Article

Transgender History Month series

By Mary Bishop-Baldwin
Oklahomans for Equality History Project

The backlash is real. With the achievement of marriage equality in Oklahoma 12 years ago and nationwide a year later, it seemed that LGBTQ people were on our way to being accepted as part of a diverse society. But having lost that battle, the culture warriors made transgender people their next target and began attacking them through ongoing legislation, executive orders, rhetoric and intimidation that spurs physical violence.

Transgender people must deal with much higher rates of physical violence than do cisgender people. Among the key findings of the “Gender Identity Disparities in Criminal Victimization: National Crime Victimization Survey, 2017-2018” study by the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law:

• Transgender people (16+) are victimized over four times more often than cisgender people. In 2017-2018, transgender people experienced 86.2 victimizations per 1,000 people compared to 21.7 victimizations per 1,000 people for cisgender people.
• Transgender women and men had higher rates of violent victimization (86.1 and 107.5 per 1,000 people, respectively) than cisgender women and men (23.7 and 19.8 per 1,000 people, respectively).
• In 2017-2018, transgender households had higher rates of property victimization (214.1 per 1,000 households) than cisgender households (108 per 1,000 households).

And the Human Rights Campaign reports that “in the 12 years from January 2013 through Nov. 2024, HRC and other advocates identified 372 transgender and gender-expansive individuals who were victims of fatal violence in the United States. … People living at the intersections of multiple marginalized identities have been disproportionately impacted relative to others. Specifically, Black transgender women, who face multiple layers of violence due to their gender identity, gender, and race, comprise 61% of all victims of fatal violence against transgender and gender-expansive people.”

History shows that transgender people have always existed, and the Oklahomans for Equality History Project is taking August – Transgender History Month – as an opportunity to highlight some of the contributions of transgender people in Oklahoma and put a spotlight on the attacks that have inundated them in recent years. There’s a lot of information, so we are presenting it in a series of three articles that are being distributed through email and social media from Monday, Aug. 24, through Wednesday, Aug. 26, 2026. Part 1 looks at transgender people’s progression over time from invisibility in society to the out-and-proud individuals they have become, as well as their inclusion in the 2SLGBTQIA+ community. Part 2 considers the transgender community’s needs and how the larger community has responded. Part 3 showcases brave transgender individuals who have taken stands in the
public spotlight and the resilience of the trans community. The entire series is presented here on the History Project’s website.

PART 1: FROM INVISIBILITY TO INCLUSION

A survey of early documents from Oklahomans for Equality’s forerunner organizations, Oklahomans for Human Rights and Tulsa Oklahomans for Human Rights, turns up no references to the word “transgender” or other words that might indicate that transgender issues were among the organization’s original concerns in the 1980s. But through the organization, LGBTQ people found each other, and transgender people have been included in the organization’s mission for more than a quarter-century.

Transgender issues were on Tulsans’ radars at least by 1994, when the Tulsa Family News’ March edition included news briefs on Washington state legislation that would “make it illegal to place a foster child in a household with a homosexual, bisexual, transsexual or transvestite” and on the formation of a national group, Gay and Lesbian Americans, which, despite its limiting name, said it was “committed to civil rights for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people” in the United States. The same issue included an advertisement for a psychologist who was “sensitive to the challenges of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual & Transgendered Individuals, Couples & Families.” (Note the “ed” at the end of the word “Transgender” – a common usage at that time that has since fallen out of practice.)

In 1998, during the late Nancy McDonald’s tenure as president of PFLAG National, the organization extended PFLAG’s mission to include transgender people. McDonald, a Tulsan, was a driving force behind OkEq’s growth and for inclusion in Tulsa.

TOHR had a transgender support group at least by the late 1990s, and transgender issues were among the central priorities for the organization by the new millennium. By the time the Pyramid Project kicked off in 2000 to raise funds for the purchase and renovation of OkEq’s building, the Dennis R. Neill Equality Center, the word “transgender” was included in its mission statement.

