22: Labor Organizing

“SEIU Local 503… quickly became an important center of resistance. Local 503 was a huge and lively union with a big political agenda and a membership of 20,000. Measure 9 mandated the dismissal of any of them who were openly gay or even sympathetic to gay rights.” 

~ Out In The Union: A Labor History Of Queer America 

Miriam Frank’s 2014 book, Out In The Union: A Labor History Of Queer America, profiles the No on 9 campaign in a section titled “Busting Bigotry in Oregon.” It includes the role of Alice Dale, Executive Director of SEIU Local 503, the Oregon Public Employees Union (SEIU 503/OPEU), in recruiting other labor unions to oppose Measure 9. 

The public employee unions were “obvious partners” – AFT, AFSCME, and NEA all joined the No on 9 coalition. Affiliates of Communication Workers, Postal Workers, and Teamsters joined too. Manufacturing, construction, and maritime industry locals stayed neutral – but not a single union endorsed the Yes on 9 campaign. (Read Anne Sweet’s story about being loaned by her employer to the No on 9 campaign and her activism in Communication Workers of America.) 

“Passage of Measure 9 would create a climate of intolerance, and could result in chilling business trade with other states, reducing the number of out-of-state visitors and tourists. Jobs would be lost. Oregon doesn’t need such negative publicity and we can’t afford it.”

Oregon AFL-CIO

“Labor’s role in defending the civil rights of all LGBT workers was disproportionate to the number of Oregonians who were actual union members,” writes Frank. “But the labor unions’ influence among working families in Oregon’s socially conservative interior regions was substantial. There, unions were essential to the economy of communities, and their advocacy of an issue was more likely to be trusted than messages from less familiar political sources.” 

Frank notes that in the same year in which we defeated Measure 9, “Gay organizations and unions fail[ed] to coalesce” in Colorado, where voters approved a similar anti-gay measure by 53 percent. 

Today, in 2022, SEIU 503/OPEU membership has grown to 65,000. Current Executive Director Melissa Unger says, “We led on Measure 9 because it was an attack on workers. Every worker needs the right to feel safe at work. If Measure 9 had passed, it would have excluded our gay and lesbian staff from rights held by all other workers. The courage of our member leaders and our organization in taking that stand has impacted our union to this day.”

“We were clear about our values – that being in a union is about more than just wages and benefits, but also about safety, respect, and protection for every worker, no matter where you come from, your gender identity, or your race. This set the stage for us to continue to partner with Basic Rights Oregon and to take stands, like our union did on Black Lives Matter, nearly 30 years later.” 

Melissa Unger, SEIU 503/OPEU Executive Director

Opposing the Nullification of Rights

Thirty years ago, for SEIU 503/ OPEU, the fight was personal. The first statewide anti-gay campaign launched by the Oregon Citizens Alliance (OCA) – 1988’s successful Measure 8 – was inspired, in part, by a SEIU collective bargaining victory. 

Ann Montague, at the time a clerical worker at Oregon State University, says, “It’s important to understand what led up to SEIU 503 going all out and fighting to reject Measure 9. We could have been a union that just ‘sat this one out.’” 

Ann says “the beginning, in terms of SEIU 503, was centered around 1986-87 bargaining. A  group of lesbians who were union members at Oregon State University and the University of Oregon met and discussed the fact that we needed to add ‘sexual orientation’ to Article 22, the non-discrimination section of our contract. We started getting signatures in our workplaces, which meant talking to coworkers about our issues and organizing around bargaining. At this time we did not know Beckie Capoferri and Bob Ralphs at Dammasch. It turned out, they were doing the same thing.”  

Bob chaired Local 503’s sub-local at Dammasch psychiatric hospital where Beckie was also a union officer. Beckie told Out in the Union, “We had gay members throughout the unit, and our Executive Council was mostly queer. As far as noneconomic terms were concerned, that Article 22 issue had more interest than any other item.”  

“My guess is that union staff were letting gays they knew across the state know what was happening,” Ann says. “When we all took the signatures to the Bargaining Conference we had more signatures than any other issue. I remember our executive director, Alice Dale commenting on the huge number and saying, ‘Well, this is definitely going on the bargaining table.’ She called for the vote and it passed.” 

After a rolling strike centered on comparable worth demands, SEIU 503/OPEU won a new contract that included the ban on discrimination based on sexual orientation, “an innovation that set the pace for the rest of the state’s workforce,” according to Out in the Union. It led to the Governor’s Executive Order extending this same protection to executive branch employees – which is what was overturned by passage of Measure 8. 

The idea that worker rights, established through collective bargaining, could be nullified by popular vote, was not one that SEIU 503/OPEU was willing to let stand. 

They implemented a training program for shop stewards on discrimination in the workplace, led by Ann Montague and the gay and lesbian caucus. The importance of such training is illustrated the experiences of Oregon Tradeswomen leader Connie Ashbrook, recounted in Out In The Union. Connie came out at work in the elevator construction industry “merely by displaying a ‘No on 9’ bumper sticker on her lunchbox. She told her union business agent that the measure would harm her personally. He said he already knew. Then he made some sort of joke. ‘Well, I always said, you can’t knock something unless you’ve tried it, and I’m not about to try it.’” 

