I've never seen a Confederate flag in California, and haven't really encountered any noticeable prejudice from small town / rural Californians in my travails through Northern California. Nothing like Oklahoma.
Are you in an interracial relationship? I grew up in a small town in Illinois so I know what rural towns are like. I've definitely walked into bars and restaurants in rural Northern California and have had the entire place stare at us while we got seated. Felt exactly like rural Illinois.
I have family members who are openly gay and I know places in Northern California I would _never_ take them.
I also know of areas around the North along the coast where you can end up in a fist fight if you're an outsider especially from the Bay Area. That's less a red vs blue thing and more of a "I don't want outsiders in my town" vibe.
If you go where the tourists aren't going you'll encounter some interesting things.
No, I'm not in an interracial relationship and not gay either. I do look Muslim though.
I'm sure there are places like this in NorCal, as you attest, and I haven't encountered them because I go mostly to the places where tourists go (while I tend to avoid the most popular tourist destinations in the state, my travels have still been for camping purposes, which means the places I go to are not strangers to outsiders).
But the mere fact that I can live and travel in the state without encountering this kind of stuff is precisely the point. In Oklahoma, there is prejudice anywhere you go, even the towns and cities.
(In fact, the main group of people in Oklahoma whom I remember being inclusive towards me were actually rural / very-small-town farmers)
And when did you make this move? OKC has been undergoing a renascence of sorts over the last decade and barely resembles the rest of the state. The tech scene is really taking off and diversity is expanding rather rapidly. There are a lot of great people working hard to make a difference here and just because you like one place over another doesn't mean that other place has to be bad, it is fine to just be different.
I ask this out of genuine curiosity since I can't pick a definitive meaning: outing options? Is that ability to go somewhere or the ability to be publicly gay? My confusion is the first two adjectives tend to imply not pro-gay.
I guarantee that if I spent more than one week in Oklahoma or Kansas, I would get into a terrible political argument with the locals. I can only bite my tongue for so long.
If you're religious, right-wing, and don't care about having outing options, then Oklahoma is the place for you.