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Oklahoma Queer History, Tulsa, OK (2026)

12/01/2025

December 1 is

I was fortunate enough to have been born in a time with a better understanding of HIV/AIDS along with preventative medication such as PrEP.

It incredibly saddens me knowing how many people in my community we’ve lost to this illness. I can’t begin to imagine the fear of being diagnosed decades ago, knowing it was a death sentence. The LGBT community are already seen as the lepers of society, so it must’ve been even more isolating and lonely.

As a member of the LGBT community, it is our responsibility to remember and carry on the legacy of those we lost to HIV/AIDS. We cannot forget those we lost, their accomplishments, or their visions for the future.

We also must be accepting of those living today with HIV, and fight against the stigma.
U = U
Undetectable means Untransmittable.

09/14/2025

“House May Seek Exemption” - Henryetta Daily Free-Lance (7/4/85)

“OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — House conferees were under orders today to produce a fair housing bill that would let owners and renters discriminate against homos*xuals.

The conferees were given instructions on how to write a new conference committee report after the House voted 57–25 to adopt a motion to that effect by Rep. Bill Graves, R-Oklahoma City.

Graves’ motion directed the House conferees to come back with a fair housing bill that:

Would exempt certain private sales and rentals from the coverage of the act.

Require written approval by the attorney general before the Human Rights Commission could file a district court suit against anyone accused of violating the act.

Delete the provision for punitive monetary punishment of anyone convicted of a violation.

Exempt homos*xuals from coverage under the act.

“You are going to gut this bill and gut the fair housing law,” Rep. Don McCorkell said in arguing against the committee instructions. The Tulsa Democrat warned the House that a bill written as the House instructed “will keep us from coming under substantial compliance” with federal regulations.

In arguing for his motion, Graves denied that he was trying to rewrite the bill. Instead, he said, his motion would instruct the conferees “so that they can’t rewrite the bill so it would not be acceptable to us or to our constituents.”

But Rep. Don Ross, D-Tulsa, told the House that Graves’ motion “strikes at the very core of what this bill is about.”

Rep. Frank Harbin, D-McAlester, said that although there had been some changes in the bill that made it more acceptable to him, he was still opposed to “non-exemption of homos*xuals or g**s. … We don’t have to be like all the other states.”

Harbin said he had voted against the bill the first time it went through the House and changed his vote only after “Gov. (George) Nigh called me to his office and leaned on me one day.”

One change that Graves would make would change the effective date of the bill to 1986, Riggs said. That, he said, would mean that Oklahoma would be out of compliance with federal law as soon as the bill was passed.

Riggs also said it was “almost unheard of” to require a state agency to get the permission of the attorney general to file a suit. He said that Graves would have the House believe that the Human Rights Commission was an aggressive agency “when it is a very, very passive agency.”

“You can’t measure absolute damage when someone can’t live where he or she thinks they ought to live,” Riggs said. He said that if someone were refused a promotion or a job because of discrimination, then a damage figure could be set. But with housing, he said, the only monetary damage would be punitive damages.

“There is no protection of homos*xuals in this bill,” Rep. Davis Riggs, D-Tulsa, argued. He said Graves “sets up a straw man so that he can knock it down” and offered to help rewrite the bill if Graves or anyone else could show where there was any protection of homos*xuals.”

09/14/2025

“Senate Panel Excludes Homos*xuals in Housing Bill
House Bill Replaces Gay Teacher Statute” - The Daily Oklahoman (4/17/85)

By Randy Ellis

A bill that would prohibit teachers from promoting homos*xual activity during school or school-related activities was introduced Tuesday by three members of the state House.

The bill is a response to a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision which struck down a broader Oklahoma statute, its House authors said.

Across the rotunda in the Senate, a committee approved an amendment to a fair housing bill that would exclude homos*xuals from protection under the measure.

The teaching measure, House Bill 1569, would allow teachers, student teachers, and teachers’ aides to be fired, suspended or refused employment if they violate its provisions.

A recent U.S. Supreme Court decision struck down a current Oklahoma law authorizing the firing of teachers who engage in public homos*xual conduct, on or off duty.

