Oklahoma district replaces anti-LGBT senator with married lesbian candidate
It’s been good news for the LGBT community in US politics.
As a larger national trend indicates that more and more seats are going to Democratic candidates, it is clear that the anti-LGBT candidates are being replaced by their out and proud competitors.
This is the case in Oklahoma, where a first-time candidate for office gained a victory over an anti-LGBT Republican candidate – beating them by just a 1% margin.
The Oklahoma State Legislature saw Oklahoma Senate District 37 flip from a hard-line anti-LGBT candidate to an out-and-proud married lesbian.
Mental health worker Allison Ilkley-Freeman ran her campaign on a $20,000 budget, and is over the moon to win over the challenging role.
“We knew it wasn’t an easy win,” Allison Ikley-Freeman explained to Tulsa World.
“But I wasn’t looking for an easy win. I was looking for something that could be done with hard work.”
“When we were knocking on doors, so many people said, ‘Thank you. We didn’t know there was an election,’” Ikley-Freeman added.
Republican candidate Dan Newberry resigned from his post in June, and had also expressed that he supported “Christian conservative values,” saying that “traditional marriages and families must be defended” on his official site.
It is clear that Oklahoma needs strong LGBT candidates if it wants to reimpose the protections that have been stripped from the state by the previous legislature.
Earlier this year, an Oklahoma Senate bill previously vowed to strip LGBTQ protections statewide, and an Oklahoma Capitol official belittled LGBTQ students by calling them “cross-dressers.”
