On Monday I hosted a five-hour live stream with child advocates like Gays Against Groomers, Billboard Chris, Mark Ousley of UnWokable Podcast, and Alvin Lui of Courage is a Habit. We spent most of the time calling Oklahoma Republicans to ask them one question: Why are you funding the Oklahoma University Children’s Hospital when their gender clinic, Roy G. Biv, is chemically castrating kids?
Not one Republican staffer answered the phone. Every call went straight to voicemail. Oklahoma Senate staffers are in the building getting ready for the special session on Wednesday where legislators plan on funding OUCH to the tune of 90 million tax dollars.
We tried the governor’s office, too. His press secretary doesn’t take phone calls. I was instructed to email her. When I did, she emailed me immediately and asked me what I wanted, indicating she would not call me as I asked her to do. I sent her a few simple questions.
Hi Kate,
Is the governor aware that the Roy G. Biv clinic at OU Children’s is performing chemical castrations on kids? And also is he aware that an omnibus funding bill that will give them 90 million that they can use in that clinic at their discretion? If so, is he planning on signing that if it passes? I’d love to talk with you on the phone about this if you have time.
After that email was sent, I never heard back from her.
I’ve been doing this reporting gig for a while now. It has been almost twenty years, and almost ten here at PJ Media. In all that time, this is only the second time that I couldn’t get a state Republican representative to return my calls. Normally, they jump at the chance to talk to conservative media. We are their only hope of getting a message out that isn’t twisted into some CNN Russian collusion fantasy. So when Republicans go silent and won’t talk to us, it usually doesn’t bode well.
For our VIPs: Should Performing Transgender Surgeries on Kids Be Criminalized?
For five hours, we hammered the phones, and not one Republican staffer picked up a line. I also called several Democrats and strangely, they did answer the phones. Though their staffers lied to me or hung up on me, at least they had the nerve to pick up the phone.
While no one was answering the phones on the Republican side of the state house, one Republican senator, Nathan Dahm, was reading my tweets, and he did respond. He showed up on the live stream to face the music. Dahm blew the whistle on Republican leadership and explained that bills he wrote to outlaw gender experimentation on kids had been blocked by Republican head honchos. You can see his part of the interview below.
The Oklahoma GOP wasn’t returning calls either, though the chairman got snarky with me on Twitter. “Hey there AJ Ferate! I’m trying to get ahold of you about what’s happening at the OU Children’s hospital gender clinic. Do you support gender experiments on kids? DM me. I have questions,” I wrote.
“What an odd question.” he retweeted. “I do not.”
What an odd question. I do not. https://t.co/8yMnb4kysN
— Anthony J. Ferate (@realAJFerate) September 26, 2022
This reply came after I had left him a detailed message at his office, to which he did not respond. Ferate also did not contact me and did not comment further on why the Republicans in Oklahoma are all raring to give OUCH millions of dollars. He went very quiet after this retweet and did not respond to my requests to interview him about the goals of the Oklahoma GOP and why they exist if they can’t help their Republican leadership get in line with voters.
Dahm was the only Republican brave enough to face the friendly fire on Monday.
What the panel and I wanted to know from Oklahoma Republicans is: How on earth did a red state as conservative as theirs manage to not only allow a gender clinic for children to operate in their state, but how they could consider giving the hospital running it a $90 million bonus?
The stony silence with which we were met solidified everyone on the panel’s resolve to put pressure on Oklahoma. Gays Against Groomers founder Jaimee Michell tweeted, “We just decided we’re going to put a GAG truck right outside OUCH (Oklahoma University Children’s Hospital) demanding they stop sterilizing and mutilating children in their gender clinic. EXPECT US.” Ousley, Billboard Chris, Mike Harlow, and Lui all vowed to help campaign against anyone who voted to fund the clinic where doctors give children chemical castration drugs.
We just decided we're going to put a GAG Truck right outside of OUCH (Oklahoma University Children's Hospital) demanding they stop sterilizing and mutilating children in their gender clinic!
EXPECT US.
