http://www.okeq.org/equality-gala.html

Equality Gala, 621 E 4th Street, Tulsa, OK (2026)

01/18/2023

🚨 Save The Date! ✨ Equality Gala ✨ Saturday, May 13th, 2023. 🎉

03/03/2018

Our honorary gala chairs Wes Smith and Doug Campbell pose for their publicity photos. Join us on April 21st for the Equality Gala. http://www.okeq.org/store.html

10/21/2017

The 2017 Dennis R Neill Collegiate Leadership Award Winner, Morgan Allen is appearing in Fun Home.

American Theatre Company is honored to present the Oklahoma premiere of 2015’s Tony winner for Best Musical, Fun Home with book and lyrics by Lisa Kron (Tony winner for Best Book of a Musical) and music by Jeanine Tesori (Tony winner for Best Score,) based on the award-winning graphic novel by Alison Bechdel.
When her father dies unexpectedly, graphic novelist Alison dives deep into her past to tell the story of the volatile, brilliant, one-of-a-kind man whose temperament and secrets defined her family and her life. Moving between past and present, Alison relives her unique childhood playing at the family’s Bechdel Funeral Home, her growing understanding of her own sexuality, and the looming, unanswerable questions about her father’s hidden desires. Fun Home is a refreshingly honest, wholly original musical about seeing your parents through grown-up eyes.

The show opens Saturday, October 21 in the John H. Williams Theatre of the Tulsa Performing Arts Center with performances through Saturday, October 28. Tickets available at myticketoffice.com, or by calling 918-596-7111
Use code: funhome1 for an OKEQ discount.

04/28/2017

For Robin VanMeter, family is everything. And that extends from her nuclear family – her wife, Jaymie, and their son and daughter – to her work family at Direct Energy, where Robin co-leads a group for LGBTQ+ employees and allies.
Robin is the 2017 recipient of Oklahomans for Equality’s Workplace Inclusion Award for her efforts with Direct Energy’s LGBTQ+ Employee Resource Group, called Spectrum. As a member of OkEq’s Board of Advisors, Robin also is helping to revamp OkEq’s Family Ties program to create visibility about LGBTQ+ families in the community and to show children of same-sex parents that they aren’t alone.
Robin says the purpose of Spectrum “is to make is easier for everyone to bring their whole selves to work, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity.”
“Our focus has been on education and creating safe environments in our offices for conversations and growth for every employee,” she says, adding that the group “kicked off a campaign to educate allies on what being an ally involves and how to better themselves in this identity.”
But perhaps the greatest aspect has been the company’s support. Robin notes that Direct Energy began providing same-sex partner insurance coverage before she began working there five years ago and says 2017 is the first year the company is providing coverage for gender reassignment and intrauterine insemination.
“I have had conversations with many regarding why this is so important and how progressive Direct Energy is for our industry,” she says. “This would have saved my family tens of thousands of dollars in conception costs.
Robin says she’s thankful that Direct Energy’s policies are evolving to meet the needs of current and potential employees.
“Spectrum has taken the approach that if we start from within – educating, exposing and debunking stereotypes, proactively stopping discrimination, and holding our employees accountable for the language they use – attracting like-minded allies and LGBTQ+ community members through recruiting will come naturally,” she says.
But the group isn’t content to rest on its laurels. In 2017, Robin says, “we will be kicking off chapters in Phoenix and Pittsburgh. Longer-term success is having every employee of every office identify themselves as an ally. Ultimately, success is not needing Spectrum anymore.”

– By Sharon Bishop-Baldwin

04/27/2017

As the only “nonbinary q***r Hmong person” they know of in the Tulsa area, Pickles Lee would perhaps have a hard time finding a support group made up of people precisely like them.
And it is exactly that fact that motivates Pickles to work toward adding more colors to the virtual rainbow of inclusion.
Pickles, an Owasso High School senior who is president of the school’s Equality Club, is Oklahomans for Equality’s 2017 recipient of the Carolyn Wagner Youth Leadership Award.
Gay-straight alliances such as Owasso’s Equality Club hold a special place in Pickles’ heart because they are an introduction to activism.
“My identity seems to be a political statement without me trying, and it seems like this is the case for many other youths in the LGBT+ community,” Pickles says. “I never want any youth to ever feel marginalized or alone, and I strive to make the world a more accepting place.”
Both within the LGBTQ community and in the larger community, Pickles says, “there needs to be more inclusion of other marginalized folks, because one can be a person of color or a different faith and still part of the LGBT+ community. Being someone whose identities belong to many marginalized communities, it’s hard to find a place that can be inclusive of all identities. We’re all fighting for one thing, so why not fight together?”
Pickles found themselves at the forefront of just such a fight recently, when a group of 70 LGBTQ students from the Tulsa area were meeting with lawmakers at the Oklahoma Capitol. During the visit, a Capitol employee emailed other staffers to warn about the “cross-dressers in the building.” Pickles, a co-founder and president of TYSNG (the Transgender Youth Support and Networking Group) and a member of the Trans National Youth Council, was designated to speak on behalf of OkEq in responding to the offensive email.
Pickles is “elated” to receive the Youth Leadership Award but insists that “this isn’t the end of my activism work,” adding, “I am a loud and outspoken transgender and q***r Hmong youth, and I will continue to live my life loud and outspoken by speaking out against injustices.”
A planned double college major of law and women and gender studies should help them accomplish that.

– By Sharon Bishop-Baldwin

04/25/2017

Alice Bates had known that her son David was gay for a long time, but that didn’t stop mother and son from not only being friends but also sharing friends. And when David’s friends started dying from AIDS – and David did, too – Alice knew just what those young men needed in their final days: A Friend for a Friend.
Alice is Oklahomans for Equality’s 2017 Community Hero Award recipient for her 25-plus years of volunteering on behalf of people living with HIV/AIDS and the pets they love.
Her activism didn’t really start until after David’s death in 1991, when he was nearly 30. “I knew that I wanted to do something to make his life worth more,” she says.
About that time, a friend called Alice and said she knew a man living with AIDS who was going to die and he had a dog that was going to need some veterinary care and a new home. Alice said she would help, but that help quickly grew expensive, and she wasn’t sure how she could keep caring for the dog.
Then the media caught wind of the situation, and the newspaper did a story about the dog. The story was published on a Thursday. In the following Monday’s mail, Alice found checks totaling $500 to help care for the dog. And a mission was born.
A Friend for a Friend pays for dog or cat food, cat litter, veterinary care and even grooming for the pets of clients, because as the person living with HIV/AIDS gets sicker, he or she is able to do less. Not every client’s pet is your typical Rover or Tiger, either, Alice says, adding, “We’ve had snakes, and we kept a cow fed one time.”
The program typically serves 90-100 clients at a time, but it’s caring for pets longer today because their humans aren’t dying. That’s a good thing, even as it stretches the organization’s resources.

04/10/2017

From Toby Jenkins, Executive Director, Oklahomans for Equality took several dozen LGBTQ students to the state Capitol today to meet with lawmakers. A staffer in the House Speaker's office thought it was appropriate to warn Capitol employees that "there are cross-dressers in the building." THIS IS DESPICABLE! Our children deserve an apology, and they deserve far better from our elected officials! Please feel free to call House Speaker Charles McCall's office at (405) 557-7412 and demand it!

08/28/2011

2010 OkEq Gala

2010 OkEq Gala Mia Bella Images retains copyright

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