Oklahoma lawmakers shoot down slew of Christian Nationalist bills

State Sen. Dusty Deevers failed to pass bills related to Covenant Marriage, abortion, and no-fault divorce

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Oklahoma State Sen. Dusty Deevers is a hard-right, MAGA-loving, Christian Nationalist in one of the reddest states in the country. He knows damn well that he has a better chance of proposing and passing extreme pieces of legislation that would never even see the light of day in most other states.

Dusty Deevers in a campaign video (screenshot via YouTube)

That’s why, last month, Deevers announced a slate of eight bills “aimed at restoring moral sanity” across Oklahoma. That list included:

• SB 456, the “Abolition of Abortion Act,” which would allow the state to prosecute women for having abortions, even if they ordered pills through the mail. It would have expanded the state’s definition of “homicide” to include women who have abortions. It also could have led to women and abortion providers receiving the death penalty (or life in prison) for receiving or conducting basic medical care.

• SB 228, the “Covenant Marriage Act of Oklahoma,” which would create a two-tiered marriage system that makes it harder for women in abusive relationships to get divorced.

• SB 829, which would ban no-fault divorces by getting rid of “incompatibility” as a justification for separation, trapping many people in loveless or unwanted relationships.

Other bills would have banned pornography in general (SB 593) and banned any kind of drag performances for kids (SB 550).

Deevers justified these batshit crazy bills by saying he just wanted to oppose “evil”:

“Contrary to what the left would have us believe, it doesn’t have to be this way. We can and should imagine and move toward a society that celebrates virtue in the public square rather than vice. We can restore normalcy, decency, and morality; we can protect the most vulnerable, restore a high view of marriage, and shield children from explicit material that can warp their innocent minds. We simply must have the courage to stand against the most radical and degenerate elements of the far-left.”

Even though any lawmaker can propose any bill, and even though some of this flew in the face of the First Amendment and basic human decency, there was reason to worry precisely because this was happening in a red state that has shown very little resistance to the most extreme elements of the Republican Party. If any state could pass these bills, it was this one.

And yet.

On Wednesday, the most eye-popping parts of Deevers’ morality legislation slate were shot down by Republicans.

SB 456, the anti-abortion bill, failed in the Senate Judiciary Committee by a vote of 6-2, meaning four Republicans joined two Democrats in opposing the plan. During the debate, Republicans asked Deevers if the bill would apply to women who traveled out of state (would they have to take a pregnancy test before and after?) and how anyone could definitively prove a woman took abortion pills as opposed to having a natural miscarriage. His answers were predictably awful, saying the forced pregnancy tests were “beyond the scope of law” and that the death penalty might indeed be justified:

“If abortion is prenatal homicide, and I believe it is, that's the question that's before us. Is abortion prenatal homicide, and should it be treated the same as … murdering a born person?” Deevers said.

…

“Are you saying the abortion provider would be an accessory to murder?” [Senate Judiciary Vice Chair Todd] Gollihare asked.

“It depends on the situation, the specific situation,” Deevers said. “If the woman went into, currently, it’d have to be something like a back-alley abortion, and an abortion provider did that, then the courts would make a determination on the measure of fault in that situation.”

In short, even red-state Republicans couldn’t get on board with Deevers’ blood lust against women who want to end their pregnancies and the people trying to help them.

Deevers also failed to get his Covenant Marriage bill through the Judiciary Committee. But because these were mostly Republicans, they spent less time arguing about how the proposal would trap people in bad marriages and more time discussing the tax credit involved. (The bill said couples entering a covenant marriage would get a $2,500 tax credit, but that meant signing paperwork saying they’re entering “a lifelong covenant made before God.”)

One of the Democrats on the committee raised some obvious questions: Was this just a tax break for religious couples? What if atheists got married and just lied about the God thing to get the benefit?

Deevers’ response? Uhhhhhh…. who cares?

It’s really a remarkable exchange because Deevers fully admits his bill rewards liars.

“This only applies to religious couples, and non-religious couples would not be able to have this tax credit, is that correct?” asked Sen. Mary Boren (D-Norman).

“If they could sign the declaration of intent and make that statement, then that’s how it would work,” Sen. Deevers said.

“So, to be able to get a tax credit of $2,500, so they signed it but didn’t believe it, they would be able to get it anyway?” asked Sen. Todd Gollihare (R-Kellyville).

“There is no distinction in this bill that says you may not lie before god, it is on that person’s conscience,” Sen. Deevers said.

Somehow, the argument that it would be legal to lie about God in order to get cash from the state wasn’t very convincing. SB 228 was eventually blocked by the same 6-2 vote.

Deevers’ bill to ban no-fault divorce also failed by the same vote. The other bills remain alive but not necessarily for very long.

The same committee also voted 5-3 against a different bill sponsored by State Sen. David Bullard, Senate Bill 380, which would have installed Ten Commandments monuments “inside and outside of the Oklahoma State Capitol.”

Senators in opposition to the measure expressed concerns that it was unconstitutional, would lead to other religious monuments and went against the will of the people.

All of this comes two weeks after Deevers had to withdraw a completely different bill that would have eliminated special education services in public schools due to outcry from people with hearts.

I suppose there’s an open conversation to have about whether extremists like Deevers or Bullard are horrible at their job (because they can’t get things passed) or extremely talented (because their goal is to get attention, not helping people). But you gotta take your wins where you can, and these guys are so extreme that even Republicans in Oklahoma want nothing to do with their ideas. They’ll do plenty of damage in other ways, but apparently there are some bridges even they refuse to cross.

Maybe that’s a sign of hope.

This is the same state, after all, where Republican lawmakers have openly vented their frustrations about Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters, who is more interested in appeasing Donald Trump than improving education in the state. It’s also where one of the leading Republican candidates to become the next governor is current Attorney General Gentner Drummond who has been a surprising supporter of church/state separation.

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