Ann remembers “How To Fight Homophobia In The Workplace,” their stewards training on homophobia, as a first-in-the-nation and a great success. “We were quite nervous when we first gave the training at a huge Stewards Conference,” she says. “We said from the beginning this was not to be a ‘touchy feely, get in touch with your homophobia’ session. We gathered actual situations of discrimination in a variety of  workplaces. And the stewards discussed what they would do. Was it a grievance? Or a worksite action? Could they do anything to assist? What had the steward done wrong or right?” (Learn more about the training.)

This, in Ann’s view, is what made SEIU 503 “ready to mobilize our union in the fight” against Measure 9.

“Our timing on the stewards training proved to be just right,” Ann told Miriam Frank. “Had the educational work not been done over the previous year, I doubt that our union would have been ready to oppose Measure 9 as aggressively as we did.” 

In addition to leading the No on 9 Labor Coalition and ensuring SEIU 503/OPEU and other locals contributed financially to the campaign, Alice Dale assigned Beckie Capoferri to work full-time on No on 9. Beckie wrote up what they learned for the NGLTF Fight the Right Action Kit; read it here. As one example of the impact of the strategic organizing she supported, she told Miriam Frank about the coaching she provided to a member of a local that was hesitant to oppose Measure 9. The steps they took led to a No on 9 endorsement and a financial contribution, and “was the beginning of new leadership for that local….Now they’re a union that’s organizing.” 

“Proud To Be Out & Loud In My Union”

Robert Doyle reached out to No on 9 Remembered to share his story:  

“I moved to Oregon to take a job with the state OSHA. I got involved with the SEIU local that represented state employees and I met Becky Capoferri and Renee DeLapp. Becky had organized Pride At Work, the LGBT labor coalition. I became involved with the political action committee in the SEIU local, and our Pride At Work chapter made a presentation at the endorsement convention of the local.  

“We assembled packets of information for the delegates attending. We got pink stickers and placed them on selected delegate packets, roughly 15 percent of the delegates. We were given a few minutes to talk about LGBT rights and Measure 9. We explained that LGBT people have always been part of the labor movement but the labor movement had not always been there for us. We then talked about Measure 9 and the impact on LGBT union members. At that point we asked everyone who had a pink sticker on their packet to stand up. We explained that with the passage of Measure 9, they just lost their jobs and were labeled as sick perverts. After the presentation the local enthusiastically came out against Measure 9.  

“I was the labor representative on the Campaign steering committee. With the support of SEIU and other unions, I spoke with the director of the Oregon AFL-CIO and asked him to come out against Measure 9. He said that many members supported the measure and didn’t want to endorse. I told him that we LGBT union members were paying dues and reminded him of the doctrine of the duty of fair representation. I told him that Pride At Work would be picketing the Oregon AFL-CIO headquarters if he didn’t do the right thing. He finally agreed to come out against Measure 9 and to encourage members to vote No on 9. That opposition to Measure 9 was announced in the next newsletter, mailed to every local and every member in Oregon.  

“Meeting and working with Beckie Capoferri and Renee DeLapp was one of the best experiences in my life. I was so proud to be out and loud in my union.”

Challenging Times Then & Now

Len Norwitz, presently a Political and Electoral Strategist for SEIU Local 503, was on their external organizing staff and loaned out to the 1994 version of the No on 9 campaign. A past staff member at Western States Center, he remembers that “the early ’90’s had SEIU supporting the farmworker union PCUN, helping defend against the LGBTQ attacks, and jumping in against anti-choice efforts. The leadership and membership – like many folks in Oregon – were tested to get out of their comfort zones, for sure.  Those were challenging times.”  

As to how the collective effort to defeat the anti-LGBT attack prevailed? Len says, “Great story telling and strategic, relational conversations won the day and continue to … so in that sense nothing new – and still what’s needed in these contentious and factional times.”   

“We must learn from those who came before us, and pick up the torch to continue the fight to dismantle oppression against our community. Today this includes organizing against assaults on Trans rights and gender-affirming care, the removal of trans youth from their families, the attempted erasure of queer folks in schools and elsewhere, trans/non-binary folks being left out of conversations around reproductive rights, the disproportionate impacts of these attacks on Black and Brown Queer folks, the looming threat of marriage equality being overturned, and more.”

SEIU 503 field organizer Francesca Edmonds 

More on Organized Labor on This Site

• Organizing Organized Labor, Beckie Capoferri’s section in the NGLTF’s 1993 Fight the Right Action Kit. 
• Anne Sweet’s story about her activism in Communication Workers of America, and being loaned by her employer to the No on 9 campaign. 
• PCUN Union Hall, the story of how Oregon’s farmworkers’ union took a courageous stand for LGBTQ Oregonians, setting in motion one of the most durable legacies of Ballot Measure 9. 
• Bigot Busters, the story of SEIU 503/OPEU leader Bob Ralphs’ efforts to dissuade Oregonians from signing bigoted initiative petitions; many union members volunteered with Bigot Busters on the weekends. Participant Robert Doyle, a labor activist, says “It didn’t keep Measure 9 off the ballot but it was clear that directly challenging the lies and misinformation changed minds. We have to be out, loud and proud about our democracy and equality.” 

