“If we’re going to educate people about gays and lesbians, we have to educate them about what being a democracy really means. We have to consistently link the two concepts, so people will begin to see this isn’t just about gays and lesbians, but about the very nature of this country’s beliefs.”
Kathleen Saadat, as recorded by Pat Young following the 1992 campaign
30 Stories for 30 Years: A Recap
Racist and homophobic hate speech and hate violence, widespread indifference punctuated by shock in the face of predictable outcomes, and courageous organizing among unlikely allies – this is the scene that serves as Act I for the Ballot Measure 9 campaign to come.
The Christian Right was ascendant. Its attempts to see America governed by a ‘moral majority’ had begun in opposition to school desegregation, grew through opposition to abortion and the Equal Rights Amendment, and was now focusing on gay people. The months leading into the vote on Ballot Measure 9 featured Pat Buchanan delivering his infamous “culture wars” speech at the Republican National Convention. Back in Oregon, Oregon Citizens Alliance leader Lon Mabon bragged that the national convention could have been an OCA convention, it so closely aligned with their anti-gay agenda.
3. The Oregon Democracy Project
“[Defeating Measure 9] required a paradigm shift about what organizing is and how power building is done. Patriarchal models of organizing weren’t going to work. The people with the most skin in the game and the most to offer weren’t in those old models.” ~ Tarso Luís Ramos
“If you throw away small towns and rural people you’ve defeated yourself. You set up fertile ground in the face of an anti-democracy movement that thrives on resentment – you contribute to the resentment.” ~ Suzanne Pharr
“A rarely told part of the story,” remembers Scot Nakagawa, “is the origin of the No on 9 campaign. It began with an election for steering committee members at a gay bar in Eugene.” To understand the significance of this, and how much the eventual organization of the campaign veered from its origins, we need to look at the political and cultural geography of Oregon in 1992. It’s a story of power and control that continues to this day.
“Remembering the No on 9 campaign, and all 35 of the OCA’s hateful measures, is a best-of-times-worst-of-times rollercoaster. Courage is there, so is terror. Community like we’d never experienced, along with painful rifts. No on 9 showed us what we could achieve when we unite against hate – and how far we still had to go.”
Holly J. Pruett
“One of the questions that we put to the LGBTQ community was where had they been in terms of farmworker rights? We work in close proximity to Portland, so it was a question that was very difficult for them to answer. We opened up a dialogue because we knew we needed to stand up for the LGBTQ community and build a long-lasting relationship for justice for all. ~ Ramón Ramírez, Former President of Pineros Y Campesinos Unidos Del Noroeste & Co-Founder of PCUN
“To this day these bonds continue, and have grown and developed into golden coalitions and alliances for the long term. This story is still told to our younger generations, and will continue to be upheld as a key moment in our history bringing together the farmworker movement and the LGBTQIA2+ movement. Your struggle is our struggle.” ~ Reyna Lopez, President of Pineros Y Campesinos Unidos Del Noroeste & Executive Director of PCUN
6. African Americans Voting No on 9
“I approached Avel Gordly, Margaret Carter, and Richard Brown and said, ‘We have no presence. We have no visible presence in this struggle.’ They immediately agreed to help get one.” As they made their voices heard within the African-American community, “It was not a monolithic or unilateral response. There was a lot of discussion, just like in the broader community, around what was right and what was wrong.” ~ Kathleen Saadat
“After two weeks of harassment, break-ins and death threats, this morning at 4:30am somebody put their death threat around a rock and threw it through the window. Two times they pried the back doors off the house… and took all kinds of files, including unlisted phone numbers and my personal schedule. It makes me very angry. And with my background as a cop and as a marine, if I feel this way then I can imagine why other people are hiding and going back into the closet, just scared to death.” ~ Scott Seibert
8. St Matthews Catholic Church