Rep. Gary Sherrer, principal author of the new measure, said the bill was written with the assistance of Attorney General Mike Turpen and differs from the original statute because it only addresses public homos*xual conduct by teachers if such conduct results in a material or substantial interference or disruption in the normal activities of the school.

Reps. Frank Harbin and Michael Hunter are co-authors of the bill.

“We just feel like the people of Oklahoma concur in the feeling that homos*xuals should not be allowed to teach in the classroom,” said Sherrer, D-Snow.

Harbin, D-McAlester, said the Supreme Court’s action should not be taken lying down.

“Oklahomans from one end of this state to the other are frustrated more than ever by the Supreme Court’s interference in matters better left to the states,” Harbin said. “This latest decision regarding the permissible conduct of homos*xual teachers in our classrooms must be retested in the courts.”

Sherrer said Oklahoma’s current law was struck down by a 4-4 tie vote of the U.S. Supreme Court.

If the new bill were challenged all the way to the Supreme Court, it would likely be upheld, Hunter said.

Hunter also said Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell, who did not vote in the previous decision, would have supported the Oklahoma statute.

The new House bill defines public homos*xual conduct as “The advocating, soliciting, imposing, encouraging or promoting of homos*xual activity during normal school or school-related activities or the commission of homos*xual activity in such a manner that such activity is indiscreet and not practiced in private.”

The 1985 deadline for House bills to be brought up on the House floor has passed, but Sherrer said he hopes the Legislature will suspend its joint rules so that the bill can be considered this session.

In the Senate, the Judiciary Committee voted 6-4 to exclude homos*xuals from protection under a state fair housing bill.

The committee approved an amendment which states that “nothing in this act shall be construed as discrimination, if the complaint is a denial to deal with or associate with homos*xuals or g**s.”

The amendment, offered by Sen. Jerry Pierce, R-Bartlesville, was attached to a House-passed bill designed to put Oklahoma in line with 40 other states which have statewide fair housing legislation.

It originally was placed in the measure in a House committee by Rep. Jim Hamilton, D-Poteau.

Sen. Bernard McIntyre, D-Tulsa, Senate author, said he had the amendment deleted from a committee substitute because “it’s obviously unconstitutional.”

“It’s a clear-cut indication that they want to discriminate against g**s,” McIntyre said.

There was no debate on the anti-homos*xual amendment when the bill passed the House last week. House author of the bill is Rep. David Riggs, D-Tulsa.

McIntyre said the amendment undermined the main purpose of the bill, which was to crack down on discrimination in housing on the basis of race, color, religion, s*x, national origin, age or handicap.

The bill would allow the Oklahoma Human Rights Commission to investigate discrimination complaints and file lawsuits in district court if it is determined discrimination has occurred and the matter could not be settled through administrative procedures.

Pierce’s amendment would forbid the commission from investigating complaints involving discrimination against homos*xuals.

Asked why he submitted the amendment, Pierce said that as a property owner, he thought that “I should be able to consider if I want to sell to someone who has that kind of lifestyle.”

McIntyre said his bill had nothing to do with lifestyles.

“What people do in their personal lives is none of my business. You could add that provision to any bill.“

“I’ll try to get a severability clause attached on the Senate floor. I would not want that amendment to get the whole thing thrown out by the courts.”

A severability clause is added to a bill to ensure that if a section of a law is invalidated by the courts, the rest of the law remains in effect.

The measure now goes to the full Senate for consideration.”

