Protecting 2SLGBTQ+ Oklahomans in 2022
ID: “Protecting 2SLGBTQ+ Oklahomans in 2022” in orange and blue text boxes. In the top right corner is a photo of a person looking at a notepad wearing a “Protect Trans Kids” shirt with a dark blue overlay and the FO logo. The background is light blue with dark blue dots at the bottom.
Freedom Oklahoma engages in advocacy to protect and expand the rights of 2SLGBTQ+ Oklahomans. While we’ve seen critical wins at municipal and school district levels in the last year, session after session we spend so much time fighting politicized attacks on 2SLGBTQ+ youth at the Oklahoma Legislature. In the 2021 session, where legislators created a physically unsafe environment for people to engage in advocacy, further removing them from accountability, we saw them engage in nationwide trends further attacking Two Spirit, transgender, and nonbinary young people. We worked hard as an organization and a community to successfully disrupt all of those efforts in the 2021 session. Unfortunately, rather than shifting away from these attacks, as we look towards the 2022 session, we see an ever-growing list of legislation further attacking 2SLGBTQ+ Oklahomans.
We are very familiar with being the targets of extremist legislators looking to make national news during an election year, and we are too accustomed to the frequency and volume of these harmful attacks. While we know that many inside the legislature do not have our community’s best interests at heart, we stay grounded in the knowledge that WE keep us safe. We’re centering the needs of the most vulnerable members of our community, and fighting fear-mongering policy efforts with collective power, radical love, and the possibility of an Oklahoma where we all have the safety to thrive.
We know what it is to fight against impossible odds, to build progress through obstacles, to hope as a discipline, and to create an Oklahoma where 2SLGBTQ+ Oklahomans are not only safe but celebrated. We do that work every day. And we do it together. Thanks for standing in the gap with us.
Our vision for an Oklahoma where all 2SLGBTQ+ people have the safety to thrive:
At Freedom Oklahoma, we know that 2SLGBTQ+ people have been under attack on this land since it was first colonized. We believe that it is critical to build power and engage in advocacy for protections at every level of government we interact with in order to achieve collective, community-based safety. We fight harmful policy attempts while also looking for opportunities to build and move forward. It is tough and intentional work, and we do it imperfectly, always striving to do better, to grow our table, to make sure everyone in the community has space in the movement. As an organization, we will forsake popularity and funding to avoid compromising on behalf of members of our community. Two-Spirit, Queer, and Transgender liberation is the long game. The 2SLGBTQ+ community is not a monolith, and therefore we as a single organization cannot claim to do this work on behalf of anyone, but rather we seek to do work with and among our community members, with a growing coalition of allies, and until the community safety we seek is realized.
The fights we anticipate in the year ahead:
Protect access to affirming care for Two Spirit and Transgender youth
Oklahoma continues to see efforts that would eliminate access to affirming health care for Transgender and Two Spirit people up to the age of 21, through a number of mechanisms but including criminalizing medical providers, banning treatment options, and criminalizing parents–taking away basic rights and increasing the potential for death by suicide among the most vulnerable members of our communities. These are some of the most extreme political attacks. They display a fundamental lack of understanding of transgender children. These efforts restrict access to best-practice medical care for transgender youth that is backed by the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association, and virtually all other leading medical authorities.
Bills to watch: SB 583-Dahm, SB 676-Hamilton, HB 3240-Gann
Stop library censorship
Members of the Oklahoma Legislature think that any parent knows better than YOU what books your students can access in their school library. In 2022, Oklahoma will see legislation targeting books that have any information or representation of gender identity, gender expression, and sexuality, encouraging parents and guardians to censor school libraries, threatening teacher and librarian licensing in the process, and even creating legal space for financial penalties.
We know this legislation is tied closely to efforts like HB 1775 and HB 1888 which limit training, access, and information in ways that make government spaces less safe for 2SLGBTQ+ people.
Bills to watch: SB 1142-Standridge and SB 1654-Jett
Let kids play
Kids learn a lot of important lessons in sports: sportsmanship, leadership, confidence, self-discipline, self-respect, and what it means to be part of a team. When we tell transgender kids they cannot play on sports teams that affirm them, they miss out on this important childhood experience and all the lessons it teaches. The attacks we are seeing in this space use coded language about how they’re working to protect women and girls, when what they really do is ban transgender kids from playing sports. We all care about protecting women and girls, and ensuring that girls have access to athletic opportunities. Oklahoma’s proposed legislation in this space goes furthest of any state, seeking to keep transgender kids out of sports teams through college. The reality is that these bills cannot possibly be enforced without implementing invasive physical inspections while ensuring that a smaller and smaller group of people can engage in the critical life experiences so many of us share through our time in sports.
Bills to watch: SB 2-Bergstrom and Hasenbeck, SB 331-Bergstrom and Townley
Ensure state training considers all Oklahomans
All state regulated entities should be actively engaging in diversity trainings, inclusive of gender and sexual diversity, to educate individuals on the systemic barriers and discrimination historically excluded groups and people marginalized because of their identities still face in workplaces and in institutions meant to serve all Oklahomans. Legislation that seeks to ban these trainings and remove this kind of coursework from school poses a threat to free speech and Title VII compliance.
