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Remnants of the state's historic pride in diversity and the Wild West "live and let live" attitude remains, despite the efforts of right-wing activists. A poll taken last year by Cimarron Equality Oklahoma showed that 86% of Oklahoma voters don't believe that GLBT people should be fired from jobs because of their sexual orientation. Oklahoma City residents just formed the city's first gay and lesbian business association. And for the first time in history, city leaders, led by the chamber of commerce, have formed a committee to explore how to make the metro area more diverse. They fear that if things don't change, companies will not conduct business in the state. Even the staunchly conservative Oklahoman hired a reporter to cover diversity.

Yet in 2005 the fact remains that "we've written it into our laws and our state constitution that it's not acceptable to be gay," says Josh Beasley, an openly gay 26-year-old who lives in the capital. A wiry guy who could be mistaken for a young Republican, Beasley moved back to his home state three years ago from Denver. He is constantly trying to explain to his Republican coworkers at the nonprofit group Feed the Children why the party's policies are hurting gay people.

Beasley is sitting for a dinnertime interview at the Habana Inn, a gay resort that bills itself as the largest of its kind in the Southwest. The inn is a one-stop shop for gay men in search of a cheap room, a strong drink, a hearty meal, a decent drag show, or anonymous sex. During most waking hours, a mix of luxury sedans, American-made cars, and dusty pickup trucks pull into the parking lot for the main attraction: cruising. They're all at the Habana to meet Mr. Right--or at least Mr. Right Now, the locals say with a laugh.

The weekend crowds blur into a haze of drinks and cigarette smoke. For these men, the Habana is their refuge. Inside the Western bar cowboys are line-dancing in ass-tight Wranglers and felt hats. At the cabaret bar the drag queens are stuffing tips in their dresses. At the dance bar the twinks are removing their shirts. A swirl of drag queens with teased hair are selling shots, and hiply dressed lesbians play pool.

It's a haven that anyone who has lived in the U.S. heartland would recognize: The place where young and old, men and women, rich and poor all mingle with the common goal of having fun in a place where it's OK to be gay. But in many states, beyond these outposts activists are bracing for conservative lawmakers who want to flex their newfound might to flood legislatures with antigay laws.

In Mississippi gay rights advocates say they'll have a tougher time trying to add hate-crimes protections that include sexual orientation to the books--a dream they've spent a decade trying to make into a reality. Republican lawmakers in Tennessee and Kansas have vowed that they will pass constitutional amendments to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman. A majority of Democrats in each state appears to support the antigay measures.

In Missouri gay activists expect that lawmakers will try to institute new restrictions on adoption. "It's hard to paint a rosy picture," says Julie Brueggemann, executive director of PROMO, a statewide gay rights group. "This is the first time in 80 years that Missouri has openly hostile legislators who are in charge of the house, senate, and now the governorship. In the past we've always had a governor that we could count on for a veto in case something did get through the legislature."

In Oklahoma, Anne Magro and her partner, Heather Finstuen, have seen firsthand how quickly lawmakers can take away protections. The couple joined a lawsuit by Lambda Legal to try to repeal Oklahoma's law against adoptions by gays, which was signed into law May 4. It outlaws adoptions by gay and lesbian parents from out of state, even for those who've legally cemented their adoption rights in other states.

Magro and Finstuen are not hard-bitten activists; they simply want to protect their 6-year-old twin girls. The pair are sitting for a lunchtime interview at an Indian buffet in a strip mall near the highway in the college town of Norman, where they live. Magro is an accounting professor at the University of Oklahoma, Finstuen a second-year law student who's getting a crash course in constitutional law these days. It's a rare break from their busy schedule as morns, what with sleepovers, play dates, soccer practice, gymnastics, and Girl Scouts.

Although two other sets of couples are part of the lawsuit, Magro and Finstuen are the public face. They're the ones who have the exhausting schedule of doing the media interviews, keeping full-time jobs, and making time for the twins. (To protect the twins' privacy, The Advocate agreed not to print the girls' names.) The case may not be resolved for years, yet "we felt that we had a duty to do it," says Finstuen. "We have an opportunity to take a stand and to make a difference in a lot of people's lives."

