“There’s not multiple genders. There’s two. That’s how God created us,” Mr. Walters said, saying he did not believe that nonbinary or transgender people exist. He said that Oklahoma schools would not allow students to use preferred names or pronouns that differ from their birth sex.
“You always treat individuals with dignity or respect, because they’re made in God’s image,” Mr. Walters said. “But that doesn’t change truth.”
And at an Oklahoma board of education meeting this week, Sean Cummings, the vice mayor of a town adjacent to Oklahoma City known as The Village, blamed the board’s anti-gay and anti-transgender policies for the bullying of Nex. “You brought it on,” he said, addressing Mr. Walters directly.
“We’ve been told death wasn’t directly related to the fight at school,” he said, cautioning that the investigation was ongoing.
“There’s a lot of feelings of helplessness,” said Hali, 18, a transgender girl and high school senior in the town of Claremore, who asked that her last name not be used out of concern that she may be targeted by anti-transgender activists. “You always have that little bit of fear that you could be attacked, that you could be one of the victims.”
“I really see there’s a civil war going on, where the left is really fighting for the soul of our country,” he said. “They are undermining the very principles that made this country great, our Judeo-Christian values and our traditions in this country.”
The Oklahoma school superintendent, Ryan Walters, said “radical leftists” had created a narrative about the death of 16-year-old Nex Benedict that “hasn’t been true.”
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