I had planned the trip so carefully.

Upon receiving a long awaited refund for an erroneous charge that had greatly interfered with a previous trip in the fall, I immediately bought an Amtrak rail pass, the one that lasts for thirty day and allows for ten separate segments to go where you want, when you want, and if you still want, provided that within the thirty days from your first train to your last yu end up home.

The plan was to go to Oklahoma City for the event at the University, visit with good friends, and see what changes had come to the city as a whole and the Gay Community specifically since the last time I was there, and use the remaining days and rail segments to see places where I had previously lived, taught, and advocated for teachers and Gay rights.

Using my tax return to open a credit union account and adding money over the next sixty days making my account the basis of a loan, and with the timing of my retirement check and social security check, one received at the beginning of the month, the other in the middle, there would be a constantly replenishing of my bank accounts so I could enjoy the trip worry free.

I got on a reputable hotel reservation site which had been recommended by people that I know and who have used it and made reservations at the first hotel with a payment due date the same as my departure date. I received multiple emails with verifications from the booking site and what I assumed was the hotel from all the letterheads and the usual included promotions.

Keeping to a strict budget before the trip, by the time I stepped on the first train it was to be a simple matter of getting where I was going, deciding how long I would stay, booking the next leg of the trip and the next hotel before leaving town, and repeating this in Los Angeles and then San Francisco before heading home. With debit cards from both my bank and my credit union, my Social Security check having been automatically deposited into my checking account the morning I left, I had no concern about money as everything had been budgeted and divided so one debit card was for hotels and necessities and the other for fun and friends, I was never to be without easy access to cash. 

Considering there would be at least six nights sleeping on trains, the cost of housing was not as high as it otherwise could have been.

I arrive. I enjoy. I move on. No concerns.

I arrived at the first hotel, the one in which I had lived for the first five years I taught in Oklahoma City and to which I now returned as an appreciated person, prepared to give my name and fill out the forms needed to get the room key, only to be told that the hotel which had new owners was no longer affiliated with the third party booking site so my room was canceled. I could, however, rebook the room, not at the price I had been quoted and which had been taken out of my bank account on the day of my departure as arranged, but at a rate one hundred dollars higher. This would put a dent in my budget, and, thinking I would just have to pay the difference, was a little shocked that I had to pay close to the four hundred dollar price of the room while it would be up to me to get the booking site to refund what they withdrew from my account meaning, budget-wise, until I got the refund, I had basically paid for the one room twice.

The hotel was reluctant to help. 

My first suggestion, to just let me have the  for the night and in the morning we could all get together and ron things out with any funds being forwarded to whoever was supposed to get what  withy me paying the difference so the room would be covered, was just ignored by the clerk at the desk. I thought the whole process could be easily and swiftly dealt with if they were to call the company whose contact info I was sure they had on file, and start the process, as the hotel could supply, on the spot, any numbers needed regarding hotel accounts etc. and I coud supply any number needed from the email verifications I had downloaded to my phone and three different sized android devices. Rather, the clerk at the desk, seeing someone more interesting to the eye, did not have the time to deal with me and suggested I try phoning the booking site who would most likely take only about two days once the refund was established.  

In the meantime, I could book the room for the number of nights I would need it at the higher price

The next Morning I sat in the lobby on my phone with the booking site. There were numbers I needed that the hotel had but the person at the counter seemed a little put out by my bothering him for them. When I informed the clerk that the booking site would be calling for some sort of verification and returned to my roost in the lobby, he quietly went into the office, returning with bathroom cleaning supplies, and went to clean the lobby bathroom when the Schrodinger phone rang. Was it a general hotel inquiry or was it the booking site?

The process eventually took two hours, but once the last step was completed, I could expect the refund in seven to ten business days, meaning, the hotel money for the next stay would be reduced until the refund could be added back, or I would have to stay for less time as, while waiting for the refund, I could replace the cost of the hotel room by spending a night on the train to the next destination.

As I was to find out a few days later when I called the booking site for an update, the hotel had as yet not submitted their codes to the site so the refund was still pending. A voice on one such call, Dave, went through a number of actions that got me to a supervisor who, being upset with the image the hotel was creating of the company, did what was needed to get the refund by the end of the day I called, but many days after I had left that hotel.