The TOHR Torch Fall 2002 newsletter is full of references to the organization’s inclusion of transgender people in its mission, programs and community center name, the Tulsa Gay, Lesbian, Bi & Transgender (GLBT) Community Center, which was a rented facility at 2114 S. Memorial Drive at the time.

A circa 2003 document in the History Project’s physical archives is specifically about a transgender support group and spells out the group’s mission statement/purpose: “Gender Outreach of Oklahoma is a volunteer, educational, outreach, support, and social organization for The Transgendered Community (TTC), their significant others (SOs), families and friends. The purpose of Gender Outreach of Oklahoma is to act as a non-sexual support group for TTC and their significant others.” The document says that:

Toward this end, it will:
• Provide programs, speakers, services, and social activities for the support of the members and to promote the acceptance of TTC.
• Provide opportunities for TTC, for the purpose of developing self-understanding and self-acceptance.
• Provide Outreach by passing on knowledge and understanding of TTC to related organizations and to the public.
• Assist members with problems related to their specific needs, whenever possible.
• Assist SOs in the establishment and continued existence of their own interest.
• Encourage members to participate in Gender Outreach of Oklahoma Unity Events.
• Encourage members to participate in Gay/Lesbian/Bi-sexual/Transgendered community (GLBT) promotions of legislation affecting anti-discrimination of the GLBT community.

The group, a part of TOHR, was hoping a new community center could provide its members a room for meetings, doctors and therapists, a safe place to be themselves, “2 Lockers for the cross-dressers to store their clothes” and “a dressing room,” apparently because its members did not feel free to dress in alignment with their gender identities at home or in other places.

Also in the History Project’s physical archives is a copy of a grant application to an organization called Resist dated Nov. 28, 2004, which mentions that TOHR had held a “highly successful” regional conference on transgender issues in 2003 and that “TOHR’s Gender Outreach Program provides education, meeting space and social interaction for northeastern Oklahoma’s transgender and intersex population.” An accompanying chart shows that TOHR at the time had one transgender board member and five active volunteers who were transgender.

An archived 2016 document on the Gender Outreach Program lists the average monthly attendance as follows:
• General meeting – 35
• FTM specific meeting – 11
• Teen specific meeting – 11
• Parent specific meeting – 20
• Gender non binary – 5
• Bartlesville – 5

Yes, the document indicates that “OkEq has started a transgender support group in Bartlesville. For now,” it says, “that group will meet monthly at First Presbyterian Church. Thank you to Josie Peacock for being willing to facilitate that meeting. The Tulsa group will assist in getting that group up and running. Thank you to the Bartlesville PFLAG group for pointing out the need for a transgender group in that area.”

In 2013, OkEq’s transgender program was featured in the documentary “Just Gender,” which premiered at Tulsa’s Circle Cinema to a packed house, the Dec. 30, 2013, OkEq eNews reported. The same issue noted that “youth and parents from our transgender youth and family support group continue to receive international attention. Taylor Burns, our family therapist, and physician Laura Arrowsmith have presented at more than a dozen conferences, universities and medical societies nationwide. Both Taylor and Laura have worked with several Oklahoma school districts to provide services for families with transgender children.”

The Feb. 20, 2013, OkEq eNews notes that “to honor the courage and bravery of the transgender community, Havah Gordon has made a donation to OkEq's Be Our Voice, Give a Day campaign and is sponsoring the Equality Center for the week of Sun, February 17th, 2013 through Sat, February 23rd, 2013.”

Dr. Arrowsmith brought National Center for Transgender Equality founding Executive Director Mara Kiesling to Tulsa and the Dennis R. Neill Equality Center in 2014.

OkEq's Gender Outreach Program held a daylong workshop on transgender issues in April 2015. Dr. Arrowsmith, a board member of the National Center for Transgender Equality and a former Oklahomans for Equality board member, provided the keynote address.

On New Year’s Day 2016, OkEq hosted a panel discussion featuring Dr. Arrowsmith, Taylor Burns and attorney Alyssa Bryant after a viewing of the film “The Danish Girl,” about the Danish artist who was one of the first recipients of sexual reassignment surgery in the 1920s, at the Circle Cinema.

