[ND] LGBT People of Oklahoma

[ND] LGBT People of Oklahoma

An informational document about notable queer Oklahomans. The document discusses the lives of Phyllis Ann Lyon, Anita Bryant, Bruce Alonzo Goff, James Fugate, and Rollie Lynn Riggs.

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Rollie Lynn Riggs (August 31, 1899 - June 30, 1954) was an American author, poet and playwright born on a farm near Claremore, Oklahoma. His mother was 1/8 Cherokee, and when he was two years old, his mother secured his Cherokee allotment for him.
He moved to Shelter Island, New York after he started receiving a steady income when Green Grow The Lilacs was adapted into the landmark musical Oklahoma! (In 1943)

James Fugate (pen name James Barr), author of several gay themed novels, plays, and articles was born in Oklahoma. It was while in Holyrood that the bulk of his literary output was produced including his groundbreaking novel Quatrefoil published in 1950. In the 1950s Fugate began a journalism career as the area feature writer for the Great Bend, Kansas, Tribune. In addition to Quatrefoil, Fugate also published the play Game of Fools (1955), and his second novel The Occasional Man (1966).

Bruce Alonzo Goff (June 8, 1904 - August 4, 1982) was an American architect, distinguished by his organic, eclectic, and often flamboyant designs for houses and other buildings in Oklahoma. Goff accepted a teaching position with the School of Architecture at the University of Oklahoma in 1942.
In 1955, Goff, who was homosexual, was accused of "endangering the morals of a minor", as homosexuality was not socially acceptable in Norman, Oklahoma in 1955. As a result of the unproven claims, he was forced to resign from his position at the University of Oklahoma.

Anita Bryant was born in Barnsdall, Oklahoma. Bryant became Miss Oklahoma in 1958 and was a second runner-up in the 1959 Miss America beauty pageant at age 19, right after graduating from Tulsa's Will Rogers High School.
In 1977, Dale County, Florida, passed an ordinance sponsored by Bryant's former friend Ruth Shack that prohibited discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Bryant led a highly publicized campaign to repeal the ordinance as the leader of a coalition named Save Our Children. The campaign was based on conservative Christian beliefs regarding the sinfulness of homosexuality.

Phyllis Ann Lyon and Dorothy Louise Taliaferro "Del" Martin, are an American lesbian couple known as feminist and gay-rights activists. Phyllis Lyon was born on November 10, 1924 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. She holds a degree in journalism from the University of California, Berkeley, earned in 1946. During the 1940s, she worked as a reporter for the Chico Enterprise-Record, and during the 1950s, she worked as part of the editorial staff of two Seattle magazines.
In 1955, Martin and Lyon and six other lesbian women formed the Daughters of Bilitis (DOB), the first national lesbian organization in the United States.
On June 26, 2015 when the US Supreme Court ruled gay marriage legal Lyon age 90... laughed and laughed when told the news. "Well how about that?" she said. "For goodness' sakes."