, the gender-nonconforming teen in Oklahoma who died following a physical altercation with other students in a high-school bathroom, hit close to home for state representative Mauree Turner. They made history four years ago when they were elected to Oklahoma’s House of Representatives, becoming the U.S.’s first nonbinary legislator, and since then Turner has had a front-row seat to her conservative colleagues unleashing a relentless assault on LGBTQ+ rights.
If I can be candid, I ran for office to the left of a Democrat because — being Black, trans, queer, Muslim, in the buckle of the Bible Belt — oftentimes my communities are the first up on the chopping block when liberals or progressives want to amend a bill just to get a little bit further. It feels like oftentimes we get into a place like this and people will say, “Oh, okay. We see you. We hear you. We support you. Stay alive.
The youth are resilient in a time where they absolutely don’t need to be. They are trying to figure out how to loveorganize themselves out of this mess that we are giving to them. I’ll never forget the time I had to have a Zoom meeting with a kid who was worried about these anti-trans laws and they were wondering what detransitioning would look like for them in the next coming months. Those are hard conversations to have.
People will often ask me, “Are you willing and interested to work across the aisle?” I’d love nothing more if I had a commonsense colleague across the aisle that was willing to sit down and talk through things. But when folks like Senator Tom Woods feel empowered after this child’s death to say something like that, that tells me that you are not someone who is bound in compassion. You aren’t fit to lead a diverse population of people in any way, shape, or form.