07/30/2025

“AIDS: One Tulsan’s Fight for Life”

Tulsa World (4/14/85)

Stories By CATHY MILAM — Of the World Staff

“Peter, a 24-year-old Tulsa man, said he first realized something was wrong in August 1984, shortly after he began working on a construction job.
“It was the first time I’d done that kind of work, and I thought at first that I just wasn’t used to it. I suffered from a lot of fatigue and what seemed to be flu-like symptoms,” Peter said.
“It got where I couldn’t walk up the stairs in my apartment building without being out of breath.”
It wasn’t the flu. Instead, Peter was diagnosed as having AIDS — acquired immune deficiency syndrome.
Peter had contracted Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia, a rare form of lung disease. The lung disease, along with Kaposi’s sarcoma, a rare form of skin cancer, are the two diseases that most often kill AIDS victims.
“Seventy percent of the people who get (the lung disease) don’t survive. But we licked it,” Peter said.
Six or eight weeks later, it came down with cryptococcos meningitis (an infection of the membranes that envelope the brain and spinal cord). That’s what keeps reoccurring. We treat it for weeks, it seems to get better and all of a sudden its back again,” he said.
Peter said that when his doctor, Dr. Jeffrey Beal, told him that it was possible that he had AIDS, “I felt, down deep, that it just couldn’t be AIDS, it had to be another kind of infection.
“I’d just read the scare stories. That was it. I wasn’t really informed about the disease,” Peter said.
Peter’s daily treatments are similar to the kinds of treatment given to cancer patients. He has four more weeks left on his current fight against meningitis.
“Hopefully we’ll have it killed by then,” Peter said.
“It (AIDS) has given me a lot. When it comes to long-range plans, I have no idea how long I can go, and how much I can carry off.”
Peter said most of his close friends are very supportive, and are interested in his illness. He said most of them are concerned because they feel that one day they could be affected.
Most of his closest friends also are gay, Peter said.
Peter’s mother, Jane, said she first heard Peter’s diagnosis of AIDS when he was hospitalized for the first time.
“My thought was, ‘They’re crazy.’ I figured there was no way that Peter could have AIDS,” she said.
“I knew nothing about AIDS. I really thought it was something that someone had dreamed up to hang on gay people, so I never bothered to learn about the disease.
“The truth is, I don’t think I ever accepted that he had AIDS until about six weeks ago. I just believed the odds were too great,” she said.
Jane pointed out that there have been 9,405 cases of AIDS diagnosed in this country, three-quarters of which are gay men. Estimates place the gay population at about 25 million.
“It was hard for me to deal with that, the feeling that I had somehow been singled out,” Peter said.
Beal said Peter does not fit the classic stereotype of an AIDS victim. “Studies show that at the time of diagnosis, the age ranges from 29 to 39, and that the victim’s average number of lifetime s*x partners is 1,000 or more, whereas a normal, healthy gay male has a lifetime total of 500 or less s*x partners. Peter has been part of an almost monogamous relationship for the past two years,” Beal said.
Beal said that AIDS is a disease with a long incubation period, and in many cases no symptoms occur for three or four years after a victim is exposed to the virus.
Paul, Peter’s lover, said that fear of the disease is a two-edged sword for him. Not only must he watch the person closest to him suffer, but he fears for his own health.
“It’s hard to cope every day, but I just keep checking with Dr. Beal, and as long as he says I’m OK, I’m OK,” Paul said.
Both Peter and Paul said the disease has made an impact on their friends.
“They’ve drawn closer together. When it hits this close to home, they have to start asking, ‘What can I do to prevent this situation,’” Peter said.
“Most of our friends are cutting down on dating,” Paul said.
“You especially see the difference at the clubs and bars. Not so many people are going around looking for anonymous s*x,” Peter said.
Peter said he sees a certain irony in the fact that the fear of AIDS is cutting down on gay promiscuity, at the same time that growing acceptance of the gay lifestyle is making it easier for homos*xual couples to form lasting relationships.
“It’s like there’s no more need to run out into the darkness and get back in before daylight,” Peter said.
Jane said she learned about her son’s s*xual preference five or six years ago, when he was arrested in a raid on a gay club in Oklahoma City.
“The police beat him up, drug him through grass and sent him back on an airplane without any shoes,” she said.

“I had to deal with him in jail, with straightening everything out and getting him into the hospital here as soon as I picked him up at the airport. I’ll never forget it,” Jane said.

Peter said he’d watched as some former friends turned away from him when they learned he had AIDS. “Most of my friends that are gay don’t treat me any differently, but some of the straight people kind of shy away.”

“There aren’t any better people than the hospital personnel who take care of me, but some of them seem to go overboard in trying to protect themselves,” he said.

