Drag Bill Protest
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 Representative 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," McAfee said.
Busty Springfield, a drag performer and founder of a drag queen story hour in Norman, said 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 said opponents will continue to try to disrupt.
Tribal Taxes
One tribal citizen's case against state taxation is headed to the Oklahoma Supreme Court, and three tribal nations have thrown their support behind her.
The Cherokee Nation, Choctaw Nation and the Chickasaw Nation have asked the Oklahoma Supreme Court to exempt tribal citizens living and working within their own reservations from personal state income taxes.
They’re doing it in court via a case that centers on Alicia Stroble, a Muscogee Nation citizen who lives within her tribe’s reservation and works for a tribally owned business. Stroble filed for a refund of her state taxes from 2017-2019. Last fall, the Oklahoma State Tax commission rejected her request.
The three tribal nations filing an amicus brief cited two Supreme Court Cases explaining why Stroble shouldn’t have to pay state taxes-including the landmark McGirt vs. Oklahoma that said the Muscogee Nation's reservation was never disestablished.
Education Legislation
Oklahoma’s House of Representatives approved 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 said 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 probably could have figured it out a little bit more specifically," Bennett said.
The bills passed overwhelmingly with Republican support, now they move on to the senate.
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