— Gays Against Gr██mers (@againstgrmrs) September 26, 2022
Between all of us on the stream, we reach over 200,000 people. We spent a full day with all our accounts actively campaigning to get some attention on Oklahoma Republicans who don’t seem to care about children being harmed with tax dollars and trying to get statements on the record. Then, around 10 p.m., a mystery bill appeared out of nowhere that purported to restrict OUCH from performing any gender-related services on children. The bill was introduced by…Oklahoma Republican representatives.
If making our kids safe can wait until the spring, so can your Covid spending bill.
Understood?@officialOKGOP @oksenategop @OKHouseGOP @GovStitt @CarlyAtch @shanejett @NathanDahm pic.twitter.com/N72PrkeoAp
— Mark Ousley, The UnWokable (@AcsAgainstCRT) September 27, 2022
[N]o monies shall be budgeted or expended by the Authority for the benefit of any facility owned by the University Hospitals Authority or University Hospitals Trust performing “gender reassignment medical treatment”, as defined in this section, on children under eighteen (18) years of age.
For the purposes of this section, “gender reassignment medical treatment” means any health care to facilitate the transitioning of a patient’s assigned gender identity on the patient’s birth certificate, to the gender identity experienced and defined by the patient.
1. The term includes: a. interventions to suppress the development of endogenous secondary sex characteristics…
b. interventions to align the patient’s appearance or physical body with the patient’s gender identity, and
c. medical therapies and medical intervention used to treat gender dysphoria.
2. The term shall not include: a. behavioral healthcare services or mental health counseling,
b. medications to treat depression and anxiety, or
c. services provided to individuals born with ambiguous genitalia, incomplete genitalia, or both male and female anatomy, or biochemically verifiable disorder of sex development (DSD),…
While that sounds good, there’s a major problem with this bill, and I had Senator Shane Jett (the second Republican to man up and respond to questions) on a live stream on Tuesday morning to discuss it.
The language added to the funding bill they will most likely pass on Thursday has no enforcement mechanism. So, essentially, Republicans have added a meaningless restriction with no way to check if the hospital violates it. Who is going to give up protected medical info to senators? No one. The hospital will get the money, the governor will sign it because the language says they can’t keep doing the treatment and get the money, but it’s not illegal for them to do it! And it will remain that way until Republicans write and vote on a statewide ban that can’t come before them until January 2023.
If, like some senators have alleged, Oklahoma’s Republican leadership has no intention of stopping gender experimentation on children then this is the perfect solution for them: Throw off the critics by offering crumbs, claim a win while kicking the can down the road, and give the opposition time to form an angry mob.
Governor Stitt is trailing by four points behind his Democrat opponent and could be voted out of office this coming election before the statewide ban would come to his desk. If that happens, the new Democrat governor will veto it. This solution is no solution at all but resembles a bandaid on a gaping wound. One must ask why a Republican governor wouldn’t either call a special session now to pass the ban already proposed last year or issue an executive order stopping gender experiments on kids tomorrow. Either one of these actions would create a giant win for Republicans to run on in the upcoming election and might even raise his polling numbers instead of allowing Democrats to stall the bill and use it to run scare ads against their opponents.
PJ Media reached out to Stitt’s office again and asked him that very question. If he responds we will update you.
Sen. Jett announced that he, Sen. Dahm, and a few other Republicans with backbones are starting a “Millstone Caucus,” referring to the words of Jesus that it would be better for a man to be tossed into the sea with a millstone slung around his neck than to harm a child. Jett says this caucus will fight for the rights of children to be free from gender theology and medicalization in Oklahoma. His advice to Oklahoma constituents is to burn up the phones at the capitol and ask each representative you talk to, “Are you a member of the Millstone Caucus?” PJ Media will continue to follow this developing story. Wednesday, the Oklahoma legislature will be live streaming their special session where they plan on voting on the bill that could give OUCH millions of taxpayer dollars. I plan on bringing that to my viewers, and we will make sure that every Republican who votes “yes” to fund this abuse will not do so in the dark.
UPDATE: Kate Vesper, press secretary for Governor Stitt told PJ Media today that the governor does not support funding OUCH’s gender clinic that uses puberty blocking drugs on children. According to Vesper, the governor will not sign any funding bill that doesn’t explicitly prohibit it. However, Stitt has made no public statement and Vesper says he does not plan to.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member