Jane laughingly told about one nurse who entered Peter’s hospital room wearing cap, shoe coverings, a mask and two gowns.

All three said they were disturbed by the ideas spread by some fundamentalist groups, claiming that AIDS is God’s punishment for gay behavior.

“It seems a little late for God’s wrath,” said Peter. “There have been g**s since the beginning of time. Furthermore, AIDS only affects male homos*xuals, and only a small percentage of them. Yet g**s have been the only ones persecuted.”

“If you told someone your son had leukemia, they would have sympathy,” Jane said. “Where’s their sympathy for someone with AIDS?”

“I don’t care for the Jerry Falwell types who would talk about God’s wrath,” said Paul. “I believe that we are all God’s children, and that God doesn’t frown on love between any two people.”

Jane, Paul and Peter asked that their real names not be used in this article because of the stigma attached to AIDS.

Peter hopes that a cure will be found soon.

“Yes, I’m young,” he said, smiling. “I just wish I could say for sure if I’ll get old.”

06/24/2025

“AIDS Victims Wasting Away; No Medical Help in Sight” - The Daily Oklahoman (1/13/85) by Jim Killackey

The night before being discharged from a Tulsa hospital, the 24-year-old man anguishes over where — and how — his virtually defenseless body will next be attacked.

Chris has fought off pneumonia and a form of meningitis during two stays. He is leaving the hospital, but he’ll be back. Very soon, perhaps; maybe next week, next month.

And the next time will be worse.

Chris has contracted Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome — AIDS, as it is best known.

Unless a major breakthrough is made in the treatment of AIDS, Chris will die during 1985.

“My future looks pretty short,” he notes.

Chris, a Tulsa native, is one of 16 Oklahoma men struck down by AIDS over the last two years.
Eleven of those 16 are dead. The others are dying.
Oklahoma health officials expect the number of cases to increase during 1985.
Nationally, about 7,700 cases of AIDS have been reported since 1981.

And the number of AIDS cases nationally has doubled every six months.

While significant strides have been made in the identification and diagnosis of the AIDS virus, there is no cure.

A vaccine is years away, researchers in Oklahoma and elsewhere say.

“It’s pretty damn sad. They just waste away,” commented Dr. Greg Istre, state epidemiologist.

AIDS completely destroys the body’s immune system, leaving the victim vulnerable to and defenseless against a wide variety of infections and some forms of cancer.

Of the Oklahoma deaths, most have been caused by pneumonia. Two AIDS victims have developed a deadly form of skin cancer called Kaposi’s sarcoma.

Like many viruses, the AIDS virus (known as HTLV-III) can lodge in a body but never cause disease.

Researchers don’t know why some who are exposed get AIDS and others don’t.

In fact, it is believed that for every AIDS victim, there are 30 to 50 people who have been exposed to the AIDS virus but have not contracted the disease.

The AIDS virus has a long incubation period: It can take from a few months to five years for the virus to trigger the deadly syndrome.

About three-quarters of the cases involve homos*xual men.

The remaining victims — those in the so-called “high risk” category — tend to be intravenous drug abusers, Haitian immigrants, blood-transfusion patients and hemophiliacs.

Chris, who is a homos*xual, believes he was infected with the AIDS virus while living in Dallas two years ago.

The man admits that he was once very promiscuous, but now he says he lives with his lover in a monogamous relationship.

But the damage is already done.

“Many of my friends are scared,” he said.

The AIDS epidemic, he contended, has drastically changed the s*xual habits in the Tulsa gay community.

Some gay men are so fearful of the…

Part 2:

Disease that they have either abstained from any s*xual activity or are seeking psychological counseling to completely alter their homos*xual lifestyle, he said.

Chris has this advice to g**s: “You’ve got to curb promiscuous s*xual activities.

“You’ve got to, or you’ll be going through the hell I’ve been going through.”

The AIDS virus is spread through body fluids: blood and semen, and possibly mucus and saliva.

Among g**s, AIDS is transmitted s*xually, and promiscuity increases a man’s chance of being exposed to the virus.

