Oklahoma has enacted multiple new laws in recent months that focus on hot-button culture war issues, including protecting women’s sports and the unborn, and keeping biological males out of women’s bathrooms and locker rooms.
Governor Kevin Stitt, a Republican, has signaled that the state’s new laws stem from the views and desires of everyday Oklahomans. “It’s just common sense,” he said in a Thursday morning phone interview with The Daily Wire.
The governor shared that he’ll be interviewed by reporters from outlets like The Washington Post who refer to the state’s Save Women’s Sports bill as “controversial.”
“I say, well, hang on, whoa, whoa, whoa,” he said. “In Oklahoma, it’s not controversial at all.”
“We believe that boys should play boy sports, girls should play girls sports,” the governor explained. “I hear from parents and people with young daughters. I’ve got three daughters myself. These are young kids that are impressionable. And we’re not going to let them feel uncomfortable.”
On Wednesday, Stitt signed a bill into law requiring students to use bathrooms and locker rooms that correspond to their biological sex listed on their birth certificate.
SB 615 orders that schools “require certain restrooms or changing areas to be used by individuals based on their sex” in order to “ensure privacy and safety” of public school and public charter school students in pre-K to 12th grade.
The bill orders that the state funding of non-compliant school districts or charter schools be decreased and notes that parents may sue non-compliant schools. It immediately went into effect since it was passed with an emergency clause. Students who are unwilling to use the bathroom that aligns with their biological sex may use “a single-occupancy restroom or changing room” designated by the school.
Amid heavy backlash from abortion supporters, the Oklahoma governor also signed the strictest abortion bill in the country into law on Wednesday. The bill, which went into effect immediately, prohibits all abortions in the state.
#BREAKING: Oklahoma just became the only state in the U.S. to totally ban abortion while #RoevWade still stands. The Center & @PPFA are suing the state of Oklahoma on behalf of abortion providers and advocates to stop this cruel ban and restore abortion access in the state. pic.twitter.com/IOxefOqmfV
— Center for Reproductive Rights (@ReproRights) May 26, 2022
“I promised Oklahomans that as governor I would sign every piece of pro-life legislation that came across my desk and I am proud to keep that promise today,” he said in a statement. “From the moment life begins at conception is when we have a responsibility as human beings to do everything we can to protect that baby’s life and the life of the mother. That is what I believe and that is what the majority of Oklahomans believe.”
I promised Oklahomans that as governor I would sign every piece of pro-life legislation that came across my desk and I am proud to keep that promise. (1/3) pic.twitter.com/vQJdwkDJZN
— Governor Kevin Stitt (@GovStitt) May 26, 2022
Stitt also signed legislation in April banning the state from issuing gender-neutral birth certificates, and in March, banning biological men from women’s sports.
Across the state, Stitt told The Daily Wire, people are both grateful and supportive: “People in rural Oklahoma, people at the cattle sale, people in the business community, people in the church, people at the supermarket, people at the school where their little girls are going into a bathroom.”
“It is just craziness that people are making an issue out of this,” Stitt said. “The only reason you would make an issue about this is if you’re just kowtowing to a very, very small minority.”
Young women competing on the University of Oklahoma’s track team or on weightlifting, swimming, and volleyball teams around the state have thanked him for saving their scholarships, he said, saying, “Thanks Governor, this makes so much sense.”
“We’re not against anybody,” he insisted. “We welcome everybody to Oklahoma. But that doesn’t mean you have the right to invade on our traditions or what we know is is normal practices in the state of Oklahoma.”
Stitt is seeking reelection during a turbulent time in American politics when the GOP is increasingly leaning into the culture wars following Governor Glenn Youngkin’s success in the Virginia gubernatorial election. Many have attributed Youngkin’s victory to his late-in-the-game embrace of cultural issues, particularly education.
American Principles Project President Terry Schilling told The Daily Wire on Tuesday that the Oklahoma governor has internalized two “really important” aspects of American culture that more politicians on the right must figure out.
“One, our cultural elites in the so-called mainstream media and academia and Hollywood are grossly out of step with where the American people are,” said Schilling, whose organization focuses on family and culture issues. “And he is taking advantage of that and using it for his political advantages.”
But most importantly, Schilling said, Stitt is acknowledging that “economy is downstream of culture.”
“When you are producing dysfunctional people and denigrating your culture and sexualizing your children and radicalizing them to hate their country and the church that appears by their by their skin color, your economy will suffer from that long term and your nation will suffer long term from that,” Schilling predicted.
Organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union have heavily criticized and pushed back on Stitt’s recent legislation, particularly SB 615.
“By singling out transgender students for discrimination and excluding them from restrooms that match their gender identity, SB 615 discriminates based on transgender status and sex in violation of the United States Constitution and Title IX of the Civil Rights Act,” ACLU of Oklahoma’s executive director, Tamya Cox-Touré, said in a Wednesday evening statement.
“These violations put Oklahoma at risk of losing hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding, and harms transgender youth, all to solve a problem that plainly does not exist,” Cox-Touré said.
Schilling insisted to The Daily Wire that the cultural left may portray Stitt as waging a culture war because it has become so “radicalized,” — but in reality the culture wars have been “brewing for a long time and Republicans are just now starting to fight back.”
“The voters are with him,” the American Principles Project president said. “And that’s a recipe for success, both in terms of growing your state, being successful and in governing, but also in getting reelected. And that’s how the founders designed our political system.”
Under pressure from corporations and organizations, Republican governors in states like Utah and Arkansas have vetoed bills banning biological males from women’s spaces or prohibiting transgender sex-change surgeries for minors (in both Utah and Arkansas, the state legislatures overrode the governors’ vetoes).
Still told The Daily Wire on Thursday that he has not faced such pressure, and that he believes average, everyday Oklahomans and Americans agree with policies like the ones he has so recently enacted.
“Sometimes there’s a vocal minority of folks that are that are the loudest in the room screaming,” he said. “And the people that love [Oklahoma’s new laws] are the silent majority. They don’t have to say anything because they’re like, ‘Dang right. Governor’s doing exactly what we all think and what we all think is ridiculous.’ That’s kind of the way we see it in Oklahoma.”