More on Oregon’s LGBTQ Labor History  

• “We Are Union Builders Too: Oregon Union Tackles Discrimination Based On Sexual Orientation” by Ann Montague, Labor Research Review #20 (1993) 
• “Nine Days That Shook Oregon” by Ann Montague (originally published 1988, reprinted in Labor Standard 2017) 
• Out In The Union: A Labor History Of Queer America, by Miriam Frank (2014) 

As they say on The Moth Radio Hour, “Moth stories are true as remembered and affirmed by the storyteller.”  Read more about the benefits and challenges of historical memory.  

Sarah Stephens moved to Portland from Los Angeles, where she’d worked for the Hollywood Women’s Political Caucus – “a very big powerful Political Action Committee at the time,” she says, “all the big names: Jane Fonda, Faye Dunaway, Barbara Streisand, Roseanne Barr.” 

They had hired her because of her prior work on Central American issues. “Many of the housekeepers of the women involved had fled as refugees from Central America. The Caucus used its celebrity power to raise money for Central America solidarity work through big benefit concerts and houseparties that I helped organize,” Sarah says.

Coming out of that, she had no idea what she would do once she got to Portland. But Jeff Malachowsky, Western States Center executive director at the time and a member of the campaign steering committee, encouraged her to work on No on 9. “I got hired to do celebrity outreach, or whatever it was called,” Sarah remembers. “I didn’t feel welcome; the atmosphere was toxic and crazy. It scared me and I didn’t have any idea how to plug in. But I made two of my best friends in the world – Scot Nakagawa and Jack [then going by Linda Shirley].”

“We tried to figure out, how do we connect this incredibly outrageous story, of the Oregon Citizens Alliance, with the rest of the world?” 

Sarah Stephens, co-founder, Artists for a Hate Free America

The gay filmmaker Gus Van Sant was based in Portland, the setting for his acclaimed indie movie Drugstore Cowboy. My Own Private Idaho, starring Keanu Reeves and River Phoenix, had recently been released. “Scot was a key validator” when it came to making the case for the stakes in Oregon, Sarah says, and “Gus adored Scot.” 

“Gus brilliantly used his name and influence in just the right ways to make it a very hip thing, and to make Oregon matter,” Sarah says. 

Sarah and Scot worked with Gus and Portland-based concert promoter and producer Chris Monlux to organize a Hollywood houseparty for No on 9, attended by Lily Tomlin, Roseanne, Faye Dunaway and “a whole ton of other celebrities,” Sarah remembers.

“I knew how to make it work in Hollywood and could connect the dots. The No on 9 campaign leadership was there; it was surreal – worlds colliding! – but it was great. We raised some money, but more importantly, the story became national. It was a New York Times story, that Hollywood was outraged and up in arms.” 

One person in attendance was Danny Goldberg, the President of Gold Mountain Records, the grunge/alt label of Atlantic Records at the time. Danny was also the manager of Nirvana. Sarah and Scot pitched him on doing a benefit concert featuring the band.  

Held at the Portland racetrack, the concert drew 6,000 fans which The Oregonian reported was “roughly half of what the promoters initially thought the show might sell.” 

“Master of ceremonies for the four-band concert was Jello Biafra, former singer for the Dead Kennedys, currently a touring political firebrand and ‘spoken-word artist.’ Biafra used his soapbox to warn of ‘Christian supremacists’ who would ‘peep into your windows the next time you want to smell some teen spirit,’” The Oregonian wrote. Panning Nirvana’s performance, the critic noted, “the event did seem to be a somewhat effective forum to get young voters to pay attention to Ballot Measure 9. And some of the bands made sure to urge voter registration.” 

The t-shirt from the event has become a collector’s item, as have the kitschy Tom Peterson watches Scot and Sarah gifted the band. 

Sarah still has a poster on her wall from another facet of No on 9 artists’ involvement. Produced by members of the design community and featuring a 1937 photo of silhouettes of dancers, it reads, “If you’ve ever known love, vote against hate. No on 9.” 

Artists for a Hate Free America 

“The New York Times piece for the event in Hollywood made me realize there was a future for an organization that engaged artists and entertainers in anti-hate work,” Sarah says. 

After Measure 9 was defeated, she and Scot, with Gus Van Sant and Chris Monlux, regrouped and began to envision Artists for a Hate Free America (AHFA). Jeff Malachowsky and Western States Center co-founder Cynthia Guyer were also early board members, along with Sharon Gelman, the founding executive director of Artists for a New South Africa, which had formed in 1989. 

“It was a lot of beating the bushes, pulling threads, trying to figure out who knows who, going back to my Central America solidarity work with Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Brown, Melissa Etheridge,” Sarah says. “I had some friends from those days – band managers for groups like Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Beastie Boys. I went back and beat all those bushes.” 

Over its six-year run, AHFA worked with musicians like Michael Stipe/REM, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, Hole, Ice T, Ani DiFranco, Neil Young, and Sarah McLaughlin, and hosted the movie premieres of Basketball Diaries and Even Cowgirls Get the Blues. 

“We succeeded at reaching top-tier artists and getting them engaged,” Sarah says. “It was an amazing effort – the result of many people working very hard and using their connections for the cause.”

Sarah remembers an AHFA concert in Charlotte, NC for Harvey Gant who was challenging U.S. Senator Jesse Helms. “It was Pearl Jam, Gloria Steinem, and 30,000 drunken frat guys. They listened to Gloria only because Eddie Vedder had his arm around her.” 

