But a not-so-funny thing happened once they seized control: They rarely hesitated to stick state government’s nose into private lives.

The “government” is now in exam rooms as women and doctors make life-or-death reproductive health decisions. The “government” now mandates Christian dogma in public schools. The “government” now imposes one-size-fits-all restrictions on physical and mental health treatment for transgender children and their families.

We were reminded of this duplicity on New Year’s Eve when a state district judge overturned the State Board of Education’s 2023 rejection of a Moore student’s request to change pronouns in their student records. The action came about a month after the state board forbid local districts and schools from “altering sex or gender designations” in student records without its approval.

Two important reminders: First, the state ed board is filled with Gov. Kevin Stitt’s appointees and works in concert with state Superintendent Ryan Walters. Second, Stitt and Walters are poster children for a Christian Nationalist movement that not only seeks to obliterate church-state separation, but also to marginalize and vilify “others” – particularly those who are LGBTQ2S+.

As is often the case in contentious legal battles, Judge Michael Tupper’s ruling didn’t settle the issue, once and for all. For as he overturned the state board’s action, he also upheld its authority to require its approval before local districts and schools change pronouns in student records.

In fact, the judge concluded, it was all the equivalent of a procedural hiccup: the state board’s error was failing to notify the student about the “upcoming agency action against them” and to give them “procedural rights under the law” to be heard.

While the ruling may be legally defensible, it doesn’t help resolve real world issues, including whether parents and health professionals should be able to decide, in concert with local school officials, what’s in a student’s best interest.

Parents and health professionals won’t always get it right, of course. They’re human. Fallible. Indeed, some students later in life may come to regret their decisions. But is it really preferrable to give an appointed state board the final say?

How can the limited government/individual liberty crowd square their supposedly sacrosanct principles with giving the state the authority to determine a student’s identification on their school records – not parents?

Unfortunately, you can bet there will be more of this sort of meddling in the upcoming Legislature, given its uber-right membership.

More efforts to further isolate trans youth. To restrict women’s reproductive choices. To mandate sectarian instruction in public schools.

In an interview with Oklahoma Voice, new House Speaker Kyle Hilbert seemed to concede there wasn’t much point, for example, in continued efforts to restrict abortion. “When there’s not any reported abortions,” he said, “I don’t know how you further reduce from zero.”

OK, it’s not much. But at least it’s a sign Hilbert is in touch with reality. And in today’s Oklahoma statehouse, that’s progress.

Of course, the speaker’s comment did not go unchallenged. Two senators, Elgin’s Dusty Deevers and McCurtain’s Warren Hamilton, fired back in a news release challenging the “zero” abortion assertion. They also pledged to again pursue legislation to “abolish abortion” in this year’s session.

“As a pastor and local activist,” Deevers said, “I have been engaged in the fight to protect preborn children for years prior to becoming a senator. I have much respect for Speaker Hilbert as Christian man, but as much as I desperately wish there were zero abortions in Oklahoma, zero ‘reported’ abortions is not the same thing as zero abortions.”

Actually, the senators claimed, an estimated 3,274 “self-managed” abortions are legally performed each year in Oklahoma. Moreover, another 4,000 abortions are “committed by Oklahomans driving to other states,” Deevers said.

“3,274 little human beings are murdered annually on our watch,” Hamilton noted. “As legislators, this fact should grieve us and stir us to continued action. We must keep fighting the good fight to protect the most innocent among us.”

Rhetoric which translates: Limited government and individual liberty for me, but not for thee.