In his three years as Oklahoma’s public schools constable, Ryan Walters, a former high school history teacher, has transformed himself into one of the most forceful culture warriors in a state known for its staunchly conservative politics.
After the death earlier this month of a 16-year-old non-binary student a day after a fight in a high school girls’ bathroom, gay and transgender advocates accused Mr. Walters of fomenting an atmosphere of dangerous intolerance in public schools.
In his first interview reacting to the death of the student, Nex Benedict, Mr Walters told The New York Times that the death was a tragedy but that it had not changed his views on how gender issues should be dealt with in schools.
“There aren’t many genders. There are two. This is how God made us,” Mr Walters said, saying he did not believe non-binary or transgender people existed. She said Oklahoma schools will not allow students to use preferred names or pronouns that differ from their birth gender.
“You always treat people with dignity or respect because they are made in the image of God,” Mr Walters said. “But that doesn’t change the truth.”
Mr. Walters, who is ultimately in charge of Oklahoma’s public schools and has been discussed as a possible candidate for higher office, has been one of the loudest voices in the state seeking to prevent the discussion and promotion of LGBTQ issues in schools. His fellow Republicans in the Legislature have supported a wave of new and proposed laws aimed at gay and transgender people.
In interviews, transgender students said rhetoric from officials like Mr. Walters has been seen by their classmates as a license to harass and bully them at school.
And at an Oklahoma Board of Education meeting this week, Sean Cummings, vice mayor of a town adjacent to Oklahoma City known as The Village, blamed the board’s anti-gay and anti-trans policies for Nex’s bullying. “You brought it,” he said, addressing Mr. Walters directly.
Questions remained about the bullying that family members said Nex experienced at Owasso High School before the Feb. 7 bathroom fight, and what it might have had to do with their deaths. The police said on Wednesday that Nex did not die of blunt force trauma, a finding echoed by Mr Walters.
“We were told that the death was not directly related to the fight at the school,” he said, cautioning that the investigation was ongoing.
Nick Boatman, a spokesman for the Owasso Police Department, said investigators were reviewing video from the high school and planned to release it “at some point.” Investigators, he said, have not yet determined what caused the student’s death.
Sarah Kate Ellis, president of the advocacy group GLAAD, called the death “a tragic, senseless and shocking attack that should never be forgotten” in an Instagram post this week.
Mr Walters said the tragedy was compounded by outside supporters trying to make a political point.
“I think it’s terrible that we had some radical leftists who decided to run with a political agenda and try to put together a narrative that wasn’t true,” he said. “You’ve had a tragedy and you’ve had some people try to exploit it for political gain.”
Officers have conducted interviews with students and staff at Owasso High School. The school district said the altercation lasted less than two minutes and that the students involved were able to get to a nurse’s office afterward.
No police report was made until after Nex was taken to a hospital by a family member, police said. They went home that day. The next day, Nex was rushed to hospital by local doctors and pronounced dead. The state medical examiner’s office declined to comment on the autopsy or any toxicology results, but said its final report will eventually be released.
Much of the criticism Mr. Walters received focused on the recent appointment of Chaya Raichik to a state commission. Ms Raichik, who has posted anti-gay and anti-trans content on her X account, Libs of TikTok, is part of a committee that reviews the suitability of school library books. “Ryan Walters has created a devastatingly hostile environment for transgender, bisexual, and gender nonconforming students,” said Nicole McAfee, the executive director of Freedom Oklahoma, which advocates for transgender and gay rights. Since Nex’s death, they said, “I’ve seen more times than I can count people sharing an image Ryan Walters posted during his campaign of people in a bathroom with language specifically abusing transgender youth.”
But for years, Mr. Walters, 38, has been a dispassionate lightning rod in Oklahoma, unleashing direct verbal attacks on school districts, teacher unions and occasionally individual teachers whom he has accused of promoting “pornography” or “radical gender theory.” . Public Schools. He was appointed to the state superintendent position by Gov. Kevin Stitt in 2020 and then won election to another term in 2022.
It has forced teachers in several districts to resign, including a teacher who protested the banning of certain books and an elementary school principal who showed up outside the school.
Such an aggressively partisan approach surprised some of Mr. Walters’ former students, many of whom admired him as an approachable teacher who valued debate. “Walters would do anything to be apolitical,” said Shane Hood, who took at least three history classes with Mr. Walters at McAlester High School. As a teacher, Mr. Hood said, he gave little indication of his political views, other than presenting large pieces of Winston Churchill and Ronald Reagan.
“He was probably loved by the whole school,” Mr Hood, 22, said, adding that Mr Walters’ current political persona did not match the teacher he knew.
Mr. Walters’ public controversies came as conservative states across the country passed laws restricting the rights of transgender people. In Oklahoma, lawmakers have banned gender transition care for minors and specifically banned the use of gender-neutral markers on birth certificates.
The Oklahoma Legislature is currently considering a bill that would prohibit residents from changing their gender identification on birth certificates and another that would require public schools to adopt a policy that gender is an “immutable biological characteristic” and prohibit the use of alternative preferred names or pronouns; Another proposal, known as the Patriotism Not Pride Act, would prevent government agencies from displaying flags or symbols in support of gay and transgender people.
“It’s just incredibly harmful,” said Whitney Cipolla, a board member of Oklahomas for Equality, which advocates for gay and transgender rights. “I know queer educators who are afraid to teach.”
In interviews, trans and non-binary teens in Oklahoma said the political climate had made things more difficult for them.
“There’s a lot of feelings of helplessness,” said Hallie, 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 might be targeted by anti-transgender activists. . “You always have that little fear that you might be attacked, that you might be one of the victims.”
Hallie said she knew Nex after meeting them as part of a program in Tulsa that offers counseling and other help to young people, including those who are gay or transgender. Nex was “very kind and outgoing and a very sweet person,” Hallie said, but added that she didn’t know much about the fight that preceded Nex’s death.
Asked how Oklahoma schools should treat students who identify as transgender, Mr. Walters said schools would “continue to treat every student with dignity and respect” but would not “go into transgender ideology by accepting all these conditions’ and forcing teachers to adopt them.
Mr. Walters, who described himself as a history buff and reader, said he saw the nation at a crossroads of sorts.
“I really see 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 traditions in this country.”
Returning to these values and traditions, he added, “this is what will unite us.”
Kirsten Noyes contributed to the research.