“For the artists and for us, the message was framed by what the Right was doing, a response to the Religious Right. We wanted to convey that this is just the beginning. They’re going after a lot more than gay rights – immigration, race, gender. The only way to fight them is if we’re all in this together. That really resonated with the artists. More privately, it was about the white power skinhead Aryan Nations crazy shit in the Pacific Northwest and that these audiences were so susceptible. Most of the bands we worked with were straight white boys.” 

Sarah Stephens

AHFA produced extensive materials – Voter Guides for events and shows and their newsletter, Hate Watch, distributed to their artists – and publicized the work of grassroots anti-hate groups around the country. Sarah had hoped to go one step further, to fund field work; despite trying every angle, with industry barriers, “it proved to be very difficult,” she says.

“Our strategy was to get a percent of the take at concerts and be funded by the record labels. We had successes – Pearl Jam put our logo on their CD cover. Beastie Boys gave us a percentage. But not the institutional change in the industry needed to fund more work on the ground.”

It was fun to come across an Artists for a Hate Free America Voters Guide in the Museum of Pop Culture. But the museum fell prey to pop culture’s prevailing infatuation with celebrity culture. Its curatorial notes proclaim: “Artists for a Hate Free America was founded in 1993 after a group of American musicians successfully worked together to defeat anti-gay Prop 9 in Oregon.” 

Musicians and celebrities did get involved, adding their voices to the thousands of volunteers, the dozens of full-time campaigners, and the countless unnamed Oregonians who defeated Measure 9. 

As they say on The Moth Radio Hour, “Moth stories are true as remembered and affirmed by the storyteller.”  Read more about the benefits and challenges of historical memory.  

“I was singing with the Portland Lesbian Choir at the time, and remember tours that we did to small towns in southern Oregon. We went with the Portland Gay Men’s Chorus. We were instructed not to walk around the towns after dark, or to go out by ourselves at any time of day,” Reid Vanderburgh recalls. 

“We were picketed in Coos Bay. The picketers came in to the concert and sat as far from the stage as they possibly could. They held up Yes on 9 signs. They were trying to disrupt us and disrupt our cohesion as a chorus, but it didn’t work. By the end of the concert, some of them had put their signs down, and they didn’t pick them up again when we left,” says Reid. “I believe we changed some hearts and minds through our music.” 

Gary Coleman, a founding member of Portland Gay Men’s Chorus, says of that Coos Bay performance, “I saw people put down their signs during the concert. I saw some people leave during the concert, I saw some people stay, and some who were in tears, and actually thanked us for the concert.” 

“You can’t expect everyone to be instantly transformed. It’s not about that, but it’s about that visibility that’s consistent, and the message of love – which is what we always sing about – that cuts through. The power of music in itself cuts through. It resonates in here [the heart], not just the words, but the impact of the music, of the sound.”

Gary Coleman, Founding Member, Portland Gay Men’s Chorus

We Sing Out!

The trip to Coos Bay was part of the We Sing Out! tour performed jointly by the Portland Lesbian Choir (PLC) and Portland Gay Men’s Chorus (PGMC), visiting Southern Oregon towns and other communities not known for being gay friendly. “We had threats along the way, and had police follow us several places and escort us around,” Gary says.

While PGMC had done outreach performances before, for PLC, these road trips in protest of the ballot measures were the first time they had performed outside of Portland. Reid says, “the group cohesiveness in the Choir and in PGMC at that time was so powerful that people weren’t afraid for their individual safety, because we were a powerful group. Yes, we had those people picketing in Coos Bay, but we way outnumbered them. We weren’t afraid of them.” 

“We were on buses on that particular tour,” Reid remembers. “We were given instructions that I imagine matched what the Freedom Riders were told back in the ‘60s: Don’t walk around by yourself. Don’t go out after dark. Don’t do anything in groups smaller than about four. Be really careful, be really vigilant; pay attention to your surroundings and who’s around you. We were given that instruction very explicitly. I have a feeling that it was a similar instruction that would be given to the Freedom Riders, because the danger is from similar kinds of people – people who have these ideas of what certain kinds of people are like. They want nothing to do with those people; they want to restrict those people. In this case, it was the gay community that was targeted.”

Visibility! Visibility! Visibility! 

Gary provides some historical context for the timeframe around the Sing Out tour: “In January of ‘92 we were given the Metropolitan Human Relations Commission award for our work in diversity throughout the state. Then in March of ‘92 we did a mid-Valley tour to Corvallis and Eugene, then we sang at Artquake, and then we sang at the National Community Policing Convention in Portland. And then, right after we came back from the Sing Out tour, we sang at the Anne Frank World Exhibit, and then we sang in the Meier & Frank parade. 

“What that says is that no matter where we sing, we are who we are. The impact is that simple. It’s much like Harvey Milk said: Come out, come out, come out so they know who you are. If they don’t know who you are, you’re this thing they’ll make up,” says Gary. “But at that time, when we’re being attacked and called pedophiles, and sadomasochists, and all the other stuff they attached to us at the time – it really required courage to continue to do that.” 

