What is going on in Oklahoma?

Now that marriage equality is a thing, conservative legislators are trying really hard to keep us gays oppressed. Look at any of the red states proposed bills this year, and you can find attacks on conversion therapy, trans bathroom rights, and religious freedom laws. But Oklahoma has taken it to the, well, deranged level. With three proposed bills that don’t even attempt to hide the legislators obvious bigotry.

1. HB 1598: Protecting ex-gay conversion therapy.
Represenative Sally Kern, who once said that gays are more dangerous to America than terrorists, obviously has not changed her opinion on us gays. Kern introduced HB 1598 last year; it passed out of committee but failed to reach the floor for a vote. Now Kern has rolled it over, trying to push the bill once again. 

HB 1598 explicitly states that mental health counselors may engage in “sexual orientation change efforts” with any patient—including those under 18 who are forced into the therapy by their parents.

“Aversion therapy” means any counseling by a mental health provider that exposes or asks a client or patient to undergo physical pain, such as electroshock or electroconvulsive therapy, touch therapy, pornography exposure or vomit-induction therapy, in order to change sexual behaviors or gender-identity expressions and/or to eliminate or reduce sexual or romantic attractions or feelings toward individuals of the same sex.

Although there is no current ban on conversion therapy in Oklahoma, Kern is most likely passing the bill to protect the state from getting sued. A gaggle of patients in New Jersey recently sued their erstwhile therapists for consumer fraud—and won. Kern does not want this to happen in Oklahoma.

2. SB 733: Forbidding HIV-positive people from getting married.
Wanna get married? No problem! Just fill out this paper work, pay some fines, and get a blood test to prove that you don’t have “communicable or infectious diseases.” Under SB 733 anyone who has these communicable diseases could be denied a marriage license. Why? To stop people living with HIV to have the same rights as everyone else. As if they weren’t discriminated against already. 

Luckily for us, Oklahoma can’t pass this one. The Supreme Court ruled that marriage is a protected fundamental right. Also, would conflict with the Americans with Disabilities Act, which protects against HIV discrimination.

The problem with this bill, which poses virtually no threat of actually passing, is the blatant discrimination.

3. HB 3044: Preventing depressed and suicidal queer youth from seeing a gay-affirmative therapist. 
Our queer youth are some of the most vulnerable kids in America. They have higher homelessness, suicide, and depression numbers than their straight counterparts. These children need people to talk to, and when their parents aren’t the ones offering help, they often look to role models, school counselors, and gay-affirming therapists. 

HB 3044, which Kern also sponsored, would rip away this lifeline. The bill states that no public school “counselor, therapist, social worker, administrator, teacher or other individual” can “refer a student under the age of eighteen” to any “individual, organization or entity” if the referral “pertain[s] to human sexuality.” Under the bill, public school counselors can’t even “provide the contact information, business card, brochure or other informational materials” of a gay-friendly organization to students. The only way around it, is to contact the parents 24 hours prior.

Basically, this bill slams the closet door in students faces, padlocks it, then laughs outside the door. The bills reach ends at age 18, when students become legal adults.

These bills are attacks, and while we would like to hope they would never pass, there is a possibility that a few of them might. So stand up and fight for our queer brothers and sisters just southeast of colorful Colorado.