At the beginning of this month, State Senator Warren Hamilton proposed Oklahoma Senate Bill 676, a punitive piece of legislation that would make it illegal for healthcare entities to provide life-saving, gender-affirming medical care to trans Oklahomans under the age of 21. 

Senator Hamilton is a staunch anti-choice conservative who believes that his role in the legislature is not to govern, but to carry out activism for an increasingly reactionary right wing that is using the facade of religion and “Judeo-Christian values” to strip away the rights of women and LGBTQ people. 

While Senator Hamilton was instrumental in the writing of this specific bill, he is merely one of numerous Republican lawmakers around the country who are attempting to use a deeply undemocratic governing system to enact a worldview that is cruel, venomous, and increasingly unpopular to society at large. Recent meager gains such as Bostock v. Clayton County have infuriated this worldview and its rage-fueled focus has turned more stringently towards trans Americans. The next step on the agenda for people like Senator Hamilton, in addition to making their lives as painful and difficult as possible, is to attempt to entirely legislate trans people out of existence. 

With this ideological background in mind, the Oklahoma City Democratic Socialists of America roundly reject SB 676 and all of the hate and violence implied within its text. We believe that all people should have the ability to realize their own bodily autonomy, especially when life and death hangs in the balance. We will not sit idly by as our family members, friends, and loved ones are targeted to be extinguished. The OKC DSA is composed of and interacts with people from all walks of life and when one of our comrades is systematically victimized, we all are; as the famous motto of the International Workers of the World goes, “an injury to one is an injury to all.” 

 On January 29th, OKC DSA members stood in solidarity with trans and LGBTQ comrades against SB 676 and participated in a march towards the State Capitol. Whenever further actions against SB 676 take place, the OKC DSA will be there arm in arm to vociferously repudiate the hateful political program of reactionaries like Warren Hamilton. Here are accounts from local trans people and why this bill, if passed into law, would be so damaging:

Warren Hamilton’s introduction of Senate Bill 676 is an obvious sign that trans lives are always at risk. The bill not only criminalizes countless transgender Oklahomans, but it severs their access to life-saving healthcare. Worse yet, this bill will set a precedent that allows law enforcement officials to violate patient-doctor confidentiality and allow for massive privacy rights violations. It is vitally important, now more than ever, for trans people across the state to speak up and make their voices heard.

M

The issues trans people face within the state of Oklahoma have been pushed under the rug and kept hush-hush for many years. As someone who crawled out from that rug, I can personally speak on the trans experience in Oklahoma. I have been to conversion therapy; I have been kicked out of my home and left homeless—all because I am a trans man. I feel that when people hear about things like conversion therapy and such, they think that it will just be blatantly out there in the open when it isn’t—most wouldn’t notice it going on unless they personally are affected by these things. Like this Bill for example: this bill was brought up with the assumption that it will just go right under everyone’s noses just like many of the other issues trans people face. That’s what makes these things so dangerous. When nobody knows or pays attention to what goes on, our cries for help come off as being overly dramatic or acting like “snowflakes.” If this bill were to pass, I would end up being a felon. I would be forced into female prison. I would face even more unspeakable abuses for the sole fact I am trans and my voice would be silenced even more since nobody seems to care what felons or inmates have to say or what they go through. This bill will not only criminalize trans youth, but it will also end up killing them. Whether by trans youth being forced to take questionable black-market hormones, suicide or from the harsh and brutal ways trans people are treated in prisons. This bill will also strip kids away from their parents who only wanted to do right by their children—causing even more trans youth to end up in foster care or homeless. And let me tell you, that is so much more horrifying and dangerous when your trans. This bill should not be passed my any means for any reason. It protects no one and only harms the trans community and its allies.

C

OK Senate Bill 676 is not only an assault on human dignity but a baseless rejection of medical and scientific consensus. In a state that cherishes the American ideals of ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,’ nothing is more repugnant and contradictory to those values than not only stripping away—but criminalizing—the right to exercise autonomy over something so personal and as intimate as one’s own body. Gender-affirming medical care is highly regarded by medical professionals and researchers around the world as highly efficacious and has been associated with dramatically reduced behavioral problems and mental health complications like suicide in teenagers and young adults. After my suicide attempt, receiving gender-affirming medical care treated my depression and anxiety far more rapidly and totally than psychiatric drugs and therapy alone. Contrary to the transphobic hysteria, gender-affirming medical care for minors does not include ‘mutilation’ or that a child can walk into a clinic to obtain cross-sex hormone prescriptions the same day. Rather, and in conjunction with years of counseling and coordination with the parents, doctors may prescribe ‘puberty-blockers’ that reversibly delay the onset of puberty so that the teenager can have more time to safely navigate their identity before moving forward with transitioning—if they so choose—as an adult. Attempting to restrict this deeply personal and potentially life-saving care like alcohol is in direct defiance of medical and scientific reality and will lead to a sharp increase in suicides, substance dependency, and further strain on an already minimal mental health care system and social safety net in Oklahoma. Threatening transgender youth, young adults, their families, and their physicians with felony charges—including a potential sentence of life in prison—for making medically and scientifically sound healthcare decisions for themselves, their loved ones, and their patients is not only a liability for Oklahoma with far-reaching implications, but it is also outright immoral and directly contradicts the ‘family values’ of this bill’s supporters.

K