Republican state lawmaker slammed after referring to LGBTQ+ community as ‘filth’

A Republican state lawmaker has been slammed after he referred to the LGBTQ+ community as “filth”.

Oklahoma Republican state senator Tom Woods made the remark during a public event in response to a question about state bills that would restrict the rights of transgender people, according to audio recorded by the Tahlequah Daily Press.

At the event, which was sponsored by the Tahlequah Chamber of Commerce, audience member Cathy Cott allegedly asked the state senator and other speakers why the legislature has “such an obsession with LGBTQ+ citizens of Oklahoma and what people do in their personal lives and how they raise their children,” the Tahlequah Daily Press reported.

“Is there a reason why you won’t answer about the 50 bills targeting the LGBTQ community in the state of Oklahoma?” she asked. “If you are ashamed of those bills, they shouldn’t be there.”

Ms Cott then referred to the case of Nex Benedict, the non-binary teenager who died in Oklahoma after an incident at their high school earlier this month, pressing Woods and the panel on how such laws have placed a target on transgender people in the state.

Woods responded by saying his “heart goes out” to the teen’s loved ones, before adding: “We are a religious state and we are going to fight it to keep that filth out of the state of Oklahoma because we are a Christian state — we are a moral state.”

Tom Woods

He continued: “We want to lower taxes and let people be able to live and work and go to the faith they choose. We are a Republican state and I’m going to vote my district, and I’m going to vote my values, and we don’t want that in the state of Oklahoma.”

Woods’ remarks caused outrage in Oklahoma and beyond, with Oklahoma Democrat Kody Macaulay, a House of