Oklahoma City will be home to two Pride celebrations this year. Board members from Oklahoma City Pride Alliance and 39th Street District Association decided to host their own events after they could not agree on a unified vision for Pride 2020. “There is a little confusion, and hopefully as we move through the next couple […]
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Cities’ equality
Norman earned Human Rights Campaign Foundation’s distinction as an “All Star” city for advancing LGBTQ+ equality without relying on state law. Human Rights Campaign (HRC) annually ranks cities across the country in various categories from 0 to 100 through its Municipal Equality Index. Norman more than doubled its ranking from 41 in 2018 to 92 […]
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Freedom fighters
Freedom Oklahoma aims to build off a successful year for Oklahoma’s LGBTQ+ community by focusing more on diverse sects of the community and advocating for more issues. With October being LGBT History Month, Allie Shinn, Freedom Oklahoma executive director, said the organization is reflecting on recent history to inform what is next to come. The […]
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Still proud
Registered members of the OKC Pride organization gathered for an emergency meeting on the evening of July 26. A crowd of around 100 people packed into Expressions Church in 39th Street District to vote on a sole agenda item: the dissolution of the entire organization. After nearly two hours of debate and discussion over the […]
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Split decision
In early June, Troy Stevenson wrote a Facebook post celebrating the fact that a group from Oklahoma County Republican Party had committed to marching in this year’s OKC Pride Parade. But not everyone on the social media site celebrated along with him. Several social media posts wondered why the GOP, a party with a vocal […]
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PRIDE March on
Last year, OKC Pride celebrated the 30th anniversary of its yearly parade and LGBTQ pride month celebration. The event has grown a large local following through the years. Some in the city’s younger generations probably could not imagine a year without the observance, but as recently as February, it appeared to some within the community […]
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PRIDE Civic union
On one hand, Freedom Oklahoma and Women Lead Oklahoma advocate for two distinct constituencies — the former promotes civil engagement in the LGBTQ community while the latter concentrates on those who identify as women. But the two groups have more in common than they have separate — a shared board of directors and office space, […]
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PRIDE King of drag
At age 17, Damian Matrix-Gritte became a king. But when he first began performing at drag shows in Oklahoma City, Matrix-Gritte, now 34, had very few people to pattern his monarchy after. “It was interesting,” Matrix-Gritte said. “There weren’t really drag kings, so I didn’t really have anything to go off of. I’m sure there […]
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PRIDE Proud notes
OKC Pride Music Lineup 9:30 Friday-6 p.m. Saturday 39th District NW 39th Street between Classen and Youngs boulevards facebook.com/okcpridefan 405-652-9561 Free From hip-hop to hair metal, long-lived scene vets to talented teens, the diverse music lineup for OKC’s 2018 Pride hops genres nearly every hour. The common thread throughout is that all of the acts […]
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New path
If asked to guess which national political party affiliate was the first to elect a transgender person to its executive board, most people probably would not think of the Libertarian Party of Oklahoma. But maybe they should. Norman resident and University of Oklahoma (OU) political science student Traci Baker made history when she was elected […]