The vast majority of Oklahoma Senate Republicans voted to pass legislation that will dole out at least $46 million in American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds directly to OU Children’s Hospital, despite the fact that the hospital’s Roy G. Biv clinic has been chemically castrating children and referring them out for sex change surgeries for years. And there’s no assurance that this will stop.
OKLAHOMA REPUBLICANS PASS FUNDING BILL FOR OU CHILDREN'S HEALTH without oversight or any assurance that gender experimentation on kids will stop. Lip service and empty promises is what Republicans are about now. pic.twitter.com/FAYcYBxqip
— Megan Fox (@MeganFoxWriter) September 29, 2022
Republican leadership hastily added language to the funding bill after massive pressure from the public that they say restricts OU from receiving any funds if they do gender assignment interventions on anyone under 18. But the bill failed to include any oversight of the hospital or enforcement of the restriction. Further, the author of the bill, Republican Greg Treat, admitted during the debate on Thursday that nothing in the bill stops the hospital from using tax money to fund elective and controversial gender surgeries on adults.
A small handful of Republicans argued to stop the bill entirely until they could get a statewide ban in place on all medicalized gender experimentation on children. Only twelve senators voted against the funding. Earlier this week, after the funding came under scrutiny by lawmakers, OU Health issued a statement claiming they were stopping “certain gender medical services.” But the statement did not specify which gender medical services would stop, nor did anyone sign it.
PJ Media reached out to OU Health to ask them to clarify what that means and who is responsible for the promise to end the practice of experimenting on minors, but they refused to do so. Media contact April Sandefer told PJ Media that the statement “is issued by OU Health—not a specific person—and that is all I am able to give you at this time.” She did not clarify which “certain gender medical services” are being stopped. For all we know, it could mean they won’t be giving out transgender flag pins with OU’s logo on them to their minor patients anymore.
Conservative media (except me) is touting OU Health's nebulous statement that they are stopping "certain gender medicine services" as a win. Did they even ask what that means? I did. Do you think this is normal not to answer this question? #OklahomaShame @OUChildrensHospital pic.twitter.com/sCBx1IKjBZ
— Megan Fox (@MeganFoxWriter) September 29, 2022
Conservative outlets outside of PJ Media have been reporting OU Health’s claim of stopping gender services as some kind of win. There is no evidence OU Health is stopping anything. They will not tell us what they are stopping, and no one will put their name on the statement who could be held accountable for it.
This is why Republicans lose. Most people will read that headline and declare a win and then go back to sleep. This is not a win. It is a subterfuge intended to calm the waters so OU Health can get its tax money and then do whatever it wants. If they were genuinely intending to stop anything, they would not hesitate to clarify what services are being stopped.
PJ Media showed OU’s reply to Senator Warren Hamilton, who said, “This is the equivalent of a child promising to be good so they can go to recess. Anyone who thinks this is a good idea should get Bernie Madoff to manage their retirement accounts.”
The total ARPA funds at stake for OU Health were $100 million dollars. What wouldn’t they say to keep that from being taken away?
It is important for the people of Oklahoma to know that the language restricting the hospital from performing chemical castrations on children was only added this week after public pressure was put on legislators to do something about it. The voters of Oklahoma should ask their representatives how the bill got that far without any language restricting these experimental practices. Also, how did a state-funded hospital in a deeply conservative state create a gender clinic for children in the first place? Who paid for it?
These questions have so far been unanswered.
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Sen. Nathan Dahm offered one of the best arguments against passing the funding bill and also called out Republican leadership for blocking bills that would stop the practice of medically altering, sterilizing, and chemically castrating children with gender dysphoria in the state of Oklahoma.
“For three sessions I have introduced legislation that would do a statewide ban and prohibition on that, however, we have never had the opportunity to even consider or vote on those bills,” he said. “We could have stopped this before it even started happening. We could have stopped it before taxpayer funds and resources were being used for this but it was not deemed priority. … It wasn’t until tens of millions of dollars were attached to this that all of a sudden it became deemed necessary that we do something on this. And the something seems to be the bare minimum.”
He continued, explaining, “let’s be abundantly clear. This does not stop minors from getting sex change surgeries in Oklahoma. It only stops it from happening at OU. It does not stop them from getting puberty blockers. It only stops it at OU.”
But even that claim — that the experiments on kids will stop at OU — is not verifiable. The bill does not have any enforcement mechanism at all. If OU decides to continue handing out puberty blockers that chemically castrate kids like candy, there is no one to know they are doing it. Private medical information is by definition private. OUCH is not required to give the Oklahoma legislators any reports about the services it is offering. There is no way to claim that the language added to the funding bill has any power at all to stop the gender clinic from operating.
Further, tax money can still be used to perform sex change surgeries on people 18 and up at OU. “This bill, these ARPA funds allow OU to use those taxpayer dollars to perform sex change surgeries on 18-year-olds,” points out Dahm. “For three sessions, we have had an opportunity to stop the spending of any taxpayer funds to this. This bill is very limited in scope.”
The state of conservatism is in very bad shape if Oklahoma — with a Republican governor and a supermajority in both houses — cannot stop the gender cult from operating on kids in their state. Instead of stopping them by defunding them entirely and putting real legislation in place to ensure it cannot happen, they have handed them millions of taxpayer dollars.
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