So Little Lord Fontleroy who was just going to waltz on and off trains like my footmen were running ahead of me making all the arrangements was the one doing that on the fly knowing that within days my first of the month check or the refund would come in together or separately.

In the meantime, so as not to get ahead of myself financially and needing to cut the whole trip short only to have everything fall in place, ironically, when I was on the train home, I had to count pennies.

I would have gladly accepted the room I found in Long Beach because of the price and location, but I only found it while the refund was in limbo and I had to conserve by finding the cheapest place possible. It was a classic Southern California drive-in courtyard motel. No Frills. A room, a bed, a TV, and a bathroom. Who needs fancy lights and fake expensive looking art on the walls if when you are in the room the lights are out and you can’t see it.

Skip the frills.

The motel at Cherry and the Pacific Coast Highway fell into a familiar mold where the husband took care of business, the wife was the chambermaid, and a son was the grounds keeper and handy-man. There were no frills. Housekeeping was you making your own bed, or not, and room service was you walking around the corner to the Jack in the Box. Rooms got cleaned between guests.

The final place that I stayed, not counting the final night when the Amtrak station closed at 10:00 pm and I had to deal with the mean streets of Jack London Square in Oakland until my 7:30 am train, was a delightful surprise.

On my way to San Francisco I had searched for hostels on the internet and found a few located near each other, and a quick internet search showed the area was decent. For some odd reason going from Los Angeles to San Francisco, the train ends in Santa Barbara with the rest of the trip via bus, and this left me a little further from my destination, the hostel area, than I would have liked. 

Hoping to avoid a long walk, I did the search thing on my phone, saw that I was a mere block or two from a hostel with a good rate, walked toward it, turned onto Sacramento Street, passed its nondescript facade enough times to frustrate me, and finally found and rang the bell. The disembodied voice on the intercom said they did not accept walk ups but required reservations, so I asked what their preferred booking site was and if they were on good terms, walked back outside, made reservations for a cheaper price, waited an hour or two, and went back inside with my reservation.

I had been encountering a series of coincidences and odd connections between things that should not be connected, and this hostel was one. Once inside, I found it had a nautical air about it with pictures of ships and nautical objects decorating the place, and the narwhal painted on the wall of the flight of stairs leading to the Buccaneer Bay, the four bunk bed room to which I was assigned, made a connection to the Whaling Museum.

Each floor had two large rooms with four bunk beds in each, good sized and equipped restrooms, and there was a common kitchen shared by all floors on the top floor. Breakfast was supplied to the degree that the makings for a good egg and fruit based breakfast were there for you to prepare to your liking. For long term hostel guests, there was a full size refrigerator and cabinets to store personal food items to prepare meals later in the day.

Residents were from all over the world, some on long, once in a lifetime trips, others as part of a multi-year plan to see as much of the world as time and reality allows, and some who came from the states, like myself, who just wanted a cheap place to stay in an expensive city.

With its location in the Business District next to ChinaTown, it was close to things I wanted to see and close enough to the various types of public transportation to get me to them.

The place was clean and no frills unless you count meeting people of all ages and backgrounds from many countries as a life extra.

I would have liked to have stayed one more night, but, knowing the fluidity of hostel guests, I was sure someone was looking forward to the bed I had reserved for three nights, and I could easily move on. 

Which I did.

The connection between the nautical trappings of the Tradewinds Hostel when combined with my having seen the remains of the rudder of the whale ship Niantic out of New Bedford that was dug out of the dirt during waterfront restoration 100 years after it burned to the water line having become another whale ship abandoned by its crew for the promise of the Gold Rush at the San Francisco Maritime Museum, a ship I had read about as a transcriber at the New Bedford Whaling Museum, and the friendliness of the staff and guests at the hostel did not completely, but to a degree did lessen the bleak welcome at the hotel I once called home.