Health officials have repeatedly warned g**s against frequent, anonymous s*xual activities.

Because there can be such a lengthy period between the time of exposure and the first symptoms of AIDS, Oklahoma public health officials say they are powerless in tracking down carriers of the disease and disrupting the transmission.

“There’s no way to know who they got it from or where they got it. There’s virtually no way of knowing who’s the source,” said Dr. Istre at the state Health Department.

In the case of Oklahoma homos*xuals, the problem is compounded by frequent trips that the g**s take to cities which have large gay populations: Houston, Dallas, Kansas City, San Francisco.

In Texas, more than 400 AIDS cases have been reported.

Another dilemma is the small percentage of gay men who have numerous s*xual partners and “just don’t care about whether they’ll get AIDS,” according to one Oklahoma City doctor.

Oklahoma, though, still continues to have a relatively low incidence of AIDS.

Not including major metropolitan areas like New York City, Boston, San Francisco and Los Angeles, Oklahoma’s rate of AIDS cases is one-half the national average.

There are five states which have no reported AIDS cases — Idaho, Maine, Montana, North Dakota and South Dakota.

Istre firmly believes that the heteros*xual population has no reason to panic or fear AIDS.

Others aren’t so certain.

“AIDS is seen in people who aren’t s*xually promiscuous. And there could be problems for the general population,” said Dr. Jeffrey Beal, a Tulsa internal medicine specialist who has treated AIDS cases.

Said Dr. James Curran, head of the AIDS task force at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta: “It’s not just a ‘gay’ disease. It is spreading fast and all can get it.

“At this point we can’t say when it will end. We have no cure.”

Oklahoma health officials still stress that frequent, intimate s*xual contact with someone exposed to the AIDS virus is the primary route of transmission.

Istre said the leading theory about what sets off the syndrome is that the AIDS virus strikes its victims while they are also in contact with other viral infections.

This combination of infections predisposes an individual to contract the syndrome if exposed to the AIDS virus.

“There are still many more unknowns than knowns,” Istre noted.
“Little pieces about the puzzle are being slowly put together.”

The origin of the AIDS virus is still a mystery, although some researchers speculate that the AIDS agent may have originated in Haiti and was s*xually transmitted to American homos*xuals vacationing there.

One area where health officials are getting a handle on AIDS is blood transfusions.

This past Friday, a physician with the National Cancer Institute reported the successful testing of a new blood examination designed to screen AIDS victims from giving blood.

Dr. Stanley Weiss said the test detects antibodies produced by individuals exposed to the AIDS virus.

At the Oklahoma Blood Institute in Oklahoma City, director Dr. Ronald Gilcher said that all units of blood processed at the institute would be tested for the antibodies.

Gilcher, who has been heavily involved in educating the local gay community on the risks of AIDS, predicts that the number of cases in the state will be four or five more — just before any vaccine will be developed for AIDS because:

“More needs to be learned about how it weakens the body’s natural immune systems.”

One person who has assisted Gilcher in working with Oklahoma City’s gay community is Dr. Dan Brubaker, a University of Oklahoma pathologist and an original member of the Oklahoma City AIDS Task Force which started in 1973.

An AIDS clinic in Oklahoma City still sees about 15–20 patients a month.

“I have a feeling that the gay community has become much more conservative, more responsible, and more monogamous,” said Brubaker.

Brubaker said that one bright offshoot of the AIDS epidemic is the national push in basic research designed to study the body’s immune system.

Such research has already assisted cancer studies, he noted.

The fear of AIDS, though, can still be prominent among health care workers.

While hospitalized, Chris said nurses and other hospital personnel were friendly but initially wore gloves and gowns while treating him.

Beal said he believes that such precautions are unnecessary.

When AIDS struck Chris last October, he displayed many of the classic symptoms of the malady.

He had enlarged swelling of the lymph glands and a low-grade fever. That was followed by a shortness of breath, night sweats and chilling.

“I thought I had a cold or the flu — and that it would pass.

“When I was told I had AIDS, I denied it. I thought I could get over it. Now I’m taking things one day at a time.

