People Are Partying After One of America’s Most Transphobic Officials Resigns
There’s been no love lost for Ryan Walters in Oklahoma.
After the state’s most notorious public official announced plans to resign, several Oklahoma City businesses celebrated by throwing parties, including 51st Street Speakeasy and OKC Cider Co. Preston Bobo, who had been a plaintiff in a lawsuit challenging Walters’ plan to force schools to teach the Christian Bible, says that his family spent the entire weekend attending various celebrations; one included a “Bye Bye Ry Ry” party thrown by Rococo Restaurant and Bar, a local seafood eatery. Bobo says that even friends who don’t pay much attention to politics have approached him to say “how happy they are that Ryan Walters is gone.”
“His rhetoric is what really was so divisive and so problematic,” Bobo tells Queer Agenda. “It caused so much stress in teachers’ lives. He called teachers ‘terrorists’ within his first, like, three months in office. He was not liked in the state, but he stayed on like a tick.”
That jubilation has been shared across the state in the wake of a September 24 interview with Fox News in which Walters announced that he had accepted a new position as CEO of the Teacher Freedom Alliance, a far-right, anti-union education nonprofit. For the past 32 months, Walters has served as the Oklahoma Superintendent of Public Instruction, using his platform to push an extreme, far-right agenda in Oklahoma schools. Among his numerous controversies, Walters mandated that President Donald Trump’s baseless claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election be taught in history courses and proposed that a new 50-question test be given to new teachers to root out “radical leftist ideology.” A staunch Christian nationalist, he has claimed that the separation of church and state is nothing more than a liberal “myth.”
Sara Cunningham, the Oklahoma City-based founder of Free Mom Hugs, says that she was “elated and relieved” at the news of his departure, calling his impact on the state “frightening.” “He’s a perfect example of what happens when bad theology, abuse of power, and white Christian nationalism are all rolled into one,” she tells Queer Agenda. “If you needed a picture of what all that looks like, it’s Ryan Walters. How it went on for so long is beyond me.”
Of the tumultuous legacy Walters leaves behind, perhaps most infamous is his assault on the LGBTQ+ community. In February 2024, more than 350 LGBTQ+ and allied organizations called for Walters’ resignation following the passing of 16-year-old Nex Benedict, who died one day after being beaten by three female students in an Owasso High School bathroom. An open letter attached to the petition accused Walters of “fostering a culture of violence and hate against the 2SLGBTQI+ community in Oklahoma schools,” one which they say led to Benedict’s tragic death.
Walters drew additional condemnation for repeatedly deadnaming and misgendering Benedict, a trans youth of Choctaw descent who reportedly used he/him pronouns. He doubled down on his mistreatment of Benedict in an interview with The New York Times in which he dismissed the existence of trans and nonbinary people altogether: “There’s not multiple genders. There’s two. That’s how God created us.” When an autopsy alleged that Benedict died by suicide (a claim his family disputes), Walters accused LGBTQ+ groups of “pushing a false narrative” regarding the student’s death and called civil rights advocates “one of the biggest threats to our democracy.”
Elsewhere, Walters controversially named Chaya Raichik, the anti-LGBTQ+ extremist behind the far-right social media account Libs of TikTok, to the Oklahoma Education Department’s Library Media Advisory Committee. Critics found the appointment shocking for many reasons. Raichik does not live in the state and has no background in education, and her posts have reportedly resulted in numerous bomb threats targeting schools and libraries, including institutions within the state. (Walters himself shared some of the content that allegedly led to those threats.)
What’s likewise unusual about her appointment, as Bobo claims, is that there are “no records of this board existing at all.” “The library board probably never met,” he says. “She’s probably the only member of this board. It’s just political garbage, but it puts real fear and real harm into children.”
LGBTQ+ advocates confirm that Walters had a dramatically negative impact on youth mental health during his time in office. Since Benedict’s death in February 2024, Oklahoma has consistently been the number-one state for calls to the Rainbow Youth Project’s crisis hotline, according to the organization’s executive director, Lance Preston. Rainbow Youth Project receives around 1,400 contacts on average from Oklahoma each month, and of those callers, he says that around 64% cite Walters “specifically as one of the primary sources of their distress.” Those numbers are both “very shocking and very telling,” Preston adds.
But following Walters’ resignation, Rainbow Youth Project has seen a tide begin to turn. While Preston says that calls from Oklahoma haven’t slowed, young people reaching out to the group’s support team have begun to express a new optimism. “We have parents calling who are relieved,” Preston tells Queer Agenda. “We have young people calling in tears, saying, ‘I’m hopeful that we get someone who actually will care about us, someone who will try to protect us.’ There seems to be a glimmer of hope.”
It may take years for the damage Walters did to be undone, as sources tell Queer Agenda. Among his many other infractions, Walters spread misinformation about students who identify as cats relieving themselves in litter boxes in school classrooms. He sent a memo to publishers claiming that their textbooks “will not be welcome in Oklahoma” if they were too trans inclusive. He alleged that the presence of trans youth in schools threatens the safety of other students. And following the assassination of anti-LGBTQ+ activist and right-wing propagandist Charlie Kirk, Walters announced that all Oklahoma schools will have chapters devoted to Turning Point USA, the conservative nonprofit Kirk co-founded.
Many of Walters’ worst ideas never came to fruition or were blocked in court, and Bobo predicts that his replacement — who has yet to be named by Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt — is likely to drop some of his more tendentious mandates. For instance, a lawsuit filed in July challenged contentious new standards requiring social studies courses to teach about how Jesus Christ “influenced the American colonists, founders, and culture.” “Now that he’s gone, the lawsuit will go away because they don’t want to deal with it,” Bobo says of Walters’ successor.
While next steps remain to be seen, the eagerness for a new chapter in Oklahoma appears universal, no matter one’s partisan leanings. Nate Morris, a community advocate and former educator, tells Queer Agenda that Republicans, Democrats, and Independents alike are “all pretty stoked that he’s leaving.” A January poll from The Oklahoman newspaper found that an overwhelming 95% of respondents would give his job performance an “F” grade, just before the release of a WalletHub survey ranking the state 50th in education under his tenure. Those survey findings were one more indication to Oklahomans, Morris says, that Walters has “consistently put himself and his own political career before the kids of the state.”
Rev. Shannon Fleck, a faith leader based in Oklahoma City and an outspoken critic of Walters, summed up the prevailing sentiment across the state in six words: “Don’t let the door hit you.” “To be able to have some healing potentially begin here in Oklahoma after what he has done is a great source of joy,” she tells Queer Agenda. “We’ve been through a lot.”
Walters’ official last day as Oklahoma Superintendent of Public Instruction was September 30. While he faced an investigation earlier this year over nude images allegedly broadcast on a television in his office, he was not removed over the controversy.
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