Budget & Tax , Culture & the Family
Jonathan Small | September 27, 2022
OCPA praises legislative effort to protect children and families
Jonathan Small
OKLAHOMA CITY (September 27, 2022)—Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs President Jonathan Small today praised state lawmakers’ efforts to protect children from being subjected to medically dubious “transgender” procedures with lifelong impact.
“There is growing evidence that so-called transgender treatments cause long-term harm to many patients—and that evidence includes the first-hand testimony of many individuals,” Small said. “Children should not be subjected to puberty-blocking hormones or surgical procedures that can dramatically and negatively impact them for the rest of their lives. The Oklahoma Legislature is doing the right thing by stepping up to stop these procedures within the OU Health system.”
The University of Oklahoma Children’s Hospital operates the Roy G. Biv Program, which the organization says will provide children “gender-affirming scope of treatment” that includes “pausing puberty to further explore gender,” “managing gender-affirming hormone therapy,” and “helping find surgeons who perform gender-affirming surgeries.”
House Bill 1007XX, which is expected to be heard by lawmakers during this week’s special legislative session, now includes language to bar entities that receive federal American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds from providing those services to youth.
The bill states that “no monies” may be spent by the University Hospitals Authority “for the benefit of any facility owned by the University Hospitals Authority or University Hospitals Trust performing ‘gender reassignment medical treatment’” on any patient younger than 18 years of age.
“For more than a decade, OCPA has warned about the dangerous direction of higher education in Oklahoma and encouraged the Legislature to use the power of the purse and its full authority to focus higher education,” Small said. “We appreciate lawmakers in the House and Senate, leadership in both chambers, and Governor Kevin Stitt’s office for taking seriously the alarm bells now sounding in higher education, especially at OU.”
The Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs is a free-market think tank that works to advance principles and policies that support free enterprise, limited government, individual initiative, and personal responsibility.
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Jonathan Small
President
Jonathan Small, C.P.A., serves as President and joined the staff in December of 2010. Previously, Jonathan served as a budget analyst for the Oklahoma Office of State Finance, as a fiscal policy analyst and research analyst for the Oklahoma House of Representatives, and as director of government affairs for the Oklahoma Insurance Department. Small’s work includes co-authoring “Economics 101” with Dr. Arthur Laffer and Dr. Wayne Winegarden, and his policy expertise has been referenced by The Oklahoman, the Tulsa World, National Review, the L.A. Times, The Hill, the Wall Street Journal and the Huffington Post. His weekly column “Free Market Friday” is published by the Journal Record and syndicated in 27 markets. A recipient of the American Legislative Exchange Council’s prestigious Private Sector Member of the Year award, Small is nationally recognized for his work to promote free markets, limited government and innovative public policy reforms. Jonathan holds a B.A. in Accounting from the University of Central Oklahoma and is a Certified Public Accountant.