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Gay bars were places of sanctuary where Gay men and women could gather according to their constitutional right of freedom of assembly without the constant judgmental gaze, comments, and verbal and physical attacks from Straight people and where they could dance among themselves and express natural affection. Back in the not so distant past, Gay bars were illegal in a lot of places and many were simply little better than an abandoned garage. The Stonewall Inn, in spite of touristy up-grades, was basically two empty rooms of what was once a stable as is attested to by the cistern in the corner of the back room covered with a board to serve as a table or a very wide and round chair.

There were no fancy glasses and shaded cocktail lamps.

 In some places, like New York City, it was illegal to serve an adult beverage to a known Homosexual, so the Gay bars that did exist skirted these rules and were often run by organized crime that cared little for the people only for the money. Catering to a Gay clientele in a city that forbade it was risky and often based on a certain arrangement with the local constabulary because of the money that crossed palms to keep eyes shut.

There was no reason for the Stonewall Inn raid that started the rebellion beyond a rumored missed payment to the 6th Precinct.

Over time and often because of being in a good financial and legal position to do so, some Gay bars were opened by Gay men, but these were often in the sketchier parts of the downtown area to which acceptable people did not go at night.

The height of rebellion was to open a Gay bar in a well-traveled, less objectionable area, but this usually at the fringe where the acceptable and unacceptable parts of a city met with uncertain boundaries. 

You know these areas now as the upscale, high-priced, Bohemian areas of bistros, exclusive restaurants, and a penchant to detest and exile the very people who made the area become what it has.

The more progressive a city, NYC, L.A,, Boston, the more likely someone would open a Gay bar in a more open, less sequestered area. Generally, the abandoned nature of the bar’s environment was a deterrent to those who wanted to screw around with the Gays by harassment both verbal and physical. Location was often a safety factor.

Like the greater society, the Gay Community had its little subcultures, so many Gay bars appealed to specific clientele. There were the general dance bars, those that catered to the leather and levi crowd, the Country Western crowd, the dance till you drop crowd, the Drag Queens and fans crowd, any segment of the population that would want to spend part of their evening at least with people within the community who shared the same interests as they flitted from bar to bar on a Saturday night.

In Long Beach California, one such bar, the Mine Shaft, which catered to all that the name implies, was a rather rough looking affair as the owner apparently was able to force the interior of a barn into a store front space so that the facade, floors, interior walls, and the ceiling supported by upright beams were rough barn board giving the illusion of being in an actual barn and conveyed the impression that this leather and levi bar was for the MEN.

In my day the clientele favored the more manly stereotypical Gays. The men were tough, they played pool seriously on the table with bleachers on three sides for spectators and players whose turns were yet to come up. There was no dance floor, and the lights were low. It was in the days when smoking was still allowed in bars and restaurants so the place always had the appropriate smokey haze. Its drinks were the size that would fit in perfectly if Gaston began his big song about his love, not of Belle, but in this case Bill. There was an undercurrent of Tom Of Finland but not in full swing.

Its look and reputation actually belied the reality of the people and ambiance inside. 

The clientele was friendly.

For a while. being not too far from my apartment, the bar was a perfect location. While I was accepting of all my fellow Gays, the choice between leather and lace was a clear one for me.

An unforeseen result of Gays owning bars back then and something that may not have initially been a consideration was who gets the bar upon the owner’s demise. Some states limited the inheritances of Gay men and women, and as blood was thicker than water any bequeathing of a cash cow to a Gay person could be challenged with the intended heir getting nothing. I have seen it with homes and multi-acreage ranches.

This often resulted, if there were partners but one held the majority shares, in the ownership of the bar going to a straight sibling who, in turn, would leave the bar to their off-spring when the time came.

The end result, not understanding the historical and communal nature of Gay bars reduced many to just being bars.

Using rental scooters as I was tired of walking, I went to the various still existing bars on the Broadway Gay Corridor, seeing what changes had occurred. Many changes, although minor, seemed to hint at the need to clean the places up, improve some of the unseemliness of the past, and present upbeat never a bad moment image. Things c necessary for the times were removed, so the booths for two that lined one wall of a bar often used for intimate conversations, first dates, and the occasional break up whose vehemence was controlled by being held in public are gone as they were seen by today’s clientele as too divisive.