Gary Coleman

“I just wanted to let everybody know that I was just a normal human being, that I didn’t have horns, that I didn’t chase all the boys – you know all those perceptions,” says longtime PGMC member Greg Friesen. “I’m just a normal man who loves to sing in a chorus. My family are rightwing conservatives. But they look at me and see a normal man doing normal things like singing in a choir. I also do some square dancing; as a teacher, I got awards – all of that sort of stuff. That’s really primary for me – that humanizing function that the Chorus helps with – at a time when there was all that talk that we’re all demon pedophiles.” 

“It was one of the reasons we chose putting Gay in our name – whether they came to our concert or not, they were going to see the word,” says Gary. Quoting longtime PGMC leader Steve Fulmer – “As Fulmer used to say: Who could be afraid of a bunch of singers?” 

PGMC established a practice of inviting those who protested and picketed their shows to “Come in and listen!” as Greg says. “As long as they didn’t make a stir, we didn’t shy away from that, or make them wrong per se, even though we might disagree with their position,” says Gary. 

Gary describes one of these experiences in the Southern Oregon Rogue Valley Community College: “They had a new chorus there, and we were going to go support it. There was somebody with flyers, passing them out to people about us burning in hell and all that sort of stuff. We invited them to come in, and they came in and sat at the back. As we sang and as we listened to the other chorus sing, we saw this person moved – to tears. At the end they left their stack of pamphlets there, left without them and did not distribute them any further, didn’t have any after-protest.” 

What Kept Us Going 

“The Chorus was a place that just kept us going through all of those years,” says Gary, reflecting over the AIDS crisis and the years of ballot measure attacks. 

“Our first death was in 1983,” Gary remembers. And then we started singing memorial services. We sang The Rose, service after service after service after service. I cry every time I sing it; even today, I still do. 

“Two other things happened at the same time. We started seeing our friends die in front of us in ways that I will never forget. We were at Benson High School and [a Chorus member] came in. We hadn’t seen him in a few months and he was just shriveled away, and I barely recognized him. At the same time there were protesters at the front door, bible thumping and telling us we were going to hell. And we were confronting that.  

“As our friends continued to die, we got bomb threats. We were picketed at many locations. All of that was going on. The thing that kept me sane during that time was the Chorus. It was the place I could rejuvenate for the work that we had ahead of us. It was just a place that just kept us going.” 

For Greg, who had grown up in a conservative evangelical home in Southern Oregon and had to be closeted, working as an elementary school teacher, the Chorus “was my way to let myself be me. I could never be myself when I was home – I had nobody to relate to. But with the Chorus, I could always count on friends being there on Monday night. You could let your hair down. I could drop all of my little defenses and shields. It was so different than going out on Saturday night to a gay bar, because that was always, you know, a little drinking, a little sniffing – party, party, party! This was just a normal, everyday, walk in, see your friends, say hi – nothing fabricated. It was just friends getting together to sing. The singing was so cathartic.”  

That was especially true during the OCA ballot measures. Greg says, “As soon as I saw that this stuff was coming out, all of a sudden, I got this gut wrenching feeling in my stomach. I’d been used to prejudice, but this was the first time that I had ever experienced a highly organized absolute hate campaign against me. It put knots into my stomach.” 

“It just really helped going to the Chorus. I was with my species, you know, my kind. We could commiserate together, and oh, not laugh about it, but make our jokes, and do whatever it took to make us feel like we were not spit on the bottom of somebody’s shoe.”

Greg Friesen

The same was true for members of the Portland Lesbian Choir. “Being part of the PLC was incredibly powerful,” Reid says. “Incredibly powerful. I found a journal entry of mine from 1986, in early October, where I was just beside myself, having found PLC. I thought, this day I did something extremely important for myself. That group gave me a reason to exist for the next nine years, until I finally realized I was trans. The center of my life was that organization. 

“It was the center of a lot of our lives. It was just the most important thing – because there’s something about choral singing. There’s a reason why it originated in churches in spiritual traditions, because there’s a huge power in converging on a single note in unison. It makes really overt, the interconnection between people. It’s so powerful. So to do that within a gay or a lesbian context, it just creates this huge sense of community that I’ve never found equaled in any other aspect of gay and lesbian community that I’ve participated in. And it spills over into the audience experience. So it brings the audience a glimpse of that same interconnection. 

“With the OCA attack on our community, the choir members drew even closer together, if that’s possible,” says Reid. 

Read more of Reid’s recollections as the only member of PLC to go on to sing with PGMC and of Gary and Greg’s conversation with No on 9 Remembered. 

More Tales from the Road 

Originally, the Sing Out tour was scheduled to perform in Medford, with a Catholic Church offering to host them. Then, Reid says, “the folks associated with that space wanted to look at the lyrics of the songs we were going to perform; they took exception to the lyrics of ‘Everything Possible’ – ‘You can be anybody that you want to be, you can love whomever you will. You can travel any country where your heart leads and know I will love you still. You can live by yourself, you can gather friends around, you can choose one special one. And the only measure of your words and your deeds is the love you leave behind when you’re done.’  

“Basically it’s reassuring a small child you can be whoever you are. They thought that was a terrible message to send to a child.”  

The host church also asked the choruses to drop the words “Lesbian” and “Gay” from their names. Choir member Mary Larsen told Pat Young this went “against every reason why we were going down there. We were going down there to be a presence and to be out and honest and open… and they wanted us to be something we weren’t, so we had to decline going down there.” 

