Organizers from several nonprofit groups and the city of Tulsa’s Human Rights Commission invited queer Tulsans to learn more about their legal rights Thursday night.
A crop of executive orders by President Donald Trump — including one commanding the government to recognize only two sexes — are inciting fear in Tulsa’s LGBTQ+ community. Bills scheduled for Oklahoma’s Statehouse this legislative session targeting trans people are also raising concerns.
Speakers included attorneys specializing in family law, housing discrimination and estate planning. Former Oklahoma State Representative Mauree Turner also made an appearance via video call.
One issue brought up was custodial rights for queer parents.
While Oklahoma law treats all parents equally when it comes to child custody, Chris Brecht, an attorney and former president of Oklahomans for Equality, said individual judges may rule differently from one another.
“There is no presumption against somebody who identifies as LGBTQ+ whenever we’re talking about custodial rights to their children,” Brecht said. “The issue is: we deal with judges, and judges are, by their very nature, people, who can have their own inherent prejudices.”
Brecht advised queer couples with children going through a divorce to find lawyers affirming of the LGBTQ+ community.
Jake Landry, a second-year law student at the University of Tulsa, said the idea for a night to educate the public came to him after the election.
“I woke up the day after the election, when I learned the results, with a lot of uncertainty,” Landry said. “That uncertainty was based on a lack of knowledge.”
Brent Rowland, legal director at the Oklahoma Appleseed Center for Law & Justice, said that kind of uncertainty was palpable among the audience members who attended.
"There has been a slew of executive orders at the federal level that are scary,” Rowland said. “Many people believe that it’s part of a strategy that we see enacted at the federal level to create chaos and confusion, so people don’t have time to act.”
You can watch a replay of the night’s presentations via Oklahomans for Equality’s Facebook page, or down below.