As I approached the Mine Shaft, the last stop of the evening and the last bar before leaving town in the morning, I joked with the bouncer sitting on a stool outside the door wearing the leather and levis that used to define the place about some of the changes I had observed, and hoped this bar held to its history. Although he would not tell me exactly, he did tell me there were changes and I might not like them. For the sake of the effect of entering blind, he did not tell me what to expect.

I opened the door and what I first saw was reassuring. The area in the bar that you first encountered upon entering was just as I remembered it, rough look and all. However upon turning to look with nostalgia at the pool table area remembering the many people I watched play pool, I was shocked to see the pool table had been replaced by a dance floor over which hung a disco-ball, and one bank of bleachers had been replaced with a DJ booth with flashing lights.

I heard the dead groan through me.

What was most striking and, I must admit was initially disturbing, was the number of Heterosexual couples on that dance floor in a basic bar, a bar whose existence came about as a refuge from the very people who were now dancing in it.

 By-gones may certainly be by-gones, but it was still a bit of a shock as, even with the other bars which were occasionally frequented with Gay men’s Straight allies, in this bar it was totally out of place, if things were, of course, as they had been.

When I poked  my head out of the door to make a comment to the bouncer, he told me the Heterosexual couples’ dancing shocks the old timers who come to town for a visit or, like me, a reminiscence.

One thing did remain constant and unchanged. Richard.

Richard had been the young twenty-something (one assumes) when he was a barback in my day. For the intervening thirty years, he remained at the bar becoming more than just the barback although he continued to enjoy that as he can talk to customers as he washes glasses, bartenders are limited in conversation to those customers whose drink they are making.

 We did some comparisons with the old days and he recounted the progression of heirs after the original owner died, and, now being the bar owned by his Heterosexual granddaughter is just another bar devoid of history or any acknowledgment of it consciously or through just not knowing.

 It had become a “This used to be.”

 I finished my drink, called Richard over, and for the second time in thirty years shook his hand, wished him well, and headed for the door after promising to come back in another thirty years to say “so long” again.

 Although there was some disappointment with the loss of the place for what it had been, it was clear evidence that those who advocated for equality had done a good job provided those who benefited do not lose touch with their past.

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Fifty years ago, three months shy of my 23 birthday, I stood with my family at Logan Airport in Boston prepared to board my flight to California where, after finishing my college course work a semester early by taking summer and evening classes as well as my daytime ones, I had a permanent substitute teaching position in Richmond, across the Bay from San Francisco, that I had arranged in lieu of the final semester student teaching assignment as I would not have that semester.

I had gone through a Catholic elementary school with the old style nuns, went on to a junior seminary, novitiate, and two years of Philosophate (major seminary with an attached accredited college where Philosophy was the major) all of which were heavy on judgment, and, knowing that student teaching involved constant and minute judgments, I chose the permanent sub route where judgment may be constant, but you are left on your own unless you really screwed up. I opted for the less overt judgment. 

The school was a private Catholic school run by an order of priests and brothers with whom I was very familiar having attempted to join the order but found it was not for me.

Richmond is across the Bay from San Francisco, but in those days I had yet to connect the dots and San Francisco was a place of tourism and wonderment, not a place for the life I could have gotten involved with. Being there when I had just recently rejoined the world after the seminary and, although having a vibrant social life during the period between leaving the seminary and this point, my time was taken up with college, a job in a liquor store, trying to learn what life was like on the outside, and learning who I was beyond all previous expectations of mine and others that had brought me to this point while experiencing teaching in a classroom for the first time.

Although I assumed I would follow the norm, i.e. job, marriage, house, kids, etc, and assumed my thoughts regarding sex were the same as any other male, I was unconsciously dealing with the acceptance of my true self and realizing that some of what comprised my assumptions that my thoughts were the same for all males that would have me find the right woman, were actually the unrecognized signs this was not meant to be as those thoughts were not universal but were indicative of something else..

For me, the City by the Bay was tourist attractions on Saturday. I saw them all and then some as my location made me not a tourist.  

I was a working tourist and saw much of the Northern part of the state as well as the Southern.