Two years later, in the next statewide OCA ballot measure fight, No on 13, “a small church stepped up and offered to host the concert; congregants hosted many of the singers,” Reid remembers. “Our host family told us, ‘We’re mostly Republicans in this parish, and we don’t believe in what the OCA stands for, so we wanted to do something to show our support.’ It was attitudes like that among the mainstream congregations that caused those ballot measures to fail; Portland by itself can’t carry the state in an election.” 

Two years later, in the next statewide OCA ballot measure fight, No on 13, “a small church stepped up and offered to host the concert; congregants hosted many of the singers,” Reid remembers. “Our host family told us, ‘We’re mostly Republicans in this parish, and we don’t believe in what the OCA stands for, so we wanted to do something to show our support.’ It was attitudes like that among the mainstream congregations that caused those ballot measures to fail; Portland by itself can’t carry the state in an election.” 

Despite the 1992 cancellation in Medford, the choruses were invited to Klamath Falls, where they were well received by about 200 people with no trouble – despite the harassment directed against other No on 9 activists locally during the course of the campaign.  

“We went to Springfield on a separate excursion,” Gary remembers. “We were at the downtown theater. There were bomb threats; the police dealt with that behind the scenes, so we didn’t really have to deal with it. But most of us had driven down in our own cars. When we came out from the venue, someone had put gay porno with little things, like ‘Fags go home’ or whatever other messages on them, on the windshields of the cars all around the theater. I looked at it and thought: Well, this is kind of hot! [laughs] It was just: Go home! But look at this on your way! It was funny, ironic, weird, strange, and it was a sign of the times. I laugh at it now. But it was kind of hateful at the time.” 

“I remember at the time [of Measure 9] we really felt a call to action,” says Gary. “We thought, this is a threat, and we can sing to this, especially in places that are outside of Portland, which we really need to support.” 

PGMC and PLC have continued to play a transformative role through visibility and outreach.  

“We went to Pendleton, probably in the late ‘90s,” Gary says. “Initially, the entire city did not support it; we wanted to put up posters and nobody would do it. The mayor didn’t support it but we went there and we had a great audience. They loved us. Several years later we came back. Most buildings now wanted us in their building, and advertised for us, and we had a bigger audience, and that just built and built.” 

Reid remembers those trips to Pendleton with the Chorus, too. The second time, Reid says, “I went a day early, and was staying with a family who took us out to dinner that evening. Upon finding out I was with the Chorus, our waiter said, ‘I sure wish I could go, but I have to work!’ This time around, only one business refused to put up a flyer and we performed to a standing-room-only cheering crowd. Our director asked the PFLAG chair what made the difference in community reception between our two visits, and she simply said, ‘You did.’” 

The most recent time PGMC was picketed was 2019 in Grants Pass. “We had gone there in 2017, says Gary. “We never raise money for ourselves when we go on outreach. It’s always for a local community agency of their choosing. They chose a local organization called Hearts with a Mission that worked with street kids. It was a wonderful crowd – they loved us, and we raised $3,000. But the Hearts with a Mission board wouldn’t take the money because we’re gay. However, they went to the City Council a month or two later and asked for money! And somebody who was in our audience at that concert said, Hey, you just turn down money! They got rid of part of their board and their executive director, and they changed their mission. 

“So back to our return in 2019, they were once again the organization that got the money we raised, and they were sitting on the front row with their kids. A huge change! However, we went outside with our host and greeted the dozen or so protesters. So it doesn’t go away. 

“But I think it is representative of our courage to be authentic. It’s just – this is who I am. Here we are. We’re singing. I’m sorry that’s a threat to you. We’re just doing it, in the face of their desire to legislate exclusion.” 

Read Reid Vanderburgh’s memories as a founding member of the Portland Lesbian Choir, who has sung with the Portland Gay Men’s Chorus since 2008.  

Read Gary Coleman and Greg Friesen’s recollections about starting and finding the Portland Gay Men’s Chorus, surviving the ‘80s and ‘90s, partnering with the Portland Lesbian Choir, their tour to China, and navigating generational change. 

As they say on The Moth Radio Hour, “Moth stories are true as remembered and affirmed by the storyteller.”  Read more about the benefits and challenges of historical memory.  

“Making fun of stuff was the way to take the sting out of difficult things,” Sally Sheklow told the Eugene Lesbian History Project. “If you could make it funny, it was survivable.”

From WYMPROV, the lesbian comedy group Sally cofounded, to stand-up routines by Howie Baggadonutz and a wide range of other queer performers, to the scene at clubs like The Embers and the all-ages City Nightclub, and the satire delivered to every voting household by the Special Righteousness Committee – the cultural power of humor, visibility, and affirmation was essential to surviving the attack of Measure 9.

“There were some nights when it was just amazing to be alive.”

Gregory Franklyn

When longtime organizer and culture-maker Sally Sheklow died earlier this year, her obituary began, “Greeting each day ready to find humor in the world is a challenge for anyone. Maintaining that humor in a decades-long effort to secure the same freedoms enjoyed by your neighbors is nothing short of miraculous.”

After performing with Eugene’s Footlight Faggots and Lesbian Thesbians in the late ’70s, Sally created the musical The Sound of Lesbians, about the VonTramp Family and their lesbian sex therapist – cut short by a cease and desist letter from copyright attorneys.

