The Hero of Oklahoma (Interview)

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It is truly an incredible thing and not, at this point in our experience, normative to have a senator, a faithful believer, a

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Christian, a senator who will stand for the cause of justice in a consistent way like we have in Senator Joseph Silk.

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So let's welcome to the stage Senator Silk, everybody. All right,

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Senator Silk, thank you for joining us. I'm sure your schedule is busy right now. So as everyone is watching this right now, live streaming, people are going to ask the question, what's happening in Oklahoma?

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What is happening? Tuesday, 10 a .m., we're going to be there. We're rallying for something very, very important, but what's happening right here in Oklahoma that everyone across the country needs to know about?

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Yeah, so the rally on Tuesday is in support of Senate Bill 13, which many of you know is an abolition bill.

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It calls for the total and immediate end to abortion without exception. So that's a live bill that's waiting to be heard in the

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Health and Human Services Committee. That's what the rally is for, and the implications of that bill over the past couple of years is there's really no excitement, from a legislative standpoint, there's no excitement or movement behind your typical pro -life bills, because what happened with the groundswell of abolitionists or people who are just demanding equal protection and equal justice have really just drowned out the pro -life voice, which is an absolutely fundamental thing that has to happen to move this forward.

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So that's what this entire week's about. The legislature knows what's going to happen on Tuesday. They know what

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Senate Bill 13 stands for. They've already seen the people while they're out and about, and it's been a really good thing already.

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Absolutely. So, Senate Bill 13 is a bill that is intended to establish justice for the sake of the pre -born.

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What makes this particular bill distinctive?

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What makes it different from the average pro -life lobby or pro -life industries' bills and movements forward?

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Yeah, so Senate Bill 13, as a lot of you know, the typical pro -life bill will have exceptions, and it doesn't actually—no pro -life bill that I've ever read has actually been consistent in the fact that it protects life from the moment of conception.

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It just doesn't. Therefore, it's very inconsistent. It doesn't offer equal protection, and it doesn't matter which one.

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I mean, there's heartbeat bills. There's ultrasound bills. None of them actually do the job and offer equal protection.

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Senate Bill 13, the language of the bill identifies life beginning at the moment of conception, and from that point on, the intentional taking of that life is considered homicide, just like it is with any other life.

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So what's, I think, interesting for those who identify as pro -life, who would say,

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I'm a Christian, I see this as human life from conception, is that I think most

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Christians who would identify as pro -life and are thinking with a biblical worldview, or let's just say thinking from a scientific perspective, biologically speaking, what happens at the moment of conception, would probably be thinking right now as they're hearing you,

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Senator, they might be thinking, well, isn't that what we're trying to do? Isn't that what everyone's doing?

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Why is this so unique? Why is Senator Joseph Sokes' bill unique? Why is what's happening in Oklahoma right now interesting?

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Because aren't we already moving in that direction? Isn't the pro -life movement trying to call this homicide?

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Isn't that true or no? That's exactly what most people think. Unfortunately, that is not what happens at all, and I've told people that one of the biggest challenges to push forward this bill is actually the pro -life lobby.

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They're the ones that are actively at the Capitol, actively lobbying legislators to not hear this bill, and again, we're talking about a bill that really does establish justice, defines life beginning at conception, and the intentional taking that life is murder, and you're right.

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Most people think that the pro -life organizations that they're involved in are actually trying to get there, but they're not, and when

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I talk to these pro -life people who are kind of coming to light, and it's kind of harsh the way

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I present it, but it's true that almost all pro -life legislation, if it does anything other than immediately abolish abortion, it's just as harmful, if not more harmful, than pro -choice legislation, and that immediately catches them by surprise and says, well,

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I've been giving money to this organization for a long time, and I'm like, well, this organization is the exact one that is presenting bills that are getting in the way of actually ending abortion.

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So that's one of the things that can tend to happen as people really get into this and start fighting for consistency, is you can start looking like tinfoil hat conspiracy theorists, because what you're saying is, is this massive decades -old pro -life lobby industry movement is actually responsible for stopping the issue of justice in the state of Oklahoma, and that's the truth.

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Yeah, that's absolutely the truth, and with that pro -life lobby in Oklahoma, for example, we have the

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Oklahoma Baptists, or the Southern Baptist General Commission of Oklahoma, large church denomination that are always, you know, they have

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Rose Day at the Capitol, which is a big pro -life day, and theoretically, they are supposed to be pushing for the end of abortion.