During the Dust Bowl, many Oklahomans who went west ended up in Richmond, so my first classes of my career included a number of descendants of those people who still harbored the assumption that they would eventually go back. Many of my students were the children of the little “Okies” that had come to the Bay Area with their parents. They only knew the stories.

Thirty-eight years later my Teaching career came to a close in Oklahoma, ironically after that initial need for self discovery living on my own a continent away from family and friends that began with Okies at the beginning of my career and me not knowing who I was yet learning and me leaving the profession sure as hell who I was,.

Book-ending by coincidence as what happened between was often a matter of rolling with the punches, especially those self-administered by conscious and unconscious decisions.

I have to admit, in all honesty, I committed every mistake a first year teacher makes that semester, and in retrospect after years of teaching, as I recognized then, I had made them all and got them out of the way for the most part.

That position led to positions in New York, Massachusetts, a second and better California experience in Los Angeles, and the final act in Oklahoma.

Eventually I connected all the dots and retained a degree of residual resentment that I had to figure the dots all out for myself as my environments never included people who could help connect them, so, although coming out to family did not have the horrendous response of rejection and exile, it became very obvious that my idea of being Gay was too influenced by the traditions and upbringing of my heterosexual world, so I made plenty of mistakes even after I came to accept myself.

It should have been easier.

For most of the people I knew the suddenly becoming Gay out of nowhere thing was confusing and a bit hard to accept at first, the ‘It’s probably just a phase” reaction for the most part, but it was not sudden. It was a little painful as I realized I had not gone through my early adolescent years as a Gay person the way Heterosexual peers simply went with the flow.

I had established myself as an effective union officer, and it became my “mission” to use what tools I had developed to make this connecting of dots less difficult for those like me. 

In subsequent years, I instituted educational programs for my students, advocated for my students and fellow teachers as a union officer in each town, city,  and state in which I taught, advocated for the ignored and demeaned Gay students, became the official cartoonist of the Los Angeles teacher’s union, and educated a train load of kids.

It was not always easy as the nature of school board elections introduced the possibility of educational abuse begun by those who, while not in the classroom, saw themselves as experts in what happens in one. 

When allowed, most often after a battle with the adherents of the educational status quo, I got to start a sheltered workshop as part of my Special Education classes in one town, began using video with my Special Education students in Los Angeles that became a city-wide program, and successfully advocated for all the letters of the Rainbow Alphabet in another, the one where Okies saw and had to deal with the finished product of who I was.

I got to be the official cartoonist of the Los Angeles Teachers union, UTLA, and helped lead a strike with my cartoons.

In the career started 50 years ago, I got to be an Assistant Band Director marching in two St Patrick Day Parades in NYC, was the Illustrator of college text on American diplomacy, the creator of a Special Education Sheltered Workshop, the first Emcee on Quiz Kids Boston Public School Cable TV, helped begin the Video in the Classroom Program for the L.A. Unified School District, along with my students was the subject of a Case Study presented to California legislature concerning use of video for Educational purposes an original staff member and founding faculty member of College Academy, Framingham State College, Instituted the videotaped morning announcements at Taft Middle School in Oklahoma City, Assisted in designing an environmental curriculum for OK Dept. of Environmental Quality, and successfully advocated for inclusion of every students in the Rainbow Alphabet before retiring.

In my career I met many people in many parts of the country that I got to meet, not because of design, but by accident and that rolling with the punches thing.

I got to Direct a Church Choir, be emcee of annual community fundraisers, had a turn as President of Stoughton Teachers’ Association and later on the board of the teachers union in Oklahoma City, and in Los Angeles was chair of the union’s subcommittee on Gay and Lesbian Issues when it became a full standing-committee.

I got to be a member of OKC band which performed at Clinton’s 2nd inauguration, was on the committee of Cimarron Alliance Group in Oklahoma that helped get a more liberal governor elected, served time on the OKC GayPride Committee, was founding member Oklahoma Stonewall Democrats, and winner of Irene Tyson Memorial Award for public service OKC, the Cimarron Community Service Award, and the Angie Debo award from the Oklahoma ACLU.

My teaching positions allowed me to be a member of Gay Men’s Chorus in Boston, Los Angeles, and Long Beach CA, the last two being instrumental in my having comfortable, though not deep friendships with political and entertainment celebrities. 