OkEq’s Gender Support Program has continued its services through the years, offering “support, education, and community for transgender and intersex individuals in a safe, welcoming space,” a 2025 Facebook post says. “Breakout groups for Non-Binary folks, Trans Men, and Trans Women. … Come as you are, find your people, and grow together in community.”

PART 2: NEEDS AND RESPONSE

The Oklahomans for Equality History Project archives include a September 2005 Needs Assessment Report on Tulsa’s Gay Community from the Tulsa Community Foundation, the Tulsa Reaches Out Project and the Community Service Council of Greater Tulsa, which said the following percentages of transgender survey respondents perceived these issues as among the Top 5 services needed for GLBT people:

 50.0% Advocacy at the State Legislature
 37.5% Physical Health Services
 37.5% Mental Health Services
 37.5% STD/HIV Prevention
 37.5% Public Awareness about GLBT Issues
 37.5% GLBT Center
 37.5% Legal Services Related to Sexual Orientation

Over the years, Oklahomans for Equality has made strides to meet those needs through advocacy, services, partnerships and education. Here’s how our archives reveal those efforts:

LEGISLATIVE ADVOCACY

The May 2006 edition of the Tulsa Star includes mention of an upcoming Day at the Legislature sponsored by TOHR and Oklahoma PFLAG when participants could visit with legislators about the needs of the LGBT community. OkEq has continued the tradition of hosting annual days for advocacy at the state Capitol and has sent representatives at other times, as well, specifically to talk to legislators and advocate for or against specific bills that would have protected or targeted LGBTQ people.

In March 2008, Oklahomans for Equality hosted a press conference to denounce then-state Rep. Sally Kern’s widely publicized statement that homosexuality is "the biggest threat that our nation has, even more so than terrorism or Islam." The press conference agenda went beyond the issue of sexual orientation and Islamophobia to include gender identity. “Citing recent acts of violence against gay and transgender people, (then-Oklahomans for Equality Executive Director Justice) Waidner said comments such as Kern's have dangerous effects, adding that ‘Rep. Kern has repeatedly used her public office to demonize lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Oklahomans and to attempt to deny them the exact same civil liberties she now defends so passionately,’” the Tulsa World reported.

OkEq sent out an Action Alert in July 2020 encouraging people to contact the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development in protest of a proposed rule that would have established homeless shelter admission and placement policies based on a person's biological sex assigned at birth rather than self-identified gender identity. “By removing these protections, shelters and programs that receive or operate using HUD grants are now able to ignore nondiscrimination protections for transgender people, leaving them vulnerable to being denied shelter and forced out onto the streets,” OkEq said in the Action Alert. OkEq also noted that “one in three transgender Americans has been homeless at some point in their lives,” making the need for this action all the more critical. The proposed rule was never implemented.

Transgender-rights advocates marched through downtown Tulsa on March 31, 2023, to protest bills in the Oklahoma Legislature targeting transgender care. The march went from the Central Library to OkEq’s Dennis R. Neill Equality Center, with participants shouting, “This is what humanity looks like,” the entire way, the Tulsa World reported.

While advocating before the Oklahoma Legislature and federal government has been challenging, to say the least, the city of Tulsa’s government has shown much more willingness and intention to be inclusive. In 2015, then-Mayor Dewey Bartlett signed an ordinance that for the first time included gender identity in the city’s list of protected classes under its fair-housing policy. And in 2019, after OkEq had worked for a decade to persuade the city of Tulsa to include gender identity and expression to its employment nondiscrimination policy, then-Mayor G.T. Bynum signed an executive order doing just that, The Gayly reported. And in 2020, the Tulsa City Council passed and Bynum signed the Hate Crime Protections Ordinance, adding LGBTQIA+ hate crime protections at the local level.

