Oklahoma State Rep. Sally Kern has defended filing three bills targeting the gay community, saying that sexual orientation is a choice gay people can make.

One bill, titled the Preservation and Sovereignty of Marriage Act, threatens government employees who issue marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples. Gay couples started marrying in the state in October after the Supreme Court refused to review an appeals court's ruling declaring unconstitutional a 2004 voter-approved constitutional amendment limiting marriage to heterosexual couples.

(Related: More than 3,200 gay couples marry in Oklahoma.)

The bill seeks to cut off government funding for the licensing or support of such unions in Oklahoma.

Kern's other proposals include allowing parents to seek therapy to change an LGBT teen's sexuality without state interference and allowing businesses to refuse service “to any lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender person, group or association.”

“It's a bill about freedom,” Kern said of her legislative proposal on conversion therapy. “Why shouldn't a parent have the freedom to take their child who's struggling with same sex attraction, which we're having more and more of today. Why? Because it's promoted and pushed in the schools.”

On her marriage bill, Kern asked, “Who do we answer to?”

“Do we answer to the judges or do we answer to the people of the state of Oklahoma?”

“They have every right to believe the way they want,” she said. “They have every right to practice the lifestyle they want to, but they don't have the right to push it down the throat of the rest of America to where we have to say we accept it morally. And that's what they want. It's like oil and water, it won't mix.”

The whole premise of this,” she continued, “is are you born this way, homosexual or not? And the homosexuals say we're born this way so you have to accept us. There's no credible scientific evidence showing this.”

Kern, a Baptist minister's wife, suggested that gay rights supporters are attempting to undermine religion: “If there was proof, then see this book right here, the Bible? Throw it out. This book has stood the test of time and you're not gong to find proof.”

Troy Stevenson, executive director of LGBT rights advocate Freedom Oklahoma, criticized the bills, saying, “It's basically a reinstitution of segregation, except this time the gay community won't have a water fountain sitting there, it will be straights only.”

The 68-year-old Kern previously made headlines for saying that “the homosexual agenda is a bigger threat than terrorism” at a 2008 gathering of Republicans.