Neither planned to become an Oklahoma activist. They met as students at the University of Illinois in 1991 and by 1998 had careers in New Jersey, living in the town of Maplewood, which bragged of its diversity in

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Ogden lives near the state capitol building with his partner of six years in a gorgeous, sprawling home. He was raised in a politically prominent family; his father was majority leader of the Oklahoma house from 1959 to 1963-a time when many lawmakers in the state supported the progressive policies of President John F. Kennedy. Ogden had the connections to climb the ladder and perhaps eventually run for governor, but that meant he would have had to stay in the closet, marry a woman, and raise a family. Instead, he came out and took on an activist role.

Ogden dreams of heading up the Oklahoma Bar Association or sitting on the state supreme court, although he's not so sure what will happen in the near future. "There is more than a glass ceiling here. It's an iron room in which the state places gays and lesbians," he says. "I still know that nothing is impossible; I can climb out the window and up the exterior wall to the next level above me, but why should it be this way? I just want a fair shake."

Ogden has achieved a level of acceptance in Oklahoma City. He and his partner, Mike Mclain, were featured in The Oklahoman's coverage of a 2004 homes tour--a hugely visible step that the daily would have never allowed in the past. And he can tick off a list of wealthy Oklahomans who raise large amounts of money for AIDS programs. Yet he is still too often stunned at the bigotry around him. In December, Ogden and Mclain were watching the movie Alexander at a local multiplex. As Alexander's lover, Hephaistion, lay dying in one scene, Ogden remembers, an audience member screamed, "Die, fag!"

That same month a local openly gay lawyer was shot in a robbery in his home, a crime for which police have charged four people with burglary, robbery, kidnapping, and extortion. It doesn't appear that that the criminals targeted their victim based on his sexual orientation, but it still caused Ogden, a well-known gay attorney himself, to wonder if he had any reason to worry.

But moving out of state, he says, is not an option. "I have family ties and political ties here," he says, "although I can't blame people who don't have those kinds of ties and leave."

Paula Schonauer is not leaving Oklahoma either, although her life might be easier if she did. The 39-Anita year-old activist--and the state's only transgender police officer--is suing the Oklahoma City police department for harassment. In the three years since she has transitioned, harassment by coworkers has only gotten worse, and the department is "unable to foster a professional work environment," she says.

With a teenage son and 6-year-old daughter in town, "I don't want to leave my children's lives," says Schonauer, who is divorced from but still friends with the kids' biological mother. "We're not totally free here, not at all. It's not an ideal situation, but I think that my kids are better off than [they would be with] a heterosexual couple who've gotten divorced and are at each other's throats all the time. I think my kids are going to grow up and be fine."

Schonauer meets up with The Advocate at the Red Cup coffeehouse, perhaps the hippest place to get a cup of joe in the Oklahoma City metro area. It sits in the middle of a few blocks that make up the city's Asian neighborhood--a fact acknowledged by a small street sign on one end that reads simply ASIAN DISTRICT.

Schonauer picked this rendezvous point because she's comfortable here: As an Oklahoma City police officer, she helped the department make inroads into the Asian populace. She even learned some Vietnamese. She gained the Asian residents' trust, and they helped her solve homicides and other crimes. She received an award from the U.S. Department of Justice.

At the Red Cup--which bears a sign on the door proclaiming that the shop does not sell soft drinks such as Coca-Cola because such companies are global corporate monopolies-Schonauer and her daughter, Joanna, each pull up a chair. Schonauer is ever the doting parent, giving the girl money for a cookie and finding her a magazine to read as the interview stretches into an hour.

Raised most of her life in Oklahoma, Schonauer graduated from Southwestern Oklahoma State University. She married a woman from Norman in 1988. As "Paul," she served in Operation Desert Storm before joining the police force. "I would have these points where I was wonderfully sure about my masculinity and [thought], I can do this, and later on I would be filled with such doubt," she recalls. "It would be up and down and up and down."

She was always completely honest with her family once she understood her need to transition, she says. By 2000 she was either going to commit suicide or get the operation, she says. Her son, age 10 at the time, told her, "Dad, if you've got to change, change, but don't leave my life."