I got to march and rally for multiple causes directly or indirectly connected to education and the rights of workers and students.

And throughout I did my best for my students. 

Nothing that happened during the career or even now in the years between retirement and now that brings the total time span to fifty years, was something that happened because it was planned.

Never got the wife and kids, but did get the house, had one once for a short time and discovered I was a horrible homeowner.

Never met the woman to marry and with whom to have children like most of the peers I thought I was just like. That turned out not to be me and the State would not allow for my getting married as myself.

Met more people than I would have ever imagined meeting and had close associations and friendships with many as opposed the few I would have gotten to meet and know if things had gone according to the general script.

And the career ended with me sliding into base and not taking the walk.

After twelve years of advocacy that included harassment from administration, a wrongful dismissal, and a court case to get reinstated and showing the district’s evaluation system for teachers was routinely abused for administrative advantage which in my case was to kill the messenger and silence the the message that sexual orientation and gender identity count when it comes to students and they should be as protected as the heterosexual students. 

Fifty years after this uninformed future Gay Man left San Francisco, I returned as part of a trip that brought me to Oklahoma City to be at the University of Central Oklahoma where my Oklahoma related artwork and the legal papers dealing with the advocacy, the court case, and the subsequent addition of the words “sexual orientation” and “gender Identity” to Oklahoma City Public Schools’ student policies had mounted a retrospective of my career, my Gay Rights activism, and the legal struggle to get inclusive language into school policies on the day the display opened.

When I arrived in San Francisco, my intention was to go to the school where my career began, but that would turn out to be the least important reason for me being there.

I found my way to the LGBT Community Center on Market Street intending to simply “check In”. It seems to be just the standard procedure when a Gay Activist comes to town, to make initial contact with a Center to find out what is going on in the community to be less of a tourist.

More a part of the collective.

I showed up at the Center a welcomed stranger, not as the person who had been in the city 50 years ago before the Center even existed as even in that City Gay rights were still a work in progress and Harvey Milk was yet to be elected to the City Council, but as the man he had become.

I was standing in the lobby after getting a tour of the facility as a Gay Man, a proven advocate of Gay youth, and a teacher who had made the lives of Gay students that much more positive.

I had done well as my Gay self.

After reciting my curriculum vitae and my accomplishments, especially the reason for my trip, Timothy, the gentleman who had given me the tour of the Center gave me something  extremely meaningful.

I tried twice to explain the whole full-circle thing but was overwhelmed by the emotions that welled up, It took two weepy tries.

He leaned forward and embraced this accomplished Gay man in a warm hug which let the 23 year old naive person that had been me know that I had done well.

It was the acceptance of me totally for who I am and what I have accomplished, and that hug was so powerful and welcoming that the 23 year-old had to go outside with his 73 year old self and break down in unabashed tears that life had come full circle and that hug signified that.

Perhaps it was simply intended to be a nice hug, a friendly hug, but in reality, it was the sign that the naive kid who could not connect the dots had come full circle and was welcomed for that not only by others, but, more importantly, himself.

Everything in the previous 50 years, even the negatives which were turned to positives, had served a purpose.

So thanks to anyone I taught, knew, worked with, lived with, attempted a relationship with, was an activist with, who sat on the bar stool next to me, marched in a parade, sang in a chorus, helped hold a huge banner, and took their lumps along the way with me or like me, from the highest celebrity to the homeless men I discussed philosophy with in Long Beach while sharing their wine, about which I asked no questions, before taking that first step away from there to Oklahoma.

Whatever the motivation for the hug, the meaning takes precedence.

I got that hug.

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Although in reality we were simply demanding our Creator endowed inalienable rights be recognized as applying to Gay people as they did to Non-Gay people, those wanting to deny this, having nothing factual upon which to base such a denial, attempted to present it as something other than  what it was, as something threatening to anyone not Gay.

The quest for equal rights was painted as the demand for special rights.

