one is attacking their behavior. They have the right to be gay…but if you disagree with them, they will do everything in their power to ruin your life.

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