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Well, a few years ago, I had Dr. Anthony Jordan, who was the executive director of the

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BGCO, to my office to discuss why the churches weren't getting behind this bill, and I asked him point -blank multiple times,

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I said, is it the stance of the Baptists that abortion is murder? And he wouldn't answer the question. He would immediately be like, well,

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I don't speak for all the Baptists. I'm like, well, that's kind of your job and your position, that's what you're supposed to do, and I said, is that the stance of the

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Baptists, that abortion is murder and killing an innocent life? And he's like, well, we've always had a really good pro -life deal on our platform, and he just, he never would answer the question.

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That's what people have got to understand, is these pro -life organizations are absolutely actively getting in the way of ending abortion, and I've had conversation and conversation with Tony Lowinger, who's a big pro -life lobbyist here in the state.

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He's been in my office multiple times. He came in last year and said, you know, Senator, I think we both want the same thing, so I don't know why we are going separate paths, and I was like, because we don't want the same thing.

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I want the immediate end to abortion, and you don't, and he was like, well, I just don't know.

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I mean, that was his question. Those are the people who are pushing the pro -life laws. So that becomes a challenge because you, we want to have people's eyes open to the truth and to consistency, and in order to do that, we do have to expose, call it a sacred cow, you have to expose an industry that many of us thought before as Christians, that was our team, right?

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When we say pro -life, Christians are pro -life. People think about red state, Republican, they say, well, pro -life is in there.

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I mean, if you're going to run for president as a pro -life, sorry, president as a Republican candidate, you had better be pro -life.

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It's assumed that that's in there, and what that can typically mean is what we just saw in the president's

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State of the Union address, and that is in the moment where the president says, hey, here's some red meat, everybody.

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I'm going to work with Congress to ban partial -birth abortions, and everybody stands up, hooray, it's amazing.

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Yes, thankfully we have a president, and I want to say yes, praise God, that he strikes straight blows with crooked sticks, but it doesn't mean it's not a crooked stick, right?

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I mean, when we think about the president saying that and everyone applauding and standing up, saying, yeah, no more icky partial -birth abortions, and right after that, the president essentially says, every human life is a precious gift from God, and everyone's applauding that.

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We have to ask the question, is that consistent? Because if every life is a precious gift from God, that's from conception every life.

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Why are we saying as a pro -life movement that, but we'll stop the partial -birth abortions because those are really icky?

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What are we doing about the other precious lives that start at conception? And so there's an inconsistency that I think the pro -life lobby and the pro -life industry is propagating, and you're right,

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Senator, the pro -life movement, I think to many people's confusion, is not working to actually immediately end and criminalize abortion in the states.

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Yeah, that's exactly right, and a lot of people, I talk to people all the time, they're like, well, I don't know, my church nomination or my pro -life organization, they'd totally be for abolition and immediately criminalizing abortion and calling it murder.

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And I say, well, just call the executive leadership and say, what do you guys think about criminalizing abortion and ending it immediately?

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And you will get a very troubling answer from them, I guarantee you. Very much so.

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And so SB13, describe the bill for us so we can understand how is this going to help the children in Oklahoma, the issue of justice in Oklahoma, and how can other states see this as a model?

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What exactly is the language? What does it do? Okay, so what we had to do with Senate Bill 13 is first, we basically medically and scientifically defined life beginning at the moment of conception.

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And then we adjusted our homicide statutes to include that, so basically the intentional taking of any human life after the moment of conception would be considered a homicide, first -degree murder.

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So that's what that does. But then what's interesting to a lot of people is we had to go in and also repeal all of our pro -life legislation that's currently on the books, because that pro -life legislation is what's keeping abortion legal in Oklahoma.

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So those are kind of the three fundamental aspects of the bill. It defines life beginning at the moment of conception.

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The intentional taking of that life is murder, offers equal protection. And then it repeals and gets rid of and purges our books of all the pro -life legislation that allowed all of those loopholes and inconsistencies.

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So if Senate Bill 13 passed committee, went over to the House, passed it, and then the governor signed it, the effect of that bill would be in Oklahoma, the practice of abortion would immediately cease in this state.

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And then also at the end of that bill, it says that basically any court ruling that is in violation to the bill would be null and void.

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So I mean, naturally, we know what the court's view of killing babies is. They think it's okay.

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They're wrong. They're wrong constitutionally, legally. They don't have any authority to say that. So Senate Bill 13 says the legislature and the governor will uphold the

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Constitution and the law and actually provide protection for all children. So I think,

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Senator, we're in an interesting space right now in terms of the time that we find before us, because people have argued in the past, say under the

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Obama administration, if we had a bill of abolition, a bill that actually had equal protection, where it was homicide, all the rest, that was essentially consistent,

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Christian, consistent, it was just. People said, well, the courts immediately would come after you, strike it down, all the rest.