Schonauer is a regular at her son's band concerts and swim meets. "I've had a lot of media here cover me, and people know me," she says. "I've apologized to my son if people tease him because of me, and he just says, 'Eh, don't worry about it. They'd probably make fun of me for something else.'"

Schonauer understands. In 2000 she informed the police department of her plans to have sex-reassignment surgery. Her superiors were supportive, telling local media at the time, "We wouldn't treat this particular situation any different than we would treat an officer going through a divorce or another particularly emotionally stressful time.... As long as Paula can perform the job, we're gong to provide all the necessary emotional support."

But her coworkers were less trader-standing once Schonauer returned from Thailand in 2002, her transition complete. The on-the-job harassment started and never stopped. "There's a difference between knowing and seeing," she says, explaining why she was more comfortable before her transition. In May, Schonauer was taken off patrol and given an interim clerical role; she's now on paid leave. "My career was going well," she says. "Now it's been sidelined." Jim Roth's career in Oklahoma could easily have been sidelined because he's gay. But in 2002 he was elected as a commissioner for Oklahoma County. The race was long and bitter. He started his campaign two years early because he knew that his opponent would make his sexual orientation an issue. He was right. "Every piece of literature my opponent sent out talked about my sexuality," he remembers. "It would have been a mail piece about building new roads and bridges, but then there would be a note about me being gay and that fact being against Oklahoma's values."

His opponent attempted to build an impressive voting bloc by appealing to networks of voters in Baptist churches. Youth groups were recruited to go door-to-door, making sure residents knew that Roth was gay and that he'd received money from the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund, a group in Washington, D.C., that works to elect openly gay candidates across the country.

Roth stayed on message, talking about fiscal discipline and the need for more infrastructure. He won by 11 percentage points. "I generally think that citizens care more about a straight road than they do about a straight officeholder," he says. "I think it's an insult to citizens to think that their sexuality is an issue."

But Roth knows he will be a target of the far right when he runs again in 2006. "I'll become a prize to somebody out there who can't run on their qualifications, so they need to find what they think will be an easy target," he says.

In addition to fixing the local roads and bridges, one of Roth's goals is to try to make city and county officials understand that there are economic consequences for not being welcoming to minorities. He's a fan of Carnegie Mellon University professor Richard Florida, whose research has linked cities' cultural diversity to their rise as economic powerhouses. Even Oklahoma City has taken note: In 2004 the chamber of commerce held a series of meetings with various minority groups to see how they could make the city more welcoming; they're now discussion how to implement what they've learned.

One reason Roth ran for office to try and make a difference was that an acquaintance, Chuck Mears, was killed in a brutal hate crime in 1996. Mears, who serviced the elevators at the county courthouse where Roth worked, had brought two guys back to his house who then used a knife to cut out his eyes before shooting him dead, burning down his house, and stealing his pickup truck. They were caught after one of the men bragged that he had "rolled a fag."

The killers were eventually prosecuted in the same courthouse where their victim had worked.

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While Roth is proud of the local examples of changed attitudes, the most recent election shows him just how far Oklahoma's culture has to go. "The dominance of this religious rhetoric that's now become the political rhetoric has really cast a chill on the state's population," he says. "The faith environment has really gotten away from the teachings of Jesus Christ, which is, Love thy neighbor. Churches here seem to be getting out of the business of feeding and clothing people and putting their efforts into voter guides and this idea that 'this person is worse than me.'"

Roth and his partner of eight years, who lives in Dallas, have discussed marriage. They've taken steps for legal protection of their estates, but it still seems incomplete without a legal union.

"I live in a state that recognizes common-law marriage--that means you can shack up for six months and you can show to the world that you are husband and wife," he says. "What is that? It's not exactly covenant marriage that you hear about in your local church. And I live in a state that has one of the worst divorce rates. I want to turn to people that are in the streets cheering for the protection of marriage to ask them to please go outlaw divorce."

Faith cuts both ways in Oklahoma. The gay and lesbian citizens go to church as well, and some hear messages quite different from the antigay sermons at the Baptist and Church of Christ behemoths that dominate the landscape. One rainy Sunday morning, members are filing into the Church of the Open Arms, which is affiliated with the United Church of Christ--a world away from the anti-gay Church of Christ.

