Dear
Rob,
I just wanted to drop you a note and congratulate you
on your 4th anniversary of GAYOKC.COM and for
becoming what I consider the Internet Hub for the
Oklahoma GLBT community.
While I've been active in the community for many
years, I've only lived in OKC for a little over 3
years and active on the web for about 4 years also.
It didn't take long to become dependent on GAYOKC.COM
as a principal research tool for anything related to
the GLBT community. Your Directory and Calendar are
unmatched in providing up to date events and contact
information for anything GLBT in Oklahoma. If anyone
gay in Oklahoma has a web page and hasn't given you
the information, they're missing the boat!
While I'm well aware that the never ending task of
maintaining such a site and keeping it current often
occurs without due recognition or monetary
compensation, I hope you can at least take some
consolation in knowing it is often read and
appreciated greatly, especially by those of us who
live and work on the web. And, with the global online
gay and lesbian population increasing to an estimated
17.1 million by 2005, up from 9.2 million this past
year, sites like yours will become even more relevant
and important to the community as a viable source for
information.
I subscribed to your GAYOKC.COM E-Mail Update and if
I don't get it every other day or two, I begin to
wonder if I should write and check on you to make
sure your still there and OK! ;-) I recommend that
everyone subscribe to keep abreast of what's
happening both in the City and across the nation. I
mean can you beat all this information with in-home
delivery for free?
Keep up the good work, and thanks for being there.
Tim Turner
OKDiversity.com
Webmaster
Tim Turner is responsible for the websites of many of
OKC's GLBT groups and businesses, including AIDS Walk
OKC. His own OKDiversity.com is quite
popular in its own right.
When I first approached the school district about
inservices for teachers about GLBT Students back in
1997, I had no idea what would be set in motion.
For the first two years when
I was working with the district's Diversity in
Education Committee, all I had was a typewriter and a
phone. This made getting information out difficult.
As time continued and the
NWClassen Experience began (which by the way could
have been totally avoided had people not panicked and
had used some common sense, but bullies are bullies)
I was advised that patience would reap more results.
In reality, the silence made slowness to act a little
too convenient. What was meant to be politeness was
misused, what was meant to help avoid embarassment,
was seen as weakness and permission to stall.
I had yet to discover the
Internet.
When GayOKC.com approached
me about an email on what was going on in the
district, the original intent of a summary of things
turned into a five part serial.
Openness had an effect.
It took away complacency,
and it let it be known that we are not afraid to
expose old fashion, totally out of date and foolish
"homo-ignorance" (they are not afraid, they
are not phobic, after all, but they are secure in
their wrong headed beliefs and their conviction that
they don't have anything to learn about us. They
wallow). There was no place to hide from bad
decisions and transparent bigotry that passes as just
the way it is.
From that came the active
and moral support that is often there just when it
has gotten to you, but hopefully not fatally. And it
brought the people who would benefit out of the
shadows of the theoretical and fleshed them out as
real people.
Sometimes I know I go on.
Count it as therapy. The computer is my freudean
couch. And, if you take the time to wade through my
emails that are reproduced here (on what is NOT my
page as I can't get the principal to understand!),
you the psyciatrist. So, thank you for the sessions.
And thank you, GayOKC.com,
for keeping the community informed globally, letting
those of us who need to inform the community of
things happening, and what they are doing locally.
Joe Quigley
You're welcome
& thank you! It's been an honor. (Joe Quigley is still
a teacher at NW Classen High School.)
Four years ago I
barely knew what HTML meant though I could understand
enough to log on to a terminal. To help with managing
screens I had to keep in my mind the analogy of the
forward and backward functions of the keyboard
commands as being similar to the pages of a book. As
with most manual and mental skills not instinctive or
genetic, practice makes perfect and today I'm owner/moderator
of two discussion e-lists, Sooner_demolist@yahoogroups.com, and oglpc@yahoogroups.com (the OGLPC Discussion
List), that for me are important venues for the
exchange of information and ideas relating to
politics, gay news, science, religion, and other
minority issues, to name a few areas of interest. All
this is possible through the connectedness provided
by the Internet, an invention considered by some to
be the equivalent in the area of communication to the
development of movable type in 1500's.
Both these forms of communication, print and
Internet, though dissimilar in operation, share the
same status as targets for censorship. There is the
quip that free speech belongs only to those who own a
printing press, with the Gaylord dynasty being the
classic example in Oklahoma that those who can
control the news also control the information
received by many people and consequently the thoughts
and actions, to some degree, of the readers.
The Daily Oklahoman, fondly nicknamed by me
the Deadly Joke-lahoman, repeatedly ignores or
bowdlerizes news that would benefit and educate the
many minorities, sexual and racial, that live in
Oklahoma, as well as the Joe & Mary Six-Packs. As
we have seen in the triumphal banner decision in
favor of the Cimarron Alliance Foundation, the
subsequent sour-grapes editorial from the Deadly Joke
lamented that now the city will be required to accept
banner themes that reflect minority interests, their
code for queer culture.
The Deadly Joke also ignores the OKC Gay Pride
Festival and Parade by not acknowledging that a crowd
in excess of 10,000 people assembles annually to
watch and march in the Parade, and participate in the
Festival.
However, the explosive spread of the Internet has
laid waste to the mailed fist of the Gaylord clan in
regard to news in general, and in particular, with
GayOKC.com, regarding gay news and events. Rob Abiera
has the digital equivalent of a printing press with
the additional advantage of lightning speed and
direct delivery that leaves print media such as
newspapers far behind in the last century.
No longer is any gay/lesbian or progressive straight
living in Oklahoma or anywhere in the world reliant
on dynastic, homophobic monopolies. We have Rob
Abiera to thank for a website updated regularly with
links to stories and events happening globally, plus
one-stop searching to links of sometimes hard-to-find
political information such as state and Federal
offices and officials, including newspapers and
community services, in short, a nearly all-encompassing
web site. This year he has direct reports from the
Gay Games in Australia, courtesy of Oklahoma's own
TeamOK-USA.
I'm glad Rob is on the gay side of the gay rights
debate-- it would be scary if he went Exodus on us!
Best wishes for the future, Rob.
James Nimmo
Oklahoma City
The flaming-penned
(keyboarded?) Jim Nimmo has become well known for his
editorial and epistolary contributions to many area
publications, traditional and digital, in the past
few years - including, of course, GayOKC.com.