My American born parents, my father a World War II veteran, had three sons. My two brothers have their Creator endowed inalienable rights equally. They did not have to fight for them. They simply exercised them as a matter of course in all things financial, Constitutional etc. However, extending those same rights to me, a Gay man, is somehow bestowing special rights on me.

It made no sense and had no substance.

We had to fight the misrepresentation that we wanted more than others had when in reality we only wanted what they had. 

We wanted EQUAL not SPECIAL rights, and equality does not raise us above others but puts us on the same level as those others.

That is why this present complacent attitude, leaning toward Privilege, really burns my corn.

In Oklahoma City every student who entered the first grade in 2010 was fully protected in all school district policies and that included the students to whom sexual orientation and gender identity applied, and in the following twelve years there had been no problems and none of the predicted disasters and the destruction of schools as we knew them occurred.

I am very familiar with those false predictions.

However, in its desire to fit in and enter the competition among the other red states, the state legislature of Oklahoma ignored its own capital city and went along with the tropes upon which the other red states based their decisions to erase Trans students and their physical, mental, and psychological well-being, not based on evidence that this was harmful, but based on ignoring the state capital’s own proven reality.

In spite of measurable and observable facts, the state chose to assign secondary citizenship to those who had been finally granted their rights after 12 years of advocacy and twelve years under the results of that.

So the state took an action to abandon some of its children and the claim to an “Oklahoma Standard”, a standard that had actually been added to because in 2009 the Oklahoma City Public Schools became one of the very few districts in the country to protect all its students by including “gender identity” and “gender expression” and had been used as a model by other school districts in the state and beyond, in order to fit in. 

Since 2009 the Oklahoma City Public Schools Student/Parent Handbook clearly states,

“The Oklahoma City Public School District (OKCPS) does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, disability, age, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, genetic information, alienage, veteran, parental, family and marital status in its programs and activities, or in its employment decisions, and provides equal access to the Boy Scouts of America and other designated youth groups.”

Beyond speculation, tropes, and the lazy repetition of disproven falsehoods , when those who go after GLBT students to deny them an equal education and involvement in school activities, clubs, and sports in a safe and welcoming school environment which by law they must attend every day, especially the Trans kids who are victimized by ignorance, bigotry, and politics, they should be presented with factual examples from reality that show how wrong they are and continue to be and should be required to supply equally factual and relevant examples to support their claims.

Putting aside the erroneous action of the politicians, this situation has presented the Gay Community with a challenge.

Up until 2022, all the students of the Oklahoma City Public Schools were protected in policies regardless of any deviation from the heterosexual norm or adherence to it. 

ALL students.

Trans students, however, after having had them, had their rights and protections as students removed, creating a second class of students in the system. There are now those without full rights, having lost them to bigotry, existing alongside those who had always had their rights and those who gained them through the hard work of those who came before them, the ones who had fought for and had momentarily won equality for all.

In the meantime, sexual orientation remains untouched, meaning that any member of the Gay Community, every stripe on the Pride Flag, save one, and every Straight kid still has their rights as students while some peers no longer do.

If this is not addressed, then Special Rights have been instituted with the approval of and with the complicity of the cis-gender members of the Gay Community as non-heterosexual students keep their rights and all cisgender members of the Gay Community do as well. 

We did not fight for Special but Equal rights, and those who accept the present situation would seem to be accepting their Special Rights as if that is enough, agreeing with the bigots that in reality we only wanted to be special.

All the other stripes on the Pride Flag have the moral obligation to get the Trans students their rights back. If they accept the present situation where “I got mine”, then the young have proven the bigots correct.

It WAS about special rights.

The generation that benefited by the activism of the past seems complacent to have special rights when that is not what we fought for.

The younger generations, especially in Oklahoma, have the moral obligation to restore equal rights and not settle complacently for special ones.

It is a betrayal of Gay History and their peers.

And as someone who fought and paid a high price to get student equality, I have to ask,

“Who the hell do you younger Gays think you are to be all privileged while spitting on the memory of the real heroes of the fight for Gay rights and not the romanticized mythological creations who did minimal work while you ignore those who got you what you’ve got?”

You have no morality if you bask in your rights while your Trans brothers and sisters have had theirs taken away and just accept it as how it is.

You have a moral obligation.

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