SERVICES, EDUCATION AND PARTNERSHIPS

On Dec. 11, 2018, Oklahomans for Equality was notified that it had received a $75,000 grant so that it could hire a full-time employee to coordinate medical services in the Equality Center’s newly renovated (in 2017) health clinic so OkEq could address LGBTQ health disparities and the “stigmatization … not experienced by heterosexual, cisgender Oklahomans” that often prevents LGBTQ people “from talking openly about their medical conditions and needs with medical providers,” in the words of OkEq’s grant application. This money started the clinic that now provides medical services available nowhere else in the state for transgender health care, as well as for HIV/AIDS care.

To further its outreach, Oklahomans for Equality provided a webinar with expert panelists on “Understanding Transgender Healthcare & Wellness” in 2023. The webinar was “for anyone interested in learning from experts in the field about gender-affirming care for adults and youth, debunking myths, and bringing awareness to this important topic,” the OkEq eNews article announcing the event said. The event moderator was trans advocate and consultant Lucas Hall, and the speakers included Dr. Al Carlozzi, Dr. Laura Arrowsmith, Dr. Shauna Lawlis, Elliot Parker and Kelly Kemp. Topics to be discussed included “processes and protocols for transgender youth and adults seeking gender-affirming care and support, understanding gender-diversity from a medical and scientific perspective, addressing common myths about trans people of all ages and the gender-affirming care they could receive, and best practices for supporting transgender youth and adults.”

Outside health-care practitioners and medical facilities were crucial to some transgender Oklahomans’ gender-affirming care at that time, but more people have come to rely on Oklahomans for Equality’s health clinic in the wake of the enactment of Senate Bill 904 into law in May. The law “restricts the use of state funds, facilities, and resources for gender-affirming healthcare, creating new barriers for transgender Oklahomans seeking medically necessary care and increasing uncertainty for healthcare providers across the state,” OkEq Executive Director Hailey Briggs wrote in a letter to constituents this spring. The law resulted in a total shutdown of gender-affirming care by those providers and facilities that accept any state money. But because OkEq’s clinic receives no state funds, it has been free to carry on the work that other providers have abandoned.

“Our commitment remains unchanged: our clinic is open, and we will continue doing everything we can to ensure transgender Oklahomans have access to affirming, compassionate care,” Briggs wrote in announcing a $10,000 challenge grant from Dennis Neill and John Southard to raise additional funds to care for the influx of patients the OkEq clinic was receiving after other facilities turned them away.

And in March of this year, the Tulsa Flyer published a story on mental health in the LGBTQ community, particularly in transgender and nonbinary people. Oklahomans for Equality’s counseling services, including clinical social worker and therapist Matthew Gibbons, were featured heavily in that article.

Former OkEq board member Conor Cleary, a lawyer who then was an associate at Hall, Estill, Hardwick, Gable, Golden & Nelson, facilitated an “OUTlaw Legal Workshop” twice a month at the Dennis R. Neill Equality Center in 2013, the OkEq eNews from Feb. 20 of that year indicates. Topics were to include wills, rights of survivorship, medical issues, durable power of attorney and inheritances, transgender name changes and trans rights. That same eNews edition also mentioned the continuing Gender Outreach Program, which was to provide “support, education and social opportunities for transgender and intersex individuals.”

In 2020, attorney Joshua Payton started OkEq’s Name Change & Gender Marker Change Clinic, which continues to meet monthly at the Equality Center. Payton, who with his wife, Jennifer Payton, incorporated the Oklahoma Equality Law Center as a nonprofit in 2023, received the Bishop-Baldwin, Barton & Phillips Civil Rights Advocacy Award at the OkEq Equality Gala in 2022 for his work on behalf of transgender people.

LAWS AND LEGAL CASES

In 2021, the state of Oklahoma began allowing gender nonbinary changes to birth certificates, but soon thereafter, through an executive order, it became the first state in the nation to reverse action and ban nonbinary gender markers on birth certificates. Gov. Kevin Stitt also signed House Joint Resolution 1032, which repealed the ability for residents to change their gender markers on Oklahoma driver's licenses.

With the rapid changes in state laws and policies, “I may not immediately know the answer to a question, but I pledge to walk in solidarity with those seeking clarity until we have an answer,” Payton has said.

