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It took that long to move freely in a world of secrets, to get beyond bars and into living rooms, businesses and minds. The following series of stories, written collaboratively, seeks to put months of watching, several hundred hours of taped interviews and the lives of several hundred gay Oklahomans into focus. Some gays shared their secret on the condition it go no farther.

For that reason, many sources are referred to by initials or by a business affiliation. In this, the first of a series, the status of gays in Oklahoma is examined. Once the most invisible of minorities, Oklahoma's homosexuals are tentatively pushing open their closet doors and, to use their own phrase, "coming out.

Young and old, rich and poor, professional and blue collar and gays are all these things the community is colonizing certain sections of Oklahoma City, Tulsa and to some extent the smaller cities in the state. A northside apartment complex is called "The Foo-Foo Hilton" because so many gays live there. Gays are operating bars, nightclubs and small businesses.

They have founded their own church. They are some of Oklahoma's doctors, lawyers, artists, construction workers and businessmen. One national publication recently reported that Oklahoma City has "a thriving lesbian community.

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An exaggeration perhaps, but the statement is indicative of a growing gay presence, which gays contend is about 80, in the Oklahoma City metropolitan area andstatewide. Gays cite the latest research, a Kinsey survey that indicates 10 percent of any given group is gay. Others, and gays themselves, put the figure closer to one in six.

It's true! Gay leaders say 1 or 2 percent of gays are actually "out. But although the percentage of homosexuals in the population may have remained constant throughout history, a position the Kinsey research seems to support, the other figure the out is definitely growing in Oklahoma.

While gay members of their closed community have greeted the movement with an "It's about time" philosophy, the increased openness of gays has spawned community backlash and resentment in some sectors of new society. Having reached what one gay called "the point of no tolerance," many are banding together, tentatively but with growing awareness and strength, to tell Oklahoma they are here, they are carrying their own weight, they are paying taxes, they are voting, and, because they like it here, they are planning to stay.

For some, the cities of Oklahoma are only a stopping place, a resting point on the road to cities with more open, and more visible, gay populations. Unquestionably, many gays in the cities are only marking time But there are a significant number of gays who, zipperz fled what they considered the repressive and stultifying atmosphere of conservative Oklahoma, are coming home.

They have come home for the same reasons as anyone else: better jobs, family, lifelong friends, safe streets. They have returned because the living is good in Oklahoma. For the majority of gays, the struggle is a lonely one: They must first fight the battle within themselves to face the truth about their sexual orientation, which brings the excruciating decision york to come out and if so, when and to whom.

I like the way I am," said a club lesbian who lives in Texas County. Perhaps, just like any progression of society, it is the younger generation who will find the going easier. Many older gays are ashamed of being gay.