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Oklahoma’s head superintendent wants to ban LGBTQ+ books but teach the Bible in history classes

Oklahoma's superintendent of public schools Ryan Walters
Oklahoma's superintendent of public schools Ryan Walters Photo: WPDE-TV screenshot

Oklahoma’s superintendent of public schools Ryan Walters (R) has suggested that the Bible be taught in history classes.

Walters has previously pushed the transphobic lie about schools providing litterboxes to students who identify as cats. He also recently referred to teachers’ unions as “terrorist organizations” and illegally tried to make rules banning LGBTQ+ books and transgender bathroom access in schools.

In a recent video, Walters said, “Oklahomans, we have a clear choice in front of us. When it comes to our schools, do we want the radical ideology in our classroom that pushes gender theory, that pushes graphic pornography in order to perform a social experiment on our kids?”

“Or,” he continued, “do we want the U.S. Constitution? Do we want documents like the Federalist Papers and the Bible, so that our kids understand our history and how our government was put together — those core fundamental principles have made us the greatest country in the history of the world?”

Real Americans know that we’ve got to support our kids by giving them a great understanding of our history,” Walters added. “Radical leftists and Biden administration, they would prefer to sexualize our kids.”

His comments come on the heels of Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt(R) accusing the state’s PBS TV station of “indoctrinating” and “overly sexualizing” kids because it broadcasted children’s cartoons featuring lesbian characters. Stitt signed an anti-trans (and possibly unconstitutional) bathroom bill in 2022 and recently signed a bill making it a felony for a doctor to provide gender-affirming care to trans youth.

In early April, Walters announced rules banning “pornographic material” and “sexualized content” from public school libraries, including 190 LGBTQ+ titles. But while Walters and U.S. conservatives nationwide are eager to ban such “pornographic” books from schools, they seemingly don’t want that standard applied to the Bible.

The Bible — which isn’t an authoritative history text, as elucidated by Notre Dame University — contains stories of “incest, [masturbation], bestiality, prostitution, genital mutilation, fellatio, dildos, rape, and even infanticide,” one Utah parent reportedly noted in March. The book also contains passages supporting slavery and advocating for the murder of LGBTQ+ people and of women who have pre-marital sex.

The Bible has a story about two daughters who get their dad drunk to have sex with him to become impregnated. The Bible also mentions a woman who fondly remembers her lover as having “the penis like a donkey and a flood of semen like a horse.”

“Get this PORN out of our schools,” the aforementioned parent said, calling the Bible “sex-ridden” and adding, “If the books that have been banned so far are any indication for way lesser offenses, this should be a slam dunk.”

The new school rules that Walters introduced in April would have required schools to notify a student’s parents if the student mentioned wanting to change their pronouns or gender identity. The state’s Republican Attorney General Gentner Drummond issued a binding opinion voiding Walters’ new rules as unenforceable because the state legislature hadn’t authorized any state agency to create new rules on banning books or notifying parents about gender identity.

When running for his current office, Walters said he wanted his state’s teachers to “undergo patriotic education offered by a conservative Christian college” because “our students are not taught history but instead are taught indoctrination, instead taught this country is an evil place full of bigoted racists,” KOCO-TV reported.

Gov. Stitt appointed Walters as his state’s education secretary in 2020. While serving in that post, Walters received approximately $120,000 in annual pay to serve as the executive director of Every Kid Counts Oklahoma, a group largely funded by advocates for expanding taxpayer-funded private charter schools.

The conservative-led charter school movement seeks to weaken public education in favor of for-profit private schools whose leaders can legally exclude any students or topics they disapprove of.

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