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The Good Lord's Porn Enthusiast
Hands
can never be idle when they're in prayer.
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(Oklahoma Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan
Walters. Image credit: Brett Deering // The New York Times)
Since 2023, Ryan Walters has served as the Oklahoma
Superintendent of Public Instruction, charged with overseeing, implementing,
and reviewing the policies of the state’s public school system.
Prior to that, for three years, he served as the
Secretary of Education, responsible for supervision of the state’s various
related agencies and standards.
So, how’s he done in these two executive roles over the
past five years?
Well, according to the 2024 National
Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)—also known as The Nation’s Report Card—Oklahoma ranks 44th in
4th grade math, 46th in 4th grade reading, 45th in 8th grade math, and 47th in
8th grade reading,
The 2025 WalletHub overall assessment of public schools, released this week, ranks Oklahoma 49th among states.
The 2025 World Population Review K-12 academic performance assessment puts it at
48th. Data Pandas places it at 45th overall, and
the ConsumerAffairs Journal of Consumer Research puts it at 49th in academic
performance.
Now, look, I’m not getting down on the good folks of
Oklahoma. I was born there, and half my father’s family is from the Sooner
State. These students and their parents deserve a hell of a lot better from
their leaders.
But none of this is particular surprising in light of
Mr. Walters dedicating his tenure to a predominant focus on rightwing “culture
war” nonsense. He’s obsessed.
Last year, he issued a mandate requiring a King
James Version Bible in every public school classroom, 5th thru 12th grades, and
asked for $3 million to carry out the initiative.
Seems expensive, right? Well, it ain’t just any Bible. He insisted the
state purchase “The Greenwood Bible” being hawked by Lee Greenwood (yes, that
one) and endorsed by Trump, who personally receives royalties from every sale.
He has pushed for overhauling the state’s public school curriculum to include space promoting
conspiracy theories, such as the 2020 presidential election being stolen and
the COVID-19 virus originating from a Chinese lab.
In 2023, he announced a state partnership with PragerU Kids, the widely condemned program shamelessly promoting revisionist history that, among other things,
depicts Frederick Douglass justifying slavery.
He’s also quite the enthusiast when it comes to
fear-mongering over pornography and “radical sexual material” in schools,
though it’s consistently been unclear what exactly merits his attention on this
matter because there seems to be an absence of both.
In 2023, he successfully forced an elementary school
principal to resign after a rightwing public smear campaign drew attention to
the educator performing as a drag queen in his private life. Mr. Walters then
proposed a ban on educators engaging in any such related activities.
Last year, he made national news again for threatening to strip one school
district’s accreditation if they failed to remove Khaled Hosseini’s “The Kite
Runner” and Jeannette Walls’ “The Glass Castle” from their libraries, deeming
them inappropriate for references to sexual abuse experienced by children.
When they balked—as any collection of reasonable adults
would—he accused them of “fighting to keep pornography on their shelves.”
Carrying out his wishes are the Library Media Review Committee, to which he
appointed Chaya Raichi, the voice behind the anti-LGBTQ Libs of TikTok social
media account. She does not live in Oklahoma.
Clearly, this is a God-fearing man who bravely
recognizes inappropriate sexual content before it even exists — indeed, a
prophet in his own time.
So, it came as some surprise when reports emerged that Mr. Walters is
being accused of displaying pornography on a television in his office during an
executive session of the State Board of Education this past Thursday, according
to a few board members in attendance.
Becky Carson and Ryan Deatherage—both of whom were
appointed this year to the Board by Republican Gov. Kevin Stitts—were the only
two in a position to see the screen and were understandably shocked. Here’s
what Ms. Carson said:
I was like, ‘What am I seeing?’ I kind of was in shock, honestly. I
started to question whether I was actually seeing what I was seeing,” Carson
said. “I was like, ‘Is that woman naked?’ And then I was like, ‘No, she’s got a
body suit on.’ And it happened very quickly, I was like, ‘That is not a body
suit.’ And I hate to even use these terms, but I said, ‘Those are her nipples.’
And then I was looking closer, and I got a full-body view, and I was like,
‘That is pubic hair.’ Even right now, I couldn’t even tell you what I was
watching.
I was so disturbed by it, that I was like — very loudly and boastfully,
like I was a parent or a teacher — I said, ‘What is on your TV? What am I
watching?’ He was like, ‘What? What are you talking about?’ He stood up and saw
it. He made acknowledgment that he saw it,” Carson recalled. “And I said, ‘Turn
it off. Now.’ And he was like, ‘What is this? What is this?’ So he acknowledged
it was inappropriate just by those words. And he was like, ‘I can’t get it to
turn off. I can’t figure out how to turn it off.’ And I said, ‘Get it turned
off.’ So he finally got it turned off, and that was the end of it. He didn’t
address it. He didn’t apologize. Nothing was said.
Mr. Deatherage concurred: “I don’t know if he turned it
off or switched the channel, I don’t remember. I was surprised that when he
came back to the table, he was not apologetic. I didn’t ever hear an apology
for that being on, and he didn’t seem to be fazed that it was on.”
Republican leaders in the State Senate are now launching an investigation
into the matter, which they described as a “bizarre and troubling situation.”
All seem unanimously perplexed and concerned.
To be fair, despite the curious circumstances, it has
obviously not yet been proven that Mr. Walters is personally responsible for
the pornography displayed on his television next to his desk in his office.
Sure, it’s possible that he’s the stereotypical
Porn-Again Christian, but it’s also plausible that he just received a few
strokes of bad luck. Maybe he was simply shafted by fate. Maybe he’s the victim
of premature contextualization.
Mr. Walters faces a reassessment by voters next year,
and it’s too early to tell if he’s about to experience any professional
symptoms of electoral dysfunction. Perhaps he’ll crank out a reasonable
explanation for all this against the stiff opposition.
In the meantime, I sure hope he doesn’t let this get a
rise out of him. I hope he’ll remember that hands can never be idle when
they’re put together in prayer.