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Well, now, I mean, I'm not an apologist necessarily for President Trump, but now we're under the Trump administration.

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We have the Supreme Court people put on that are supposed to be on our side, pro -life people, judges, those sorts of things.

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We have a president who just argued during the State of the Union address that every life is a precious gift from God. This is the time for the states to rise up and flex their sovereignty and stand for justice, because we have an administration that I do not believe is going to come after the state of Oklahoma.

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I mean, can we have a State of the Union address that says every life is a precious gift from God, and then that same president coming after a state that essentially says, we agree,

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Mr. President? No, you're exactly right, and that's a conversation that I've had with a lot of legislators and just regular citizens as well.

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If you were to pass Senate Bill 13 and sign it under an Obama administration or a Hillary administration or something like that, naturally there'd be a bigger outcry, a bigger pushback.

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I'm pretty sure that if Senate Bill 13 passed and was signed into law under the Trump administration, he'd probably just tweet out, good for Oklahoma, it's a state issue, and that'd be the end of it.

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So if there was ever a time to actually abolish abortion, it's right now. It's exactly right now. So that would bring us to this very important question.

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As people watch this live stream, Senator, they're going to be asking the question, isn't Roe v. Wade law?

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Wouldn't this be Oklahoma essentially violating what is law in our country?

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Well, and so Roe v. Wade's not a law. It's just an opinion that has no legal force whatsoever. But there's two different ways of thinking on that.

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First off, the state of Oklahoma does have the legal authority to essentially say

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Roe v. Wade was unconstitutional. We're not going to abide by that in our state. That's my belief.

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That's what I think we need to do. A lot of other legislators think that is the case as well. However, there's some people that think

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Roe v. Wade needs to be overturned. If that's the case, we've talked to many constitutional lawyers that say the only way to overturn

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Roe v. Wade and use those Supreme Court justices that probably would is to actually offer an equal protection bill or a bill that doesn't have exceptions, that actually treats all life equally.

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That's the only way to actually overturn Roe v. Wade because the Supreme Court, one of the reasons they rule pro -life bills as unconstitutional or whatever is because there's so many loopholes and inconsistencies in it.

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So whatever thinking you have, if you want to overturn Roe v. Wade, well, you need to get behind an abolition bill.

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Or if you think that the Supreme Court didn't have that authority to begin with and the state needs to stand up, you still need to have an abolition bill.

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So there's two tracks there. Either one is going to lead to the exact same thing, and it's the exact same piece of legislation.

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Okay. Senator, you mentioned a moment ago that one of the struggles in the states is the pro -life legislation on the books that's actually keeping abortion legal in the states.

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Can you describe, what do you mean by that? How can that be possible? Yeah, and that's actually one thing.

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One of our greatest opponents to ending abortion in Oklahoma is the Senate pro -tem

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Senator Greg Treat. He does not agree with abolition. I don't even know if he agrees with actually ending abortion.

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But one thing that he did actually concede on last year in our meetings,

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I said, I was like, Senator Treat, you do realize, because he kept going back to Roe v. Wade, kept going back to it. And I said, you do realize that if Roe v.

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Wade were overturned today, abortion would still be legal in Oklahoma because of all the pro -life legislation.

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And he actually, it took a couple days, but he was like, that's actually true. So he actually tried to author a trigger bill, essentially, if Roe v.

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Wade was overturned, then all of our pro -life legislation would be repealed automatically, basically.

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So he did concede to that. And it's because a lot of people, no matter what state you're at, look at your pro -life legislation on the books, that legislation is still going to be intact whether Roe v.

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Wade is upheld or struck down either way. And that shows you really how bad that pro -life legislation is.

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So I know a lot of, I think a big hindrance to bills like this being put through, even through committee in states is fear, right?

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Fear of the federal government, it's the biggest thing. I've heard governors say, well, I'm afraid for my staff.

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I'm afraid, you know, about being reelected. And so I don't want this to sound crass, but why don't you care about that?

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Well, because I don't care about being reelected is what it comes down to. But you're exactly right.

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That is very, very true. And another one of the obstacles that we have is that fear from legislators.

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It is. They don't want to be, most legislators run their time in office to not make enemies and not take a hard line so that when reelection time comes, they have an easier time getting reelected.

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Well, when you have a bill that actually would bring a complete end to abortion, naturally you have a lot of people that would hate that idea.

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You have the world out there. And so they don't really want to touch that. So there's a lot of behind the scenes stuff.