“I wonder what’s going to happen next…”

06/18/2025

Cartoon featured in the Tulsa World (11.11.85) [originally from the Tampa Tribune]

06/18/2025

“Awful AIDS Is Nature’s Retribution” (not OK specific) [The Daily Oklahoman / 5.26.83]
Patrick J. Buchanan

“WASHINGTON — The s*xual revolution has begun to devour its children. And among the revolutionary vanguard, the Gay Rights activists, the mortality rate is highest and climbing.

The disease is called AIDS, for acquired immune deficiency syndrome, and among the homos*xual population of New York City and San Francisco, twin capitals of the revolution, it is reaching epidemic proportions.

“As of April 13, 1983, 1,339 people have been diagnosed as having AIDS — 505 cases were fatal. In New York City alone, there have been 509 cases, with 228 deaths.” Thus wrote Dr. Kevin Cahill in the Times a month ago.

In non-medical terms, AIDS is a hideous disease that destroys the defense mechanism of the body, leaving it vulnerable to attack. The effect is that the body would normally ward off:

“When these germs enter the body, we have natural resistance. But in lesser extent, Haitians, and those who require blood transfusions, which leads to the grotesque and hideous “wasting disease” that ends in death.

Shocked by the AIDS epidemic, San Francisco, where one-fourth of the cases have been reported, is issuing special masks and gloves to police who have to deal with “suspected AIDS patients.”

Police are fearful of contracting the disease and carrying it home to wives and children. Within the homos*xual community, bathhouses and private clubs, where promiscuity is rampant, are closing down.

This recalls the crisis that hit the Ford Administration over the outbreak of Legionnaire’s Disease. The silence of the political community and the medical profession over AIDS is astonishing — nothing less than a “conspiracy of silence” in the estimation of Dr. Cahill.

Though AIDS remains the most dramatic and deadly, it is not the most pervasive of the life-threatening and communicable diseases afflicting active homos*xuals in America.

According to J. Gordon Muir, medical researcher and author of the upcoming The Crushing of Society, various strains of hepatitis and diseases of the bowel and colon are near pandemic in the homos*xual community.

Hepatitis B is a liver infection for which there is no effective treatment, which may go on to cirrhosis and death. Writes Muir: “Previously, it was thought that this virus could be only transmitted by those contaminated blood in transfusions or by a contaminated needle (as with drug addicts).

Now it is known that the virus can be passed via s*xual in*******se. If our concern is not only for the city of San Francisco, but for the country, this expands not only the medical but the moral problem.

Hepatitis A, common in the homos*xual community “also has a good potential for being passed on in contaminated food and water, which is just one reason why not practicing homos*xuals should not be in the food handling business.”

Among Muir’s conclusions: “We are therefore forced to one inescapable conclusion: no male homos*xual should ever be food donors. There should be an immediate, emphatic public health stipulation.”

Among the diseases of the bowel now spreading rapidly through the homos*xual communities are amebiasis, shigellosis, and giardiasis. Again, Dr. Muir: “The prevalence of amebiasis and giardiasis in one study was reported to be 62.5 percent in homos*xual men, compared to 6 percent in bis*xual men and 0 percent in heteros*xual men…”

“The gay sound medical solution,” argues Muir, “is that open, male homos*xuals don’t belong in the food handling business.”

Even one public health official believes San Francisco may face a terrible dilemma. Dr. Don Hillman is referring specifically to its human rights law, which mandates that “federally protected civil rights for active homos*xuals requires the business community to make accommodations!”

Or will it heed citizens who claim their “civil rights” entitle them to bring their lovers into the kitchen — to handling their food active homos*xuals?

This community has only itself to blame. It has violated natural law, it has offended God, and nature has taken its inevitable retribution.

The diseases are the wages of sin.

The s*xual revolutionaries have declared war upon nature, and now nature is exacting an awful retribution.”

05/04/2025

“Homos*xual teacher bill passed by House” - Okmulgee Daily Times (5/16/85)

“OKLAHOMA CITY (UPI) — House members Wednesday passed another bill aimed at keeping homos*xual teachers from teaching in Oklahoma’s schools.

