How to Support LGBTQ+ Tulsa When You Don't Live Here

Every few months, Oklahoma passes another piece of legislation that makes national news for the worst reasons, and every few months the same well-meaning message shows up in our inbox from somebody in Chicago or Portland or Brooklyn: "I saw what's happening there. I wish there was something I could do." Darling, there is. There has been the entire time. You just weren't looking for the answer, you were looking for the feeling of having asked, and those are not the same transaction. Here is the actual, specific, checkable-off list of what helps, ranked by how much it actually helps.

You Do Not Need a Tulsa Zip Code to Count

Tulsa's queer community is not a museum exhibit you feel bad about from a distance. It is a working, functioning, occasionally exhausted network of people who show up at the state capitol, run a health clinic on a shoestring, and keep a bakery open after somebody threw a Molotov cocktail through its window. That last part actually happened, at The Donut Hole in Brookside, and we've told the full story in our guide to Tulsa's LGBTQ-owned businesses. None of what this community has built required your zip code to match theirs. It requires your ten dollars, your gift card purchase, and your willingness to hit share instead of just double-tapping and moving on. That's the whole ask. Nobody's asking you to move to Oklahoma.

Donate to Oklahomans for Equality First

If you only do one thing on this list, make it this one. OkEq is the organization we've covered more than any other on this site, from the history of how it got its building to what it actually does day to day, and every time, the throughline is the same: this is real infrastructure serving real people in a state that has made that work harder than it should be. A donation at okeq.org funds the health clinic visits that keep people on HRT, the support groups that keep people from feeling like the only one, and the Equality Center's lights staying on. It is the single most efficient dollar you can send into Tulsa's queer community from anywhere in the country.

Back Freedom Oklahoma, the People Fighting the Legislature

OkEq runs the community center. Freedom Oklahoma runs the fight at the state capitol, tracking and pushing back on the anti-transgender legislation that keeps making Oklahoma national news for reasons nobody here is proud of. If you've read a headline about Oklahoma's legislature targeting trans residents and felt genuinely furious about it, that fury has a direct outlet. Freedom Oklahoma's advocacy work runs on donations from people who will never once set foot in the state capitol building in Oklahoma City, and that's exactly how it's designed to work. You don't need a vote here to fund the people making sure Oklahomans still have rights worth voting to protect.

Buy Gift Cards From Queer-Owned Tulsa Businesses

Here's an honest limitation: nobody can ship you a plate of James Beard-nominated pasta from Il Seme, and your latte from Pony Coffee is not surviving a flight to Brooklyn. What you can do is buy a gift card for the next time you or somebody you love passes through Tulsa, or better yet, gift one to an actual Tulsan in your life and let them enjoy it this weekend. A gift card purchased today is real revenue today, not a symbolic gesture waiting on your next visit. The Donut Hole in Brookside takes phone orders and ships some merchandise; check @thedonuthole for what's currently available. Every dollar into a queer-owned Tulsa business is a dollar Oklahoma's legislature can't touch and can't tax out of existence. Our full LGBTQ+ Business Directory has dozens more, in case three names isn't enough spending money for one guide.

Actually Use Your Feed for Something

Following @tulsagays, @okeqtulsa, and Freedom Oklahoma's social accounts costs you nothing and does nothing on its own. The share button is the part that matters. When OkEq posts about a legislative fight or a fundraiser, when a queer-owned Tulsa business gets targeted the way The Donut Hole was, the algorithm decides how far that reaches based on how many people outside Oklahoma bother to say something about it. Tag a friend. Repost to your story. Leave an actual comment instead of a heart emoji. It is the lowest-effort item on this entire list and it is also the one most people skip, which tells you everything about how most allyship actually gets spent.

Come in October, If You Can

Tulsa Pride now runs in October, and it draws tens of thousands of people who decided that showing up in person, spending a weekend's worth of hotel and restaurant money in this city, was worth more than a donation from a distance. If you've ever wondered whether Tulsa is worth an actual trip, we wrote the entire travel guide to answer that question, and the short version is yes. Bodies in the room at a Pride festival, dollars spent at queer-owned restaurants while you're here, that's support too, and it comes with a genuinely good weekend attached.

What Not to Do

Don't post a black square and call it a day. Don't send a DM to a Tulsa organization asking them to explain the political situation to you when Google and this website both already have (start with our honest answer on Oklahoma's safety). Don't assume Tulsa's queer community needs your sympathy more than it needs your ten dollars, because it doesn't, and being pitied from a distance gets old fast when you're the one running the health clinic on a Tuesday. Support here looks like a receipt, a shared post, or a donation confirmation email. Everything else is just noise with good intentions attached.

Tulsa's queer community has been building something real here for 45 years, mostly without anyone outside the state paying attention. You don't have to move here to change that. You just have to send the ten dollars, buy the gift card, and hit share the next time it actually matters.