Payton successfully represented two transgender students who obtained court orders for gender-marker changes on their school records in 2023. The Oklahoma State Board of Education then refused to make those changes. But Payton’s Oklahoma Equality Law Center and the Oklahoma Appleseed Center for Law and Justice sued the board and then-State Superintendent Ryan Walters and prevailed in June 2025.

Payton is also fighting a law signed by Gov. Stitt in March of this year that made it impossible for people to change their gender markers on Oklahoma driver's licenses. The law does not invalidate those licenses that were already changed.

Gender markers are just one aspect of the law that has come under attack by the Legislature and governor in recent years, which also have seen the passage of bans on gender-affirming medical care for minors and prohibitions on the use of state funds and properties for gender-affirming care. These policies remain the subject of ongoing state and federal legal challenges. Lambda Legal, for example, reports that it is currently fighting policies targeting transgender people in Oklahoma in the areas of identification documents, school facilities and healthcare.

The Fowler v. Stitt case challenges the state’s prohibition of gender-marker changes on birth certificates. “Starting in at least 2007, the Oklahoma State Department of Health (had) permitted transgender people to obtain Oklahoma birth certificates with amended sex designations,” the 10th Circuit court noted in a 2024 ruling. But the 2021 executive order from Gov. Kevin Stitt stopped that practice. The appeals court found that the plaintiffs had a “plausible equal protection claim” and remanded the case back to district court for a ruling consistent with its findings. However, the U.S. Supreme Court vacated that ruling in 2025 and sent the case back to the 10th Circuit for reconsideration.

The Bridge v. Oklahoma State Department of Education case challenges 2022’s Senate Bill 615, which prohibits transgender people from using Oklahoma school restrooms that align with their gender identity. The district court ruled in favor of the defendants, and the case is on appeal at the 10th Circuit.

In the area of healthcare, the Poe v. Drummond case challenged the law created by 2023’s Senate Bill 613, which bans gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors, but the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court’s ruling upholding the ban.

In 2022, Gov. Kevin Stitt signed into law an act to prevent University of Oklahoma medical facilities from providing gender-transition medical services to minors.

Oklahomans for Equality distributed a statement on social media that fall and in the Nov. 7, 2022, eNews, saying: “Medical decisions should be between the patient, the parents, and their doctors. The interjection of politicians into that space is wildly inappropriate and nothing more than an act of bullying. This carrot and stick approach to promote their transphobic ideals hurts all Oklahomans who access medical services at University Hospitals. They would rather deny funding for medical services than respect the rights of transgender kids and their families. Transgender medical care is a form of suicide prevention. Because without this care, our young people often don't live to see adulthood. These are Oklahoma kids who need support and care. To all trans kids and their families, no matter what Oklahoma (legislators) think or do, you are valued, and people will continue to fight for you.”

In a case from Tennessee last year, the U.S. Supreme Court said states could legally ban medical treatments such as puberty blockers and hormones for transgender people younger than 18.

Also in 2022, Gov. Kevin Stitt signed the “Save Women’s Sports Act,” which prohibits those assigned male at birth from participating in girls’ or women’s sports. This June, hearing cases from Idaho and West Virginia, the Supreme Court ruled that states’ bans on transgender athletes from women’s and girls’ sports teams are legal.

PART 3: OUT AND PROUD

Despite all the obstacles that are stacked against them, brave and determined transgender people have stood in the public spotlight and have taken stands for their own and others’ rights. Among the first openly transgender public figures in Oklahoma history have been Paula Sophia Schonauer, who was an Oklahoma City police officer when she transitioned in 2001 and who was a candidate for a seat in the Oklahoma House of Representatives in 2014; attorney Brittany Novotny (now Brittany Stewart), a transgender attorney who faced ridicule when she ran in 2010 for the Oklahoma House seat held by Rep. Sally Kern, R-Oklahoma City (Charlie Meadows, then-chairman of the Oklahoma Conservative Political Action Committee, called Novotny a "confused it."); Mauree Turner, who was elected to the Oklahoma House in 2020 as the nation's first openly nonbinary lawmaker; and Nat Wachowski-Estes, who in 2020 was the first openly transgender candidate for the Tulsa City Council.