The Oregon Citizens Alliance provided even more fertile ground for parody. Songs like “Who Put the Bon in the Lon-Mabon-Mabon,” sung to a 1950s melody, lifted spirits at campaign and community events. Hear Sally sing a verse and talk about writing the song “standing in front of the post office with our [protest] signs…for hours” by clicking on the No on 9 video in the Outliers and Outlaws exhibit.

For Eric Ward, as a Black punk rocker in Eugene in the early ‘90s, improv theater was not his primary jam. But he never missed a WYMPROV! show. “I saw WYMPROV! dozens of times,” he says. “I didn’t care that it wasn’t a punk rock show – it was cultural space I needed to be in.”

Sally and other cultural organizers were endlessly creative in how they brought people together during the long fight against Measure 9 and the other hateful ballot measures that preceded and followed it. Sally’s obit notes that she hosted a Family Freedom Seder in opposition to Measure 9 for 400 guests.

The campaign encouraged and supported creation of affirming social spaces. In the NGLTF Fight the Right Action Kit, event organizer D-J wrote, “House and dinner parties are not merely fundraising tools for your campaign…. Money is only one asset the guests will bring with them. They also carry their own stories and histories, ideas and skills, anger and frustrations. They have contacts with other groups of people, at home and at work, that could support the campaign. And they carry a lot of energy with them that you can channel toward the benefit of your campaign.”

On one coordinated night, “Dine Against 9” featured more than 100 dinner parties in the Portland area, with solidarity events in states from Washington and California to Maine, and a glitzy afterparty.

Alongside these campaign-specific social events was a flourishing of comedy, music, street theater, and other performances that lifted up an angry and frightened community.

Howie Baggadonutz & the Power of Representation

By the time the OCA launched Measure 9, Howie Bierbaum had already skewered many a far right and religious zealot with humor and truth-telling. In 1985, broadcasting as Howie Baggadonutz, he co-created Queersville, a gay comedy show that aired live, Sunday nights at 10pm on KBOO.

“We called up Joe Lutz” – the OCA-backed Baptist minister who came close to unseating U.S. Senator Bob Packwood – “and talked to him live, on-air for 7 minutes,” Howie says. “He was vile.” Another subject was anti-gay, supposedly “pro-family” legislative candidate Drew Davis who was caught with a carload of porn and drugs – “ripe for comedy,” Howie remembers. “We called it all out on the show.”

They got threats – “Sometimes people would threaten they’d be waiting for us outside the studio.” But Howie says, “It was really important for gay people to have representation on radio and the stage. Everyone has access to a radio, free. You could listen with headphones in your bedroom as a 15 year old – how empowering!”

That led Howie into years of producing queer shows.

“In the late ‘80s and early ‘90s it was so easy to put stuff together and get an audience. This was pre Will and Grace. We only had indie movies and live performances. I had a mission even though I didn’t know it – creating ways to have visibility and positive images and to bring people together; it was vital for validation and education.”

Howie Bierbaum

Along with local lesbian comic Carol Steinel, Howie performed stand-up at community events, fundraisers, and venues like Darcelle’s. He produced the gay variety show Homogenized for several years. With Thomas Lauderdale, he ran a Monday night dance party called Queer Night. Howie cites Linda Shirley – another event producer and KBOO radio host, AKA the Dyke behind the Mic – Don Horn’s Triangle Theater, Darcelle’s, the choruses; “they all had their place and appealed to different people.”

Creating these affirming spaces was an antidote to “how terrifying it was to be out during that time,” Howie says. His house was being vandalized by juvenile delinquents in the neighborhood and he found himself fearful about displaying a No on 9 sign.

“I found it to be a very scary time,” Howie says. “I was a founding member of ACT UP in the late ‘80s. We were emboldened then, underground and fighting back, taking late night direct action, chaining ourselves to the federal building. I thought that energy would transfer over to fighting the OCA, but it was harder. The OCA put us under a microscope. I didn’t feel I could be as up front as with ACT UP. It felt very challenging.”

Building cultural power within the LGBTQ community and with allies had a lasting impact. Two years after the Measure 9 campaign, when the OCA had come back with Measure 13, Howie teamed up again with Thomas Lauderdale to do a benefit show at Cinema 21 with the Del Rubio Triplets. Thomas opened the show with his new band, Pink Martini.

“They lost the battle against queers culturally – that was a pretty quick trip,” Howie says. “But it’s still important to be visible and your true self, no matter what the struggle is. Living your truth and being honest is still a core truth.”

Gregory Franklyn & The Portland Nightscene

In 2017, when The Embers closed after presiding over downtown Portland nightlife for 48 years, Kevin Cook, AKA the legendary entertainer Poison Waters, described its significance to Oregon Public Broadcasting:

“Cook’s first trip to the club came before he was 21. He snuck in, underage, just to see ‘what all the hubbub was about.’ He described the environment as reminiscent of Baz Luhrmann’s movie Moulin Rouge! ‘Embers is a dance club, a performance venue, a gathering space,’ Cook said. ‘One side is a big dance floor – I’ll even use the word discotheque – with lights and smoke and mirrors. The other side there are drag shows many nights of the week.’