Bills to watch: HB 1888-Williams and Bullard, SB 627-Bullard and Williams, SB 1141-Standridge
Protect access to accurate name and gender markers
Having legal documents that accurately reflect a person’s name and gender identity are critical harm reduction efforts necessary to create safety for Two Spirit, transgender, nonbinary, and gender diverse folks. Everything from airport security to receiving vaccines to encountering law enforcement can be made much more dangerous when a person does not have the legal documents to match the way they exist in the world. In October 2020, Freedom Oklahoma launched its first name and gender marker change clinic. Through this program, we work to train law students in how to help people file briefs for name and gender marker changes in Oklahoma courts, and then facilitate clinic dates where they get to put those skills to use. In the face of this critical organizing effort, the ability to access this already arduous process is under attack. This legislative session, in response to an executive order from Governor Stitt, legislators are trying to create barriers for any name changes not related to adoption or marriage and any gender marker changes or X gender marker designations.
Bills to watch: SB 1100-Bergstrom, HB 3075-Culver
Fight dangerous attempts to enshrine so-called conversion therapy
There is clear agreement in the medical and mental health community that so-called conversion therapy is not a medical practice and when 2SLGBTQ+ young people are subjected to it, the outcomes are traumatic and harmful. While most of the country has already banned this practice or is working to do so, the Oklahoma Legislature is trying to enshrine this harmful practice in statute while preempting local government officials from making their own decisions about what is best for their constituents.
Bills to watch: HB 1004-Olsen, HB 2973-Olsen
Stop Title II Violations Relative to School and Public Bathrooms
School should provide a safe and affirming environment for all students to learn, but the Oklahoma legislature seems determined to rehash old fights that disrupt education settings at the expense of the most vulnerable students in our state. It has been made clear time and time again that reasonable accommodation must be made for students in regards to bathrooms. A student must have access to a bathroom that reflects their gender in the same way that any other student has access to a bathroom. For trans students, specifically, that means that Title II must be considered as it pertains to ADA accommodations. For the broader public, non-gendered bathrooms are utilized far beyond the 2SLGBTQ+ community, including by families and folks with disabilities. Restricting this access will have accessibility consequences for entire segments of our communities.
Bills to watch: SB 1249-Merrick, SB 1164-Merrick
While these are the most explicit attacks on our community, we know that oftentimes 2SLGBTQ+ people face a disproportionate impact from much of the legislation that moves through the Oklahoma Legislature. We’re especially aware that recent attacks on reproductive care centers in Oklahoma impact care for our community, especially Two Spirit and transgender people. Here are a few of the other bills and shell bills (where language has yet to be inserted) we believe it is urgent to track in this session ahead.
SB 1225–Bullard, HB 1641- Humphrey, SB 615-Bullard, SB 803-Jett, SB 1172-Standridge, SB 1470-Standridge, SB 1544-Pederson, SB 1560-Standridge, SB 1381- Standridge, SB 271-Taylor, SB 1282-Haste, HB 4242-Hasenbeck shell, HB 4243-Hasenbeck shell, HB 4239-Hasenbeck shell, HB 4240-Hasenbeck shell, HB 4023-Conley shell, HB 3763-Johns shell, HB 3199-Williams shell, HB 1183-McCall shell, HB 1184-McCall shell, HB 1185-McCall shell, HB 1186-McCall shell, HB 1187-McCall shell, HB 2417-Russ shell
A more nuanced note on SB 1138 by Senator Pemberton and Representative Pae. We largely support efforts to expand bullying disruption, because of the disproportionate number of 2SLGBTQ+ young people who are the targets of bullying. However, as presently written, this particular bill calls for immediate parental notification of a student being bullied, without there being any room for the student to opt out of that notification if it would out them to their parents or legal guardians or put them in a vulnerable situation because it provided information about their gender identity, gender expression, or sexuality. While we appreciate the intention of the bill, the mandatory reporting does cause concern that this bill in practice makes it even more difficult for 2SLGBTQ+ students who live in non-affirming households to report experiences being bullied.
Even in such a tough year, we also want to acknowledge the bright spots–bills introduced to protect and affirm 2SLGBTQ+ people. The bills we’re hopeful to see advance include:
A bill to help ensure processes for critically missing adults who are not seniors, with a focus on missing Two Spirit relatives, drafted due to the leadership of Aubrey Dameron’s loved ones.
HB 1790- Pae
Relating to Nondiscrimination Protections
HB 3001- Rosecrants
Requires bills and amendments be drafted with gender neutral language
HB 2107- Turner
Relating to creating affirming interactions for people engaging in name and gender marker changes
HB 2108- Turner
HB 2109- Turner
HB 3249- Turner
Sales tax exemption for menstrual products
SB 1499-Garvin