The bill would permit the firing of a teacher for advocating, soliciting, encouraging or promoting homos*xual activity during normal school activities or school-related activities.

A teacher also could be dismissed for committing homos*xual activity indiscreetly or not in private.

The state’s previous ban on homos*xual teachers failed earlier this year to pass a constitutional test before the U.S. Supreme Court.

House author Gary Sherrer, D-Snow, said the current bill is constitutional. The vote on the bill was 94-0, sending it to the Senate.

In other action, the House approved a bill to prohibit teachers from using oral examinations of students to obtain information of a personal or private nature in five areas.

Among the five areas are religious beliefs, mental or psychological problems potentially embarrassing to the student or his family and s*xual behavior and attitudes.

The law already prohibits the use of written exams to obtain that information.”

05/03/2025

Thank you all for being so understanding.

I will resume posting today.

- Evan

01/28/2025

“OSU G**s Mull Suit Over Recognition” - The Daily Oklahoman (3/25/84)

“STILLWATER — Attempts by a homos*xual support group to be recognized by Oklahoma State University have spawned a semester-long controversy on this conservative campus, and the issue soon could end up in court.

At issue is whether an organization calling itself University Students for Gay Understanding and Awareness will be allowed to assemble on campus and meet, free of charge, in university buildings.

Group members say they have the same rights as other OSU organizations and maintain that a 1981 Supreme Court ruling on a similar case at the University of Oklahoma in Norman is in their favor.

The group first applied for recognition in late 1983.
An OSU Committee on Student Organizations originally voted 6 to 5 for recognition, but the full student government association senate didn’t agree.

That body recently voted 26-20 against recognition of the gay organization after lengthy and sometimes heated debate over moral, social and legal issues associated with the group’s request.

Several OSU student government leaders who voted to deny recognition said they were not oppressing gay students, but merely representing constituents who don’t want a gay support group registered at OSU.

One sophomore senator from Tulsa noted: “I didn’t think a group should be recognized because of their s*xual preferences.”

Another student government senator who voted against the gay group said, “I don’t feel the g**s promote a positive educational environment. And while I’m not against their lifestyle, the acts they commit aren’t supported by state law.”
Now, the gay group has contacted the American Civil Liberties Union about the possibility of a lawsuit against the university.

“If we don’t have this settled by the end of March, we’re going to sue,” said one member of the gay group.

“There is a gay community in Stillwater, and they need the encouragement to ‘come out.’”
“But they’re afraid of the cowboys and the Christians and others.”

A final decision on the matter has gone to OSU official Thomas Keys, who is student union director.

Keys has said that he thinks the name of the group should be changed to Students for Awareness of Homos*xuals in order “to communicate as explicitly as possible the nature of the organization” and “to remove all reference to the university.”

Keys said the matter should be decided within the next week.

If the gay support group was given recognition status, it would be allowed to organize and meet on campus and to have speakers come to OSU.
The group also could place meeting notices in the campus newspaper.

But it would not receive funds from the university or be allowed to affiliate itself with the university name.

Gay group leaders said they have already changed the organization’s name four times and don’t want to do it again.

“We’ve gone through the proper channels, and we’ve done everything right to comply with the rules. I mean, we’re not pushing pamphlets or preaching on street corners,” said Bill Grudier, treasurer of University Students for Gay Understanding and Awareness.

“But we’re not getting anywhere,” Grudier said.
In December of 1981, the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled that OU had to give formal recognition to the Gay Activists Alliance, a homos*xual support group that had sued school regents.

In doing so, the high court reversed a ruling by a Cleveland County district court that had upheld the OU Regents’ denial of official student organizational status to the gay alliance.
The high court said the alliance had First Amendment freedoms to organize and be recognized as a group promoting a positive self-image of the homos*xual and seeking the elimination of discrimination against homos*xuals.

The OSU gay group has 35 to 40 members, and a couple of faculty members have become allied with the organization.”

Oklahoma Queer History

12/01/2025

09/14/2025

09/14/2025

07/30/2025

06/24/2025

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