An Honorable Suicide

On the political battlefield, Oregon Republicans go down fighting

On planet Earth, about 150,000 people die each day. In the U.S., just under 8,000 die every day. And in Oregon? Roughly 123 people die every day.

Heaven forfend that one of them should be trans.

A Marion County Circuit Court judge this month ordered the Oregon Department of Corrections to provide gender-affirming care to a male inmate who says he’s female. The judge decided that a failure to give this inmate what he wanted could result in a “lethal condition” — suicidal thoughts and self-harm associated with being denied gender-affirming care.

So Senior Judge Cheryl Pellegrini ordered the DOC to arrange various treatments for the inmate, who was convicted in Clackamas County of sodomy and sexual abuse. He uses female pronouns, goes by the name “Nova Gaia” (a goddess of the earth?) and he needs: breast augmentation, facial feminization surgery, tracheal shave and electrolysis.

Although death is a daily occurrence everywhere, suicide among the transgender is to be prevented at all costs. Affirmation of their condition is required.

How many ordinary, taxpaying Oregonians have all their medical needs met like this?

This is the kind of absurdity that Oregon’s one-party state has invited.

It isn’t surprising that a piece of legislation called House Bill 2002, which has a gender-affirming component, has become center stage in a walkout by Senate Republicans. The bill runs 46 pages. Its chief sponsors are all Democrats. The party’s press releases typically sum up the bill’s intention as “protecting abortion rights.”

It doesn’t take 46 pages to protect abortion rights. When Tina Kotek ran for governor, she guaranteed Oregon’s generous abortion laws would remain secure if she were elected. Well, she was.

Yet here we have HB 2002.

This badly written bill tries to do too much. A few of its aims:

• It would allow minors of any age to access abortions, birth control, treatment for sexually transmitted diseases and prenatal, delivery and postnatal care without their parents’ knowledge.

• It would require insurance companies to cover gender-affirming treatment, such as the procedures prison inmate Nova Gaia will receive.

• It allows teenagers 15 or older to consent to medical treatments, including gender-affirming care, such as hormone blockers that suppress testosterone or estrogen. Teens can also consent to gender-related surgeries if they can find a doctor to go along.

One peculiar section of the bill decriminalizes concealing the body of a dead newborn. This is supposedly to correct an antiquated law meant to target abortion. If so, it could just as easily have been given its own bill instead of being buried inside the 46-page HB 2002.

To top it off,  HB 2002 has an emergency clause, meaning citizens cannot petition to place it on the ballot, and allow voters to weigh in. For the past decade, Democrats have used the emergency clause on controversial legislation to silence opposition.

With HB 2002 so unwieldy, there was plenty of room for Senate President Rob Wagner to compromise with the Republicans. Why is he going to the mat on behalf of gender-affirming care?

Wagner and Democratic leaders calculated that if they could push the Republicans to walk out for 10 days, then Measure 113 would kick in. As approved by voters last year, Measure 113 would prohibit any legislator who has 10 or more unexcused absences from running for re-election following the end of their terms.

“These Oregon Republicans just committed political suicide” tweeted OccupyDemocrats.com, a national news website featuring advocacy journalism.

Senate Majority Leader Kate Lieber (D–Beaverton, SW Portland) and one of the chief sponsors of HB 2002 declared: “Functionally, this is a power grab by a handful of extreme politicians who want to overturn the will of the voters who did not put them in charge. If the people of Oregon supported their out-of-step agenda, they would have voted for it.”

The real power grab are the games Democrats have been playing for the last decade. In 2019, Democrats passed HB 2015 to give driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants — only five years after Oregon voters rejected such a measure. And, of course, HB 2015 carried an emergency clause so voters could not refer it to the ballot.

Wagner, Lieber and other Democratic leaders gladly disrespect the will of the voters when it suits their purposes.

Another fascinating twist is how the Democratic Party has made a fetish of minorities — creating new identity groups and then offering to push their interests. Now in the context of the Senate Republican walkout, “minority” is a dirty word.

Measure 113 was written by progressives and designed to crush the Republican minority.

As The Oregonian’s Helen Jung noted in an editorial: “It should surprise exactly no one that Measure 113 did not stop walkouts. It was not built to. …  (T)he solution to ensuring that a minimum number of legislators are present to achieve quorum is to lower Oregon’s abnormally high quorum threshold. Instead, the public employee unions who fronted the measure opted for a more peculiar and politicized route. Voters should accept their role in creating the current impasse.”

Most voters don’t read the entirety of ballot measures they vote on, let alone understand them. As it is, the text of Measure 113 is so confusing it is headed for the courts where lawyers can argue over what it really means.

Media coverage has not captured the genuine concern parents have over HB 2002’s interference with family. With so many problems in Oregon —  particularly the state’s failing education system — why is gender affirmation even on the agenda? (See “Let’s Sex Up the Kindergartners” by Portland Dissent’s Richard Cheverton)

Much of the news coverage has quoted the usual Democratic and Republican leaders squaring off, as if it were another political campaign.

When some Republicans reached the limit on unexcused absences, the Oregon Capital Chronicle quickly announced: “One-third of Oregon Senate now ineligible for another term as Republican walkout continues.”

The news site ran a photo of the framed Oath of Office that Senate Minority Leader Tim Knopp, (R-Bend) keeps on his desk:

“I, Tim Knopp, do solemnly swear, or affirm, that I will support the Constitution of the United States, and the Constitution of the state of Oregon, and that I will faithfully discharge the duties of STATE SENATOR according to the best of my ability.”

If the news site was trying for some symbolism and suggesting, as Democrats have, that the senators who walked out are violating their constitutional oath, well, in the past decade legislators — particularly Democrats — have routinely violated a significant section of the state Constitution: Section 42 that governs the rights of victims in criminal prosecutions and juvenile court delinquency.

Subsection 7 states clearly, in straightforward language: “In no event is it intended that the criminal defendant be considered the victim.”

Look at the legislative bills passed in the last decade that were sold as a way to promote public safety. Many were endorsed by Partnership for Safety and Justice (formerly the Western Prison Project, an advocacy group for inmates). Oregon’s increase in crime reflects how we now treat criminals like victims.

The Oath of Office that Knopp and the other senators took concludes with the words “to the best of my ability.”

The Republicans are doing the best they can with what they have to work with.

They are working with colleagues who are concerned about gender affirmation but think political suicide is funny.

They are working with colleagues who have been in the majority for more than a decade and have grown arrogant. How is the state doing?

In the latest turn of events, it appears the Republicans will be blamed for the death of hundreds of legislative bills dealing with issues like housing, reading skills of young children and the state’s public defense “crisis.”

The assumption is that passing a bill will take care of the problem. Education has been considered a high priority in previous sessions. A few years ago, the legislature passed the Student Success Act. How is it working?

As for the “public defense crisis,” as Portland Dissent reported before, it exists because this state is much too generous. Attorneys know how to run the meter and game the system. We pay for never-ending appeals.

It wouldn’t be surprising if the state paid for Nova Gaia’s lawsuit seeking breast augmentation to help affirm his/her gender.

The walkout of 2023 could be decisive in ways that have nothing to do with the ability of Republicans to run again.

It could be a turning point in whether Oregon starts to look more like Portland.