Xenophobia and Anti-Gay Legislation Galore: What's the Matter with Oklahoma?

By Richard L. Fricker, Consortium News. Posted May 29, 2008.

The Republican-dominated Oklahoma legislature is defining the frontier of xenophobic immigration laws, anti-Muslim bigotry, gay bashing and encouragement of gun-toting students -- with Democratic legislators often too timid to resist.

Rep. Randy Terrill, Republican chairman of the Revenue and Taxation Committee, has emerged as a hero of the "protect our borders" crowd by authoring a law, known as HB1804, that makes it a felony even to give an illegal immigrant a ride.

You also can't provide education, health care and many other services to undocumented immigrants, including infants. And, police are required to check the immigration status of anyone "suspected" of being in this country illegally.

If you thought such a draconian measure might face stiff opposition -- or at least a drawn-out political battle -- you'd be wrong. The bill sailed through the Oklahoma House, 88-9, with 35 of the 44 Democrats joining the Republicans, and then passed the Senate on a 41-6 vote with two-thirds of the Democrats lining up with Republicans.

After the law's passage, its extreme -- one might say un-Christian -- features prompted virtual declarations of civil disobedience from the Southern Baptist Convention and the Episcopal, Methodist, Lutheran and Roman Catholic churches, which announced they would not curtail aid to anyone.

Terrill then attacked Roman Catholic Bishop Edward Slattery of Tulsa as "misguided," accusing Catholics of opposing the law out of fear that it would curtail a growth in population and thus revenues for the church.

Terrill followed up his legislative victory by floating a "son of 1804," a bill that would forbid the issuance of birth certificates to a child if one parent was an illegal alien. That bill also sought confiscation of property for anyone caught violating HB1804.

The property-confiscation idea, however, was deemed too radical by the Oklahoma business community, which saw it as a threat to corporate owners. So, the follow-up bill got sidetracked.

Undeterred, Terrill proposed another anti-immigrant bill to make English the official language of Oklahoma.

When that bill died on a procedural vote in the Senate, Terrill enlisted the Washington lobby group ProEnglish, whose specialty is robo-calling, to make constituency calls to state senators.

One senator took umbrage and forwarded his calls to Terrill's office. Furious at this "cowardly act," Terrill crossed the rotunda threatening to "whip his ass."

Though Terrill's pressure tactics failed to revive the bill, it is expected to become a hot-button election issue this fall.

Meanwhile, the Oklahoma business community, which mostly sat on the sidelines as HB1804 was passed, is now having second thoughts, worrying that the new law has cut into the labor force and thus corporate profits.

A significant number of Mexicans, both legal and illegal, have left the state to avoid harassment, while other laborers are living in fear.

As Terrill and his supporters mounted legal assaults against non-English-speaking immigrants, Republican colleague Rep. Sally Kern focused on what she viewed as an even graver danger: gays and lesbians. In April, she went before a local GOP meeting and labeled that threat worse than the one from al-Qaeda:

"Studies show that no society that has totally embraced homosexuality has lasted more than, you know, a few decades. So it's the death knell of this country. I honestly think it's the biggest threat our nation has, even more than terrorism or Islam, which I think is a big threat. OK?

"'Cause what's happening now is they are going after, in schools, 2-year-olds, and this stuff is deadly, and it's spreading, and it will destroy our young people, and it will destroy this nation."

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Richard L. Fricker is a Tulsa, Oklahoma-based freelance reporter/writer and two-time winner of the American Business Press Editors Award for Investigative Journalism.

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