Hundreds of people met at the State Capitol on Wednesday to protest proposed legislation that would ban certain drag performances from being held in public.
The hundreds of protesters who gathered outside the House Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday booed as they saw Republican Rep. Kevin West’s House Bill 2186 pass with a vote of 5-2.
The original language of the bill would have outright banned drag performances, including drag queen story hours, from being held in public where minors could see them. However, the amended bill specifies such performances cannot be “harmful to minors”, which under Oklahoma statute includes nudity, sexual conduct or sexual excitement, or sadomasochistic abuse.
Freedom Oklahoma Executive Director Nicole McAfee says the message the bill sends is harmful to LGBTQ+ Oklahomans.
"We know this rhetoric extends harm to all of our two-spirit, transgender, and gender-nonconforming community," said McAfee.
Busty Springfield, a drag performer and founder of a drag queen story hour in Norman, says story hours provide safe spaces for LGBTQ+ youth.
"I cannot emphasize enough how important it is for us to provide safe spaces for young queer people and their parents and their families to better understand themselves and who they are," Springfield said.
The bill now moves to the House floor, which McAfee says opponents will continue to try to disrupt.
Oklahoma’s House of Representatives pushed through a pair of education measures Wednesday.
House Bills 2775 and 1935 are the centerpieces of House Speaker Charles McCall’s $500 million education reform plan that features teacher raises and tax credits for private school families.
Lawton Representative Trey Caldwell says the measure will help public schools across the state.
"These sister bills give us an opportunity to let every child in the state of Oklahoma win. Not a single school in the state of Oklahoma, if these sister bills pass, will receive less money than they did today," Caldwell said.
The House spent hours on questions and debate about the bills’ specifics related to tax credits. Republicans say many of those would be determined by the Oklahoma Tax Commission.
Democrats like Representative Forrest Bennett bristled at the uncertainty.
"When we're going to send half a billion dollars into this program, I think we should probably I think we probably could have figured it out a little bit more specifically," said Bennett.
The bills passed overwhelmingly with Republican support, now they move on to the senate.
Oklahoma City broke ground Wednesday on a new coliseum at the OKC Fairgrounds.
The new coliseum, which hasn't been named yet, will replace the aging Jim Norick Arena. The project will cost around $121 million using money from MAPS 3 and 4, and other sources.
The new arena will have a seating capacity of 7,500 Construction is expected to be complete in 2025.
Researchers from Oklahoma State University project that the Arkansas River and its tributaries will have less water flowing through them by the end of the 21st century.
Many Oklahomans rely on rivers and lakes in the Arkansas River Basin for drinking water, crop irrigation and hydroelectric power. But OSU researchers predict that up to 28% less water will be flowing through the basin by 2099. Ecosystem modeler Jia Yang says that’s mostly due to climate change.
"Climate change is going to have a very large impact on the water resources in Oklahoma," said Yang.
The study predicts the Canadian and Cimarron Rivers will slow down the most thanks to rainfall patterns in the western plains. Yang says he hopes these findings will encourage water conservation,
"River flow reduction is related to everyone, so everybody can do something to help us to mitigate the impact of the reduction," Yang said.
He says it’s especially important in Oklahoma City, which relies on the most affected rivers.
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