“Thirty years ago, very few churches were welcoming of LGBTQ people and most mainline denominations had laws forbidding queer clergy. Clergy and laity who stood up for the LGBTQ community felt very much like trailblazers, facing backlash not only from others in their faith community but also the church hierarchy. The threats and withdrawal of financial support, the physical intimidation and destruction of sacred spaces – it was terrible, a very scary time.” ~ Rev. Cecil Charles Prescod
“What Ballot Measure 9 has done is open up a window for people who are bigoted to display those feelings, and that’s what happened in the Salem slayings. Measure 9 has lit a match to a fuse that was already there.” ~ Suzanne Pharr, in the New York Times
“When I took on the job as editorial page editor, I spent some time studying the Oregon Constitution. Not that many people who aren’t lawyers read the state constitution or know it. But I saw myself as a gatekeeper who had to be a defender of the noble principles of the constitution.” ~ Bob Landauer, retired Oregonian Editor
“I remember how the community separated right off the bat – grassroots activists in the street and then the more mainstream types who wanted to take the conventional political campaign route. They kept warring with each other. There was so much internal bickering. Each side thought theirs was the only correct way to do it. It was our biggest obstacle, the inability to realize that both sides of our divided community could do their thing.” ~ Renée LaChance, Just Out co-founder
“When we first found out about our daughter, we thought we were the only people in Grants Pass who even knew a gay person. That’s how closeted the community was then, how unaware we both were, and how isolated you feel. And then you start reaching out – a whole new world has opened up for us.” ~ Elise Self
“Bigot busting has two primary objectives: preventing petition signatures, and providing a gay-positive experience to as many people as possible. An individual who might have signed a petition earlier can become an ally when confronted with the truth.” ~ Bob Ralphs (1950-1995)
14. People of Faith Against Bigotry
“It was still very new for people. I’d be invited to speak to the Baptists, for example. They had never talked to an out gay person. We would take any denomination or faith group where they were, and try to move them one step closer to equality views.” ~ Dan Stutesman
“In 1992, chaos and uncertainty seem to reign. The value of our organizing to date is that we have given a community hope and belief in the power of our collective strength. For now, we fight the bigotry being advanced by the OCA, but our real purpose is to assert the vision of inclusion that we have for our community in a time of challenge.” ~ Marcy Westerling
“I visited the No on 9 campaign headquarters regularly. I wanted officers to see that, as well as the community. If we could prevent problems, we would. And if not, we wanted to respond as quickly as possible. The chief’s responsibility isn’t just to parrot something, but to live it.” ~ Portland Police Chief Tom Potter
“The most useful thing that all of us can participate in, is being a part of a collective of community members. Along with all the terrible stuff from that time was the joy of meeting and making community with people – so many amazing people.” ~ Officer Katie Potter
17. Asian Americans Oppose Measure 9
“In Oregon, the idea to gain unified Asian and Pacific Islander opposition to Measure 9 did not come from the No On 9 Campaign, but instead from Asian and Pacific Islander Lesbians and Gays.” ~ Lynn Nakamoto
18. Republicans Against Prejudice
“I am a moderate, mainstream Republican and I’ve just returned from Romania as the United States Ambassador. I’ve seen what happens when you lose your human rights. That is why I vote with you. No on 9!” ~ Allen “Punch” Green
“There were some nights when it was just amazing to be alive. 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
“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.” ~ Howie Bierbaum
“The LGBTQ community took the horror of the Oregon Citizens Alliance and gave something back to Oregon that was beautiful and powerful. I would have done almost anything for that movement. People would call me homophobic slurs for years afterwards, in rural areas where I travelled to speak, accusing me of running the secret homosexual agenda. I considered it a point of pride.”
