“Offensive” Champion for Children Sidelined

Representative Jeannette Oxford is one of the most polite, charitable, and caring members of the General Assembly. Her quiet demeanor is only broken by a flash in her eyes when she hears of children being harmed.

For the last four years on the House Committee on Children and Families, Representative Oxford and Representative Beth Low have been the progressive 1-2 punch that prevented many bills that endangered children or limited reproductive choice from passing.

This year, a new Chair of the committee, Cynthia Davis, ran off many of the previous members of the committee. Representatives who championed these issues for years also knew that they couldn’t work with her. At the end of the upset, one Democratic Representative agreed to return to work on that committee – Representative Oxford.

When it came time for the Speaker of the House, Ron Richard, to appoint this “Special Committee”, however, he refused to appoint Representative Oxford to the committee saying that “…some members find her offensive.”

I’ve seen Representative Oxford at work in this very committee and she’s never been “offensive”. In fact, she is overly polite to members who are less intelligent and poorly informed – some who have failed to even read the legislation before them.

There are only two things that may qualify as “offensive” in ultra-conservative circles: 1) her ability to speak intelligently about progressive issues, or 2) her sexual orientation.

On the first offense, it’s true that Representative Oxford would run verbal circles around the committee chair effectively running a group of freshmen Democrats through the ropes course of legislative sparring, but the failure of the Republicans to appoint a more verbose chair is hardly Representative Oxford’s fault.

On the second offense, if true, I would hope that even conservative Republicans would find "offensive". You don’t deny a person of color the right to sit on a committee with a racist, and you can’t deny a lesbian the right to sit on a committee with a bigot.