And in the 2010s Tulsa-area transgender teenagers Katie Hill of Bixby and Arin Andrews of Catoosa made history with local and national publicity about their transition journeys through newspaper stories (“PART ONE: Katie Hill finds herself after 16 years living as a boy”; “PART TWO: Katie Hill braves returning to school, finds love”, “Katie Hill and Arin Andrews attend the Equality Gala held at the Convention Center,”); magazine articles (“I Transitioned From Female to Male as a Teen. Here's My Story”); books (“Rethinking Normal: A Memoir in Transition” by Katie Hill and “Some Assembly Required: The Not-So-Secret Life of a Transgender Teen” by Arin Andrews, both available in OkEq’s Nancy & Joe McDonald Rainbow Library); and modeling for a national ad campaign (“A Barneys Campaign Embraces a Gender Identity Issue”).

Discrimination against transgender people in employment became a topic of public interest across Oklahoma after Rachel Tudor, Ph.D., was denied tenure and dismissed from her position as a professor at Southeastern Oklahoma State University in 2011. Tudor, who had transitioned from male to female during her time on the faculty, sued the university under Title VII, claiming discrimination on the basis of sex. Oklahomans for Equality presented her with the Bishop-Baldwin, Barton & Phillips Civil Rights Advocacy Award at its 2016 Equality Gala. Ten years after her dismissal from the faculty, the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered her reinstatement in 2021.

RESILIANCE

With legislative and administrative attacks continuing to target transgender people, it’s important to remember that through community, they have found ways to flourish and move forward with dignity, grace and pride.

Oklahomans for Equality presented the Lynn Riggs Performing Arts Award to transgender baritone Lucia Lucas in 2019 after she made history by performing the lead role in the Tulsa Opera’s presentation of “Don Giovanni” at the Tulsa Performing Arts Center in May of that year. This was the first opera appearance by a trans woman in a principal role in the United States. A film about Lucas’ journey was shown at Tulsa’s Circle Cinema that April, with a mixer with the artist held before the showing and a presentation afterward by Tulsa Opera Artistic Director Tobias Picker about the significance of the transgender movement in opera and performing arts.

And on this year’s Transgender Day of Visibility, March 31, Tulsa-based Paully Steele staged an all-trans fashion show at the Equality Center presented by her GENDER magazine in partnership with Twisted Arts and OkEq. The participants were “ready to TEAR UP the runway and celebrate trans creativity, visibility, and community,” a social media post said.

Oklahomans for Equality itself has put transgender employees and board members front and center over the years, with Alex Wade, a former OkEq medical services director, serving as deputy director and then interim executive director over the years from 2016 to the early 2020s. Sharon Queen, a transgender Navy veteran who was the Equality Center’s events coordinator, also coordinated the Gender Support Program and helped coordinate a Support Our Troops Rally at the Equality Center in 2017 after President Donald Trump indicated that the government would no longer allow transgender people to serve in the military. Then-OkEq board member Alyssa Bryant spoke at that event, saying in advance that “OkEq will continue to fight the ongoing attempts by regressive forces in our culture, no matter what title or office they hold, to exclude our members from the life and defense of our country.” Krissy Dudley served as OkEq’s administrative coordinator from 2019-2022, and Anna Puhl, who identifies as nonbinary, has recently returned as the Lynn Riggs Theater’s audio and lighting engineer. Puhl raised the nonbinary flag over the Equality Center for the first time during Nonbinary Awareness Week in July 2020.

Oklahomans for Equality continues to bring together and fight for all the diverse aspects of our 2SLGBTQIA+ community. We know that our collection does not reflect the complete history of transgender people in Oklahoma, so we welcome the submission of documents, memorabilia and details that would make our archives more representative. Please contact OkEq at 918-743-4297 or at historyproject@okeq.org if you have items to submit, and visit our History Project website at history.okeq.org to find more examples of how you fit into our history.