~ Eric K. Ward
“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
“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 tried to figure out, how do we connect this incredibly outrageous story, of the Oregon Citizens Alliance, with the rest of the world? We raised some money, but more importantly, the story became national.” ~ Sarah Stephens, co-founder, Artists for a Hate Free America
“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.” ~ Melissa Unger, SEIU 503/OPEU Executive Director
“Teaching people to just think about it, helping them to make a personal connection, how Measure 9 would negatively impact them if this passed. This is your uncle; your bull dyke neighbor who mows your lawn and fixes your car for free; your son who we all know is gay but we pretend they aren’t.” ~ Anne Sweet
“We thought a lot about how to connect with people who don’t get this, who think it doesn’t affect their lives. [This meant] getting people to be really personal, getting people to tell their own stories.” ~ Barbara Bernstein
24. The Walk for Love & Justice
“You are out on the front line of our movement. This Walk is about moral and spiritual values. You are walking in the tradition of the civil rights movement. “You are not alone – every one of the 25 million American gays, lesbians, and bisexuals marches with you today.” ~ Urvashi Vaid (1958-2022), then executive director of the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force, at the kickoff of the Walk for Love & Justice
“It’s this really quick intimacy, partially based on the vulnerability of being on the edge of the road. I saw with my own eyes, walking through all these different places – including Northern Ireland, at the height of the Troubles, and Israel and the West Bank, and Yugoslavia just a few years before war broke out there – you could have so many meaningful conversations. I just knew that a walk like this was a really valuable organizing tool.” ~ Anne Galisky
“[My grandma and grandpa…sent me $200 to go on the Walk. I had to raise $300… and I didn’t know where it was going to come from. My grandma said, ‘We know how much this means to you, and so we want you to be able to go do it.’ I cry today just thinking about it. So I had everybody kind of pushing me to go.” ~ Kelley Weigel
“When you open the door to the OCA and the OCA began to restrict who was going to participate in the democratic process, it was really an assault on everybody. Perhaps the best person, at that time, to articulate that kind of universal application of what was happening was a straight person.” ~ Ellen Lowe, interviewed by historian Pat Young
Introduced by the moderator as “a lady in the audience who’s a parent of a homosexual child,” the “Town Hall” camera zeroes in on Ann and Bill Shepherd, with their daughter Susie sitting in between them. Ann says, “We love Susie, we accept her totally. We also recognize that many of our friends, and hers, have an orientation different from our heterosexual one, which really doesn’t matter. Because they’re wonderful people. We speak, both of us, as Christians and as parents.” Susie told an oral history interviewer later, “The tension in that room was palpable. It was unbelievably tense. That particular show won the Oregon Broadcasters Award in its category that year…. That show changed people’s lives.”
“Today when I go to the Businesses Against Discrimination luncheon… the feeling is that we’re in a state where you’d think every business has always shown up to support their employees, and said, ‘This is what we stand for.’ That was not always the reality, of course. But the dynamic has clearly shifted from ‘I don’t know about this,’ to ‘This is a fundamental thing, to stand with all people in our community.’” ~ Eric Friedenwald-Fishman
28. Towards Movement-Building Campaigns
“It’s not just the lists of supporters that were at risk of being lost. It’s the combined learning from each campaign; the word or phrase or value that gives us a chance to open this dialogue. We need people to carry that learning from campaign to campaign. Otherwise you get a whole new set of consultants, a whole new pollster with every campaign, and they start all over again with messages that don’t challenge homophobia and transphobia. ‘Even if you’re not comfortable with gay and Lesbian people, no one should be treated this way’ – that was a message recommended by pollsters across the country for many, many years. We had to push back: Why are we giving people permission to be uncomfortable? Why don’t we figure out how to make them comfortable and accepting – even champions?” ~ Thalia Zepatos
29. The Lawsuit That Shut Down the OCA
“The Mabons have put themselves and me through considerable grief by not taking responsibility for the actions of Scott Lively. They’ve gone to an enormous amount of effort not to pay a relatively small debt. They spent $32,000 in legal fees in one month alone when Lon Mabon was in jail. They could have paid me with that money. They’re playing games and seem to think they’re above the law.” ~ Catherine Stauffer, in The Portland Alliance
“We have to become a movement that understands the long arc of history. Learning from earlier struggles teaches us discipline and helps prevent the sin of despair. In a time where some seek to erase or deny our nation’s history, remembering the stories that are part of the movement for inclusive democracy is a powerful act of resistance and redemption.” ~ Eric K. Ward
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.