“But Embers was also more than just a nightclub, Cook said. ‘In the late ’80s, early ’90s, when I came about … Embers was such a welcoming space for folks who were figuring out who they are. HIV and AIDS hit about that time, and people were really lost for a lot of reasons,’ he said. ‘As in many aspects of the community, the drag community was hit really hard. Embers was… a place for performers to just be there to support one another, and then when it came time to raise funds and support for friends who needed it, a place to grieve and be together.’”

Gregory Franklyn found his community at The Embers. He’d been “trying to be a rock star” in Eureka, California and wanted a larger market for his music. “Portland was just right for me – I had culture shock for 20 minutes, maybe, and then I was home. Incidentally, Lon Mabon followed me here from California,” Gregory says, laughing. “I didn’t bring him here, I swear! He was involved with a cult called Lighthouse Ranch. The closest city, where they would come to recruit, was Eureka.”

When Gregory arrived in Portland, he says, “I felt embraced by the gay community here. It was the first I’d been associated with because where I was in Humboldt County, there wasn’t one. This was not long after Dan White had murdered Harvey Milk. Anita Bryant was doing her thing. Gay people were not accepted like we are today. I mean, America was not for us. It was against us at the time.”

He got involved with the gay-focused Metropolitan Community Church and produced television shows through Portland Cable Access – including PSAs about the effects of Measure 9 and the long-running series NightScene and Outrageous, broadcast from the all-ages City Nightclub. (These history-making shows are now being archived at the Stonewall National Museum & Archive in Fort Lauderdale. Gregory says, “Kids coming up in rural areas who don’t have the kind of community that I have are going to be able to see these programs and understand that they’re not alone; that they’re coming from a whole history and culture.” Scroll down for his 1996 documentary about City Nightclub.)

Gregory also performed regularly at The Embers. He and other musicians formed a group called Chain Reaction that would sing live in between Drag Queen performances. “We each had our specialty. My thing was pop music – my signature song was Dobie Gray’s ‘Drift Away.’ One of us was show tunes, one was country, one was alternative. We covered the whole spectrum.”

Though he later joined the staff at the cable access station, during the Measure 9 campaign he was unemployed, having been fired after his manager saw him on news coverage of the Gay Pride parade.

“The main thing of that whole period,” Gregory says, “was fear and anger. We were pretty sure that a lot of people were going to lose their jobs because of Measure 9. And we were dealing with AIDS at the same time. I was living in a little studio apartment near Lloyd Center, and at one point I was sitting there realizing that I had lost five personal friends so far that year, and it was only March. That was going on at the same time as Measure 9 was happening. It was a horrible, horrible time.”

“There were some nights when it was just amazing to be alive,” Gregory remembers. “That’s something that performers at the time gave to the community. We were all angry and frightened and very much personally feeling what was at stake. But we almost never mentioned Measure 9 during shows.”

“We were trying to take people away from that and provide a little levity to a pretty desperately bad situation. It was about, ‘Let’s do something else for a minute.'”

Gregory Franklyn

At the same time, the performance community was constantly involved in fundraising, whether for the fight against Measure 9, or to meet the needs of a community stricken by HIV/AIDS.

The popularity of the performers and the dance floor at The Embers meant “there was everybody in that environment and a lot of them were allies; straight people were always welcome there. On weekend nights, the place was always packed.”

“What we should bring forward from that time,” Gregory says, “is the image of a community, all of us pushing in the same direction, even if we’re not always on the same page. The gay community in Portland is like any family in the sense that we bicker and fight among ourselves. Particularly the Drag Queens at The Embers. We throw shade on one another all the time, but when the rubber hits the road and these girls are in trouble, we pull together. We can always get back to throwing shade later, after the threat has been dealt with.”

The Special Righteousness Committee

Also known as the Family Alliance of God (FAG), the Special Righteousness Committee (SRC) was a legal political action committee formed in 1992 “to show how ridiculous the OCA and its ‘No Special Rights’ committee really are.” In materials now archived at the Oregon Historical Society, SRC wrote, “We use satire to hold up a mirror so Lon Mabon can see his own true reflection.”

The brainchild of a now-deceased Radical Faerie who, for these purposes, went by the name M. Dennis Moore, SRC argued for “a consistent approach to legislating morality.” He told The Oregonian he wanted to “draw attention to… the key issue in Measure 9: Do voters want to establish the precedent that some people can make their personal morality into public policy?”

“We are just as offended by oyster-eating, shaving and mixed fibers as the OCA is offended by homosexuality. We have just as much right as the OCA does to change the state constitution to require government discrimination against people whose behavior we don’t like.”

Special Righteousness Committee

To make their point, they conducted a “Pure Fibers Fashion Parade” in front of Nordstroms, and a protest against eating oysters outside an iconic seafood restaurant. They even filed their own initiative petition to write all of the biblical Book of Leviticus into Oregon’s Constitution.

Their most far-reaching piece of agit-prop, delivered to every household with a registered voter in the state of Oregon via the Voters Pamphlet, was an Argument in Favor of Measure 9 that ends with: “AGREE WITH US OR BURN IN HELL!”

Their argument in favor of Measure 9 as “the first step in facilitating our militant moral agenda” appeared side-by-side with Lon Mabon’s Argument in Favor.

As they say on The Moth Radio Hour, “Moth stories are true as remembered and affirmed by the storyteller.”  Read more about the benefits and challenges of historical memory.