Lying for Jesus, with fraudery!

Remember that ridiculous "Proclamation of Morality" from godbot Oklahoma rep. Sally Kern? You know, the one that basically pinned the blame for all the evils in America on abortion, porn, homosexuals and a lack of Bible-thumpers? Well, it's gaining momentum as it's collected a few signatures from government officials – or at least, it would be, if it weren't a complete fraud:

Now, a new controversy has taken center stage involving The Baptist Messenger, a weekly paper with about 68,000 subscribers put out by the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma. The publication reprinted the proclamation in its July 16 edition, complete with state seal and a signature by Governor Brad Henry and Secretary of State Susan Savage.

"It is not anything that the state is sponsoring, so to see it on such an official document that we filed is really surprising," Savage said.

Savage's office has to verify the governor's signature on all proclamations and affix the seal. Savage believes the paper took another proclamation signed on July 2 and merged the bottom half with the Kern proclamation.

"I think it's unfortunate especially when it's something that's potentially controversial to have there be any misrepresentation of the state's official position on it," Savage said.

So Bible-thumpers are trying to pass a dubious Christofascist proclamation for (their screwed-up version of) morality via fraudery and forging government officials' names onto the paper? Yeah, I'm shocked too.

Now that the story's been blown wide open the godbots are, of course, backpedaling furiously, claiming that it was just a mistake:

The paper issued a statement saying, "the artwork used was from previous editions of the paper and was used without the consent of the governor and secretary of state."

That's just stupid. So they admit that, on some previous version of the article, they'd purposefully and deliberately Photoshopped the officials' names onto the paper whilst fully knowing they didn't have their consent. Which means ... nothing at all. Other than they flat out lied. Again, how surprising.

Below is a picture of the actual publication itself, courtesy of Bruce Prescott from Mainstream Baptist via Ed Brayton:

Those names do indeed look so accidental, don't they?

(via Dispatches from the Culture Wars)