Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt is among the Republican leaders who are acting decisively to take on the “woke” left’s propagandizing of children and last week, he vetoed a bill that would have provided funding for his state’s PBS television station which has served as a vehicle to seduce impressionable kids into the LGBTQ+ lifestyle.
Among the many examples of objectionable content broadcast by the Oklahoma Educational Television Authority (OETA) are a homosexual character in “Work It Out Wombats,” PBS Kids’ “Clifford the Big Red Dog” introducing gay characters, a “PBS Newshour” feature on parental support for “gender care” treatments for underaged kids including puberty-blocking drugs, a gay wedding on PBS Kids’ “Odd Squad,” a “Let’s Learn” segment in which a person going by the name of Lil Miss Hot Mess reads a children’s book titled “The Hips on the Drag Queen Go Swish, Swish, Swish.” and a “plethora” of programming for Pride Month, the 30 days set aside for the worship of the very special demographic.
Of course, Gov. Stitt was savagely attacked by leftists over the nixing of the funding of the PBS station and he defended his decision to draw the line on the station’s role in the sexualizing of children in an exclusive interview with Fox News Digital.
(Video: Fox News Digital)
“OETA, to us, is an outdated system. You know, the big, big question is why are we spending taxpayer dollars to prop up or compete with the private sector and run television stations? And then, when you go through all of the programming that’s happening and the indoctrination and over-sexualization of our children, it’s just really problematic, and it doesn’t line up with Oklahoma values,” the governor said.
“When you talk about educating kids, let’s teach them to read and their numbers, and counting and letters and those kind of things,” he said. “I mean some of the programmings that we’re seeing on OETA today is the hips of the drag queen go swish, parents defend child transitions… you know it just doesn’t need to be on public television,” Stitt added.
He said that if the content was so popular, it could easily be picked up by a network that isn’t dependent on taxpayer money to exist and the taxpayer dollars would be put to better use elsewhere.
“Oklahoma taxpayers are going, ‘Hey, hang on, time out for just a second. That’s not my values,’” Stitt said. “I’m just tired of using taxpayer dollars for some person’s agenda. I represent the taxpayers.”
“There’s so much television, there’s so much media,” he said. “Maybe in 1957, you could have made an argument that you needed a public television station. That’s totally outdated at this point.”
“All those towers and our communications, that’s all owned by the state and whether we continue to fund an outdated public television station with taxpayer dollars, or we let the free market work, we’re still going to have the same capabilities, the same assets, the same towers,” the governor added.
“Our DPS system is what rolls out the Amber Alerts, for example. None of that’s going away,” Stitt continued. “So that’s just people confusing the issue, not being clear with their mission, trying to make excuses of why the tax dollars should still fund this outdated system.”
The governor also rejected the assertion of Democrat state Rep. Monroe Nichols who said that the refusal to fund leftist propaganda is a part of his “continued attacks on public education and underrepresented Oklahoma communities.”
Stitt dismissed Nichols’ whining as “nonsense” and opined that claims that he’s attacking public education is “another stale tactic used by Democrats who want to push far-left talking points on kids.”
“Since I’ve been governor, we have put more money in public education than any other governor before me. I’m actually requesting about a 15% increase in public education funding. We’ve increased it over $1 billion, so that’s just simply nonsense,” he said.
Among other claims by critics, MSNBC’s Ja’han Jones called the veto “nothing more than anti-LGBTQ government censorship,” and OETA board member Ken Busby said that “No civilization since the Norman Conquest in 1066 has survived that did not support arts and culture. They’re all gone. Civilization is about its culture, its history, and its arts.”
“They’re grasping at straws if they’re talking about civilization surviving,” Gov. Stitt said. “They want to confuse the facts, they want to confuse the issue… this has nothing to do with the arts. My gracious, we have the most beautiful capitol here in the country, here at Oklahoma City, and it’s filled with beautiful art.”
He also spoke of the importance of traditional family values and not allowing biological males to destroy women’s and girls’ sports.
“I believe it’s going to be more and more important in general in 2024 because the left has gone too far. They have gone way too radical,” Stitt said. “We have an obligation to protect our children and protect sports and protect free competition and fair competition in Oklahoma. And so to us, it’s pretty common sense. And I hope it’s an issue in the general election in 2024 because I think we win on that with Americans.”
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