Faces of Pride
“Mary and Sharon Bishop-Baldwin met while working as editors for The Tulsa World newspaper. They fell in love, and held a commitment ceremony in Florida in 2000.
‘We have always been a married couple, unified in all of the ways in what marriage means,’ said Sharon Bishop-Baldwin.”
Check out their 2016 Badass Ladies profile for more!
Kate Hart: I love Arkansas, where I currently live, but being a bisexual feminist in a red state is difficult. “Move somewhere else” is a frequent suggestion and one I can only assume you’ve heard as well – how do you respond to that? What makes you stay in Oklahoma when it can seem like such a hostile place to live?
Sharon Bishop-Baldwin: “Oklahoma belongs to us as much as it does to any of our detractors, and maybe even more so. Why should WE leave? Maybe THEY need to leave. As corny as our state song - “Oklahoma!” - might be, its sentiment resonates with me: “We know we belong to the land / And the land we belong to is grand…” For all of its problems, I prefer to look at Oklahoma through the lens of its promise. I don’t want to leave. I want to stay here and fix what’s wrong.”
Mary Baldwin-Bishop: “Oklahoma is our home. I’m a sixth-generation Oklahoman, and Sharon is at least a fourth-generation Oklahoman. Every Memorial Day weekend, Sharon and I drive all over eastern Oklahoma - from as far north as Barnsdall in Osage County to as far south as Wapanucka in Johnston County - to decorate family graves. We won’t be run off. We will stay here and make Oklahoma better.”
- Sharon Bishop-Baldwin and Mary Baldwin-Bishop, plaintiffs in Baldwin v United States, the case that brought marriage equality to Oklahoma. Learn more about their ten-year legal battle in their Badass Ladies You Should Know profile!
(image: Sharon and Mary accept the inaugural Oklahoma Changing World Prize from the Woody Guthrie Center in October 2015.)
(Source: katehart.net)
Neither when the national LGBT groups met with us and encouraged us to drop our case nor when the courts dragged on and on did we even consider quitting. Dropping the lawsuit after we received some initial unfavorable rulings on standing or when the calendar pages kept turning without any action would have been the same as saying to the people of Oklahoma: “You were right when you voted for State Question 711. We aren’t equal to straight people, and we don’t deserve equal rights. What were we thinking? Please forgive us, and we’ll just go back into our closets and stay second-class citizens. Nevermind.” No. We’re too bull-headed to have backed down when we knew we were in the right.— Mary Baldwin-Bishop and her wife Sharon Bishop-Baldwin share the story of their ten-year battle for marriage equality
(Source: katehart.net)
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![How did a shared love of grammar lead to marriage equality in Oklahoma? Find out in this week’s Badass Ladies You Should Know profile!
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[[MORE]]Wedding picture with Badass Ladies logo and interview quote:
“Our relationship,...](https://66.media.tumblr.com/c0d98337f58ef8d3e11e25f92930357b/tumblr_o1n00e5wak1u0p1p3o1_1280.jpg)
How did a shared love of grammar lead to marriage equality in Oklahoma? Find out in this week’s Badass Ladies You Should Know profile!
(image text under cut)
(Source: katehart.net)
We also know that we didn’t start this movement toward equality. We have been standing on the shoulders of so many brave people who opened their own closet doors at times when it wasn’t so safe to do so. Those people took great risks - and many lost not only their legal cases but also their jobs, their livelihoods and even their lives for doing so. Without the foundation they built, we could not have done what we did, and we would not be where we are now.— Mary Bishop-Baldwin, on winning a ten-year legal battle for marriage equality with her wife, Sharon Baldwin-Bishop
(Source: katehart.net)
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Badass Ladies You Should Know:
Sharon Bishop-Baldwin and Mary Baldwin-Bishop
There’s no better way to kick off 2016 than with the first Badass Ladies profile to make me cry: Meet Sharon Bishop-Baldwin and Mary Baldwin-Bishop, two of the plaintiffs that brought marriage equality to Oklahoma.
Both current/former editors at the Tulsa World, they’ve received numerous awards for their perseverance during the ten-year legal battle, including the inaugural Woody Guthrie Center Oklahoma Changing World Prize 2015, the 2015 Newsmakers Award from the Tulsa Chapter of the Association for Women in Communications, the YWCA of Tulsa’s 2015 Woman of the Year (Mary nominated Sharon!), Oklahoma Magazine’s 2014 Oklahomans of the Year, the Oklahoma Universal Human Rights Alliance’s 2014 Outstanding Human Rights Achievement, the ACLU Oklahoma Chapter’s 2013 Angie Debo Civil Libertarians of the Year, and the 2010 Oklahomans For Equality Community Hero Award.
In addition, they were grand marshals for Pride Parades in Tulsa 2013 and Oklahoma City 2014, and in April 2016, they’ll be the inaugural recipients of the University of Oklahoma Women and Gender Studies Program’s Courage Award.
Mary and Sharon come from long lines of Oklahomans, as do I (my mom went to high school in Tulsa with Sharon’s sister, and kindly connected us for this interview). It’s an honor to share this historic story from my home state, and to learn from their persistence, strength, and undeniable badassery.
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