Pics From The Gay Pride Parade In OKC Today (dial-up warning).

[Floogeldy]

[Heidi]

1. Thanks, Floog!

:thumbsup:

[Floogeldy]

3. Welcome.

:)

[Floogeldy]

2. Mas!

[fishwax]

4. cool, i wish i was there this year

last year we had quite a time at okc pride--lots of fun and major drama--the parade and the night before will live on in infamy in my circle of friends :)

[Floogeldy]

9. Everybody was having a great time!

Continuous clapping and music. Plenty of heteros there, too. :)

It was good!

[fishwax]

11. how was the weather?

last year it was so hot.

Is that over by the park on Classen? (Seeing the pics almost makes me miss oklahoma :))

But anyway, the pictures are cool, thanks for sharing :)

[Floogeldy]

12. U R Welcome

It was hot, but not that hot, and partly cloudy.

You got the locale correct, fishwax. The parade started at 5:00 o'clock at 36th & Classen. I think they rolled north to 39th, hung a left, and ended up just past 39th & Pennsylvania.

The whole thing had a joyous and happy vibe. :)

[Name removed]

5. Deleted sub-thread

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Floogeldy]

6. Uno mas.

[Duncan Grant]

7. K&R!

Thanks for posting these. Got any details about the event(s) that you could share? :party: :thumbsup: :party:
If you have an extra minute or two, would you mind posting a link to this thread over in the GLBT forum? These lounge threads disappear so quickly - Thanks!

[Floogeldy]

8. Sorry. I don't know any details about the events.

:)

[Duncan Grant]

10. That's a pity.

I'd love to hear about the people who are living "out" (or not so out) lives in OKC. Obviously, it's not as easy as living here in SF...

[Floogeldy]

13. Not that I know of.

Actually, I don't recall hearing or reading any bad stories about problems for openly gay people here. I could be wrong . . . just my personal observations and knowledge.

Interestingly, there seems to a good representative number of gay people in state government here. :)

[Duncan Grant]

16. I think my words and my meaning came out a bit sideways there.

As a former resident of rural Missouri, I'm very interested in the quality of life issues GLBT people experience (in all areas of the country). With a Senator who believes that lesbians are waiting in school bathrooms to "recruit" unsuspecting teenagers, etc. -- I tend to imagine the worst. There are few people who have a deeper respect and admiration for GLBT people in middle-America than me. :) :thumbsup:

[RoyGBiv]

18. Congresscritters ...

Our Congresscritters are idiots, especially our Senators.

Based on my perception -- and this may not really be a good thing -- the vast majority of people here basically ignore them. They speak to a fundamentalist crowd in a state in which those same fundamentalists make up the bulk of active voters. There's a lot of voter apathy here.

[RoyGBiv]

17. I dunno ...

I don't really know about the comparison because I've only visited San Francisco and so don't really have an understanding of the culture there.

But, living "out" in OKC is not as hard as one might expect given the common perception of OK in general. Now, I say this not from personal experience, rather based on the experience of several gay friends. The bigotry is of course present at all times, but I was somewhat shocked to learn (this is Oklahoma after all) that my gay friends are fairly open with their lifestyles and don't seem to suffer as much as one might expect because of it, again based on what they tell me.

One of those friends I've known since high school. We didn't live in OKC at the time; it was a small town of about 15,000 people, and apparently it has a thriving gay community and support system. I have no data to back this up, but my friend told me that this town, according to a gay-oriented magazine, had the highest per-capita openly gay and lesbian population of any town in the South or Midwest, which seems true based on personal experience considering that fully half of my closest friends in high school, including my best friend, were gay. Where that may (or may not ... I don't know) differ with someplace like SF is that they weren't open about it in high school, but they all came out in college, all but one of them doing so at the local, regional college, which actually has an active gay and lesbian support group.

Anyway, now, I work with two openly gay men, and no one else at work gives their sexual orientation a second thought. It's a subject of discussion at times, but in a friendly way, the same way those of us who aren't gay discuss our lives. (And we happen to work for a large corporation that responded to a local law that allowed companies to discriminate against homosexuals with regard to benefits by guaranteeing and expanding "domestic partner" benefits.) The eleven of us who work in that office, including the security guard who does not fit one's image of an open-minded individual, went to a local gay club not long ago, and we had a wonderful time. (We all go out occasionally and rotate who gets to pick the location.)

I don't want to paint things rosier than they are because as I said, the bigotry is here and is apparent. But the people I know, despite the fact they are legally prohibited from exercising some of their basic rights as human beings, do get along rather well.

[Duncan Grant]

22. Thanks for the info, RoyGBiv.

I could spend an entire day reading posts about GLBT lives in America. Especially posts made by our friends, families, and allies. Thanks for taking the time to pass along a first hand account about OKC!

Now if I could just get an invite to one of your workplace outings... :hi:

[SeattleGirl]

14. Cool! The Seattle Gay Pride Parade was FINALLY on TV!

It was so cool. Microsoft, Starbucks, the Seattle Firefighters Association, the Seattle School District, various churches, the Seattle City Council, and various and other sundry groups were part of the parade. I am so freaking proud of this city and it's support of the GLTB community.

[Heidi]

15. Recommended!

:thumbsup:

[Heidi]

19. Kick for the day crew!

:kick:

[progmom]

20. cool pics...

though it's hard to get a good grasp of the number of participants from the pics. how long was the parade? how many people were there?

[Misunderestimator]

21. Judging from the parade map, it was a rather large parade.

What part of the route was that? And did you get any photos of the crowds, or just these? This sort of looks like people were just starting to gather before the parade. Had the parade started already?

[terrya]

23. I would have liked to have seen pics of the entire Parade

Or, even some of it.

Oklahoma City is certainly not San Francisco, but there had to have been more of the OKC Pride Parade than that.

[Floogeldy]

25. Misunderestimator & Terrya

I found a TON of great photos of the parade:

http://www.photoreflect.com/scripts/prsm.dll?eventthumbs?event=0BBI000J

My pics were taken a few blocks from where the parade started. I have more pics but they are just more of the same as I did not change locations.

I'm betting that there were a whole lot more people where the parade ended, in the gay business district of OKC.

More information here: www.okcpride.com

:)

[Duncan Grant]

26. Great photos.

Thanks! :thumbsup:

[Blue_Tires]

24. ttt n/t