Impossible to work

When I say Oklahoma you probably think cowboys and indians. Maybe you think of a particularly nasty Race Riot. You might think of the Flaming Lips. Most likely, you classify it as one of the red states, and it is. But today, it’s made a  step forward.

I try to keep up with gay issues in Oklahoma, primarily because it’s a really shitty place to be gay and it’s where I came out of the closet. Usually, when some little blip of gay news makes its way to me, it’s not positive.  Today it is.

Al McAffrey, a gay man from Oklahoma City (and a member of the Choctaw Nation, halito), was elected in the primary for the State House back on July 25th (it takes a long time for news from Oklahoma to reach me. We only use smoke signals back there). He won the primary and since there’s no Republican candidate, he’s won, barring any write in campaign. Since it takes a lot of work to actually write a different candidate in, there is no way that anyone is going to actually beat him in the fall. He’ll be representing district 88 (which includes the site of the former Murrah Federal Building, and Downtown OKC) at the State House, is a Democrat (of the Oklahoma variety, as I can discern), and was somehow able to win a primary as an openly gay male. That’s just cool.

Earlier this year, Oklahoma’s ban on adoption by same sex couples was overturned (another case of activist judges, I’m sure). But that does not change the state’s same-sex marriage ban or the insecurity so many young homos face in their day to day lives back home. In any case, McAffrey’s election is a big step, especially since it happened in OKC and not Tulsa (traditionally Oklahoma’s “liberal” stronghold), and it makes me happy.