Oklahoma GOP Lawmakers Planning North Carolina HB2-Style Anti-Trans Bathroom Amendment

LGBT Advocates Vow Immediate Lawsuit if Measure Passes

Oklahoma GOP lawmakers reportedly plan to attach an anti-transgender “bathroom” amendment, similar to North Carolina’s HB2, to the state’s budget bill before the legislative session ends next week. 

 

Anti-LGBT Sen. Joseph Silk (photo), who authored an anti-trans bathroom bill that died earlier in the session, told KOCO-TV that he and others are “exploring all [their] options.” 

“It’s not just me,” Silk said. “There’s a lot of members of the Senate that are very concerned. We’re hearing from the public.” 

Silk has called LGBT people a “radical, intolerant, movement,” and said “they are a threat to our freedoms and liberties in the United States and Oklahoma.” He drew national attention – and derision – last year for saying LGBT people “don’t have a right to be served in every single store.”

“People need to have the ability to refuse service if its violates their religious convictions,” he continued, adding, “I say that sensitively, because I have homosexual friends.”

Aaron Cooper, a spokesman for Senate President Pro Tem Brian Bingman, told The Tulsa World that constituents are “registering their complete frustration and disappointment in the federal government,” in response to the Obama administration’s directive last week requiring public schools to allow trans students to use restrooms based on their gender identity. 

Sen. Brian Crain added: “We are looking to provide a response for those students who have objections to sharing bathrooms and shower facilities with a transgender student. And we are trying to provide instruction and direction to school administrators when they are faced with this situation and doing so in response to the outcry many senators have heard from concerned parents throughout the state.”

Troy Stevenson, executive director of the statewide LGBT group Freedom Oklahoma, threatened an immediate lawsuit if such an amendment is passed. 

“Transgender individuals are under the care of a doctor,” Stevenson told KOCO-TV. “It is a long process This is not something that somebody just one day decides needs to happen, and the fearmongering going on with it is absurd.” 

Stevenson and Toby Jenkins, executive director of Tulsa’s Oklahomans for Equality, accused GOP lawmakers of trying to create a distraction from the state’s $1.3 billion budget shortfall. 

“It could not have come at a better time for our legislators,” Jenkins said of the Obama administration’s directive, “who are notorious for not taking care of the real business of government but meddling and messing and wasting time over silly things that do not move this state forward and do not protect working-class families.” 

Lawmakers are expected to come up with a budget by 5 p.m. May 27, according to The Tulsa World. 

 

Image: Screenshot via YouTube