One of the few gay-welcoming congregations in the entire state, the church is packed to capacity this day as the Reverend Kathy McCallie preaches about the need for tolerance and diversity. It is the Sunday after CBS and NBC refused to air a commercial by the United Church of Christ that touted the church's proud welcome to all worshippers and depicted gays and others being turned away by bouncers in front of another church. The congregation is outraged, and the church will hold a press conference the next day, denouncing the networks' argument that tolerance is too controversial an idea under George W. Bush.

After the service there's a potluck in the church basement. At one table sit Barbara York and Von Green, a couple now for 42 years. They met in Oklahoma City in July 1962 when a mutual friend set them up on a date. The sparks flew "and we wanted to research it further," says York with a laugh. The couple never looked back. For years both were physical education teachers, and they grew used to living secret double lives.

"When we were young it was mostly against the law to be gay. We were used to gay bashings and getting fired. And then it got better--or at least people ignored it, anyway," says York. When the women were working for a private counseling firm in the late 1970s, a boss learned of their relationship. They were told to resign at once or they would be fired. The women immediately left.

There's no doubt that their lives have vastly improved since the 1960s. They've found acceptance within their families. They're setting up their estates to protect them when either one dies. They've made sure that the hospital has a record that they are partners so that they have visitation rights. Their house is jointly owned.

Yet like so many GLBT residents of Oklahoma, they are seeing the state regress, and they fear for the future. "I think it's going to go back to the way it was in the past," says York. "I think we're going to have more gay bashings and there are going to be bar raids. They're going to start giving us a hard time because it's popular [to do so]. People have a tendency to do what's popular."

Other gay residents of Oklahoma City--such as Gina Love, 38, and her partner of almost two years, Kelly Fives, 39--remain hopeful about the future. Love, an insurance agent, and Fives, an instructor at the Federal Aviation Administration Academy, say they have not experienced any discrimination. "No one has said anything to us in our jobs, and we're very out," Love says. "Kelly has said that when she lived in California she had people holler stuff at her. When she moved here she was scared to be open about her sexuality."

What kinds of rights would Love and Fives like to have? The guarantee that their estates are legally protected. The right to make medical decisions for each other if one becomes incapacitated. They'd also like to marry, but they feel there would be no legal or financial benefit to having a ceremony in Massachusetts and then returning home to Oklahoma. They hold out hope that those dreams will become a reality. "As the whole country gets better, Oklahoma will get better also," Love says. "It's going to take time. Any time that there's a civil rights movement, it takes time for things to happen. It doesn't happen overnight."

Advocate news features editor Graham previously was on staff at The Des Moines Register.

Oklahoma's gay history lesson

1940 Anita Bryant is born in Barnsdall. At age 18 she becomes Miss Oklahoma.

1978 Bryant, whose "Save Our Children" campaign engineered the repeal of a gay rights law in Miami-Dade County, Fla., urges Oklahoma lawmakers to pass legislation barring public school teachers from "advocating ... encouraging, or promoting public or private homosexual activity." The law passes, but it was invalidated by a court decision in the 1980s and eventually repealed.

1988 Oklahoma holds its first gay pride parade, in Oklahoma City, drawing 400 participants.

1995 A GLBT political action committee called the Cimarron Alliance Group is founded. An affiliate group, the Cimarron Alliance Foundation, is formed two years later to focus on educational issues.

1996 Tulsa's first GLBT community center opens.

2001 Lesbian Wanda Jean Allen, 41, becomes the the first black woman since 1954 to be executed in the United States.

2002 Oklahoma City leaders and a gay rights group reach settlement that allows the display of pro-gay banners across the city.

2004 During a campaign stop, Oklahoma Republican congressman (and now U.S. senator) Tom Coburn tells the audience, "Lesbianism is so rampant in some of the schools in southeast Oklahoma that they'll only let one girl go to the bathroom."

2004 Oklahoma lawmakers pass a bill that says the state will not recognize adoptions by same-sex couples from other states.

2004 Oklahoma voters approve a state constitutional amendment that bans gay marriage, and 66% vote to reelect President George W. Bush.

2004 Oklahoma City activists form a gay and lesbian business association, the Diversity Business Association Metro.

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