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Well, let's not, let's kind of kill this bill so nobody has to vote on it. And kind of to drive that home, last year with Senate Bill 13,

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I had a meeting with the Health and Human Services Chairman, Jason Smalley, who he's resigned now and out of the picture.

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But he said, you know, he said, he said, Silk, if we hear Senate Bill 13, everybody's going to have to vote for it.

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And I said, right, that's the point of the bill. But then he said, but nobody wants to vote for it.

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And so that shows you, and it didn't get a hearing, because he was trying to protect the members from having to take a hard stance.

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And I don't really understand that, because that's what we should be up there to do, is to take a hard stance on things. But the fear is a very real thing.

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Well, yeah, because I think the problem is if you have a lot of these pro -life legislators, if they have to vote, they don't want to vote for it, but if they vote against it, it's going to look really bad for those that think they're voting pro -life.

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Right. And that's exactly right. And going back to the pro -life industry, most legislators, unfortunately, want some kind of cover.

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They want somebody to run cover for them. So another interaction that me and Senator Smalley had was, he was like, hey, have you talked to the

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Baptists about this? Which I did, and it didn't go very well. But he actually followed up with me, he's like, hey, did you end up talking to the

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Baptists? And I was like, yeah, let's talk about it. But again, that shows you the power, not only of the fear, but also legislators want somebody to run cover for them.

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And if the Oklahoma Baptists would have been in support of, yes, let's do it, this is what the Baptists in Oklahoma want, there's a good chance that bill would have gotten heard.

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But they didn't. They came and said, they actually publicly came out against it. So that kind of drove that fear home even more.

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Senator, what can we do to support you, to help you over the next couple of days, and of course, the months to come?

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What can all of us do to make sure that you have the support that you need from citizens in Oklahoma, but also just Christians broadly?

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So the first thing to do is pray. I say, you know, if Senate Bill 13 were passed and had a committee hearing passed in law, it would be, it really is a divine act.

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It is such a monumental task. It will not come without the Lord. That's all there is to it.

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There's nothing that we can do as mere humans to do that. So pray fervently to open the hearts of legislators, and any obstacles that is in the way of Senate Bill 13 would get out of the way.

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The second thing is, don't just stop there, because we are the hands of God. So we are his vessels, we are his tools.

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Things get done because of our actions, basically through us, his actions. So get involved.

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So engage the legislature. Right now, it's the Oklahoma legislature. You can go to, you know, Oklahoma legislature, just Google it, you can find all their contact information, and engage them.

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Call them if you're in Oklahoma, set up a meeting with your individual legislator, email them. Last year was tremendous.

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Multiple executive assistants said they couldn't keep their inboxes cleared. They would listen to a whole bunch of voicemails.

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When they got done, they were full. That's what they need to hear. They need to hear from the people of Oklahoma. But not only that, a lot of legislators, multiple legislators said, well, we think, yeah, we think abolition needs to happen, but we want another state to do it first.

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So even if you don't live in Oklahoma, contact them anyway, because legislators look kind of what's happening across the nation.

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And if it's a nationwide rush into Oklahoma via contact, email, phone calls, they're going to pick up on that.

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So engage the Oklahoma legislature. Excellent. Well, praise God. Right? Isn't it great to hear a senator speak like this?

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Praise God. Let's join together right now in prayer for Senator Silk, and especially for this week.

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Let's pray. Father, we ask that you'd please bless Senator Silk. Lord, we lift him up to you.

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We thank you so much for what you're doing by your spirit in his life, granting him the courage that you have, the consistency, the ability to communicate.

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God, we praise you for him. And we ask that you bless him, bless his life, bless his message.

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Bless him with even more strength, even more courage. We do pray for what the senator just talked about, and that's,

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Lord, a divine act, something that can only come from your hands in this state.

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We are asking, Lord, that you would bless for your glory, not for Senator Silk, not for anyone in this room, for your glory, that you would establish justice in Oklahoma for the sake of these children, for your glory, that you would act.

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Lord, please, we ask that of you, God. We ask for mercy on these children. We ask for eyes to be open.

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We ask for your light to break into darkness. We do pray against, Lord, the arguments of the enemy, whether it's those who are trying to support abortion and believe in the murder of children, or whether it's even those who call themselves pro -life who are arguing in a very inconsistent way that is leading to the deaths of many, many more children.

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We pray for Senator Silk, pray for his family. We pray for his mission.

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We pray for this movement, and we pray for Tuesday, especially, that you, Lord, would allow eyes to be opened to your truth.