WTF 2/28/2024

The seeds of hate… 

What is known as a certainty is that in Owasso, Oklahoma 16-year old Nex Benedict had been bullied by fellow students for being a nonbinary person for a considerable period of time and that on February 8 she died a day after being physically assaulted in a girls’ bathroom at the public high school they attended.

What is also a certainty is that Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt released a statement that said, “Our hearts go out to Nex’s family, classmates, and the Owasso community. The death of any child in an Oklahoma school is a tragedy — and bullies must be held accountable.”

Which sounds all well and good until these other certainties come to light…

• Last year, Stitt signed an executive order defining an individual’s sex as the “biological sex” at birth.
• Various Oklahoma laws took effect requiring students to use bathrooms that match their sex assigned at birth and restricting gender-affirming care for trans youths.
• According to the ACLU, Oklahoma is on track to become one of the most, if not the most, anti-LGBTQ+ states in Americas as this year alone the state legislator has proposed more than 50 anti-LGBTQ+ laws  which is more than any other state i the Union.
• The Oklahoma Schools Superintendent Ryan Walters appointed Chaya Raichik… the conservative activist behind Libs of TikTok, which has targeted LGBTQ-friendly teachers at Owasso schools… to a state library advisory board.

All of which in my mind is proof that Stitt and his cronies in government and within the school system in Oklahoma through their actions sowed the seeds of hate that gave license to ignorant and stupid teenagers to physically attack a person because that person used they/them pronouns due to the fact the person self-identified as a non-binary human being.

This past Monday the LGBTQ+ advocacy group Freedom Oklahoma declared that “Whether Nex died as a direct result of injuries sustained in the brutal hate-motivated attack at school or not, Nex’s death is a result of being the target of physical and emotional harm because of who Nex was.”

Kylan Durant, president of the Oklahoma Pride Alliance, pushed back against those who said Nex’s gender identity wasn’t relevant. And he issued a pointed challenge to the state schools superintendent and other top officials when he issued a statement that said, “Our community is saying, ‘Hey, Ryan Walters: This is what happens when you spew violent rhetoric.’ This happened in a red state where all of these laws and these leaders are saying terrible things about queer people and kids. Can we not draw a line and acknowledge that stuff like this happens because of that?”

And can we as country through the actions of our elected politicians stop sowing the basis for irrational emotions that lead to hate through our legalized mumbo-jumbo… regressive and discriminatory laws… and instead just allow each one of us to live as each of us chooses to see ourselves in some form of peace and freedom to be that conscious human entity?

Is that really too much to ask of one another?

Unfortunately the evidence obviously says it is.  

How sad… how utterly awfully and damn tragically sad.

Another thousand words…