Deeply conservative Oklahoma adjusts to sudden arrival of same-sex marriage

National
By Monica Hesse January 24 at 5:12 PM
monica.hesse@washpost.com
@MonicaHesse

The “polite gays,” was how Tracy and Kathryn described themselves. Not political or loud, not obvious or overt, but understated, in keeping with their Oklahoma surroundings. Never asking anyone to think too hard or talk too much about the fact that they were gay at all. Except now they were about to ask everyone they knew to think about it, because they’d decided to have a wedding.
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Oklahoma. This was a place where Kathryn’s workplace had a cussing jar, a quarter per swear, and the words written on it, “Let Go and Let God.” Here, Christianity was the religion — Tracy and Kathryn were believers — and Oklahoma football was the religion — Tracy and Kathryn were believers — and people could be decent and kind and judgmental, sometimes all at once, which was why, when Tracy told some Rotary Club friends that she and Kathryn were getting married, she kept her eyes planted above their heads so she wouldn’t have to look at their faces.

Tracy and Kathryn had been together for seven years and known each other for 18, but they began worrying about everything in their lives that could be disrupted by this ceremony. They worried about offending people. They worried when Tracy called their top choice for a venue. At first the woman who answered the phone said the location was available, then she asked for the bride’s name — “Kathryn” — and the groom’s name — “Tracy” — and then, when she figured out that Tracy was not a man but a woman, she explained that they didn’t do same-sex weddings and wouldn’t accommodate the party after all.
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Bill Curtis was politically conservative. A retired technical sergeant with the Air National Guard, he thought that things might have been easier before the repeal of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, when someone would know another person was gay but not talk about it. He questioned news polls that said that the majority of Americans supported same-sex marriage. People on the coasts might, he thought, but he wasn’t sure about people in the middle of the country. ... He also thought that his daughter was a good person who deserved to be happy, with the same rights as everyone else, and so he had packed a gray suit and a selection of ties and driven 17 hours with Diana to be at the ceremony.



Kathryn Frazier, center left, marries Tracy Curtis on Jan. 3 at Joy's Tea Palace in Norman, Okla. Sixty people attended the ceremony. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)
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Monica Hesse is a staff writer for the Post Style section. She frequently writes about culture, the Web and the intersection of the two.