Opposition to the anti-LGBTQIA+ Measure 9 rallied support throughout Oregon to fight a shared cause
The draconian anti-gay ballot measure put forth by the ultra-Christian Oregon Citizens Alliance, or OCA, in 1992 was barely defeated. It was the first time such a large coalition and varying communities had come together in Oregon to protect LGBTQIA+ rights and dignity.
I offer here only a small fraction of these stories in hopes of painting a picture of just how broad the fight was and how all anti-OCA groups and individuals in 1992 played an essential role. Without just one, we could all be living in an even darker, more hate-filled state today.
Making space for debate
The organizing that occurred within the Black churches in Portland played a pivotal role in the defeat of Ballot Measure 9. In 1992, now-Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty was working at the Black United Fund and was the first vice president and chair of the Political Action Committee for the NAACP Portland Branch. Hardesty moved to Portland in January 1990 to start a new decade in a new town.
“I was shocked,” Hardesty said. “After being told this was a very progressive paradise in the Pacific Northwest … I was conflicted between what I thought Portland was and what it actually was with segregation and restricting the lives of Black and brown people.”
Hardesty’s father was a longshoreman and a union man, so being active in the community was commonplace for her.
“The surprise of Measure 9 was that there was an organized group using religion and scare tactics to actually demonize people who loved differently,” Hardesty said. “I was like, ‘where the hell did I move?’ I knew the impact of what that measure would do, (especially) to young adults and teenagers who were just trying to step into who they were and their identity.”
Especially, she said, with language like “‘bestiality,’ ‘pedophilia,’ what I realized was, I gotta get in this fight. I wasn’t gay, I wasn’t lesbian … but I didn’t have to think about it. I got it.”
Despite only being in Portland for a short time, she utilized the relationships she already forged and worked with a coalition to create a sample ballot.
“We agreed on 23 of the 24 ballot measures,” Hardesty said. “We got to 24, which was Measure 9, and the Albina Ministerial Alliance refused to sign on.”
So she went to the churches directly and appealed to the Rev. T. Allen Bethel, and the Rev. Leroy Haynes, whom she’d worked with previously on other issues, asking them to host community forums where the NAACP could make its case, and the opposition could make theirs.
They held three or four forums, sometimes in church basements or halls, and brought 50 to 150 people each time.
“When I closed out the evening, I would say, ‘ultimately, this decision is up to you and your God and your ballot,’” Hardesty said. “We didn’t dismiss their religious leanings, we did not disrespect their teachings.”
Cyreena Boston Ashby, CEO of Girls Inc., was a kid at the time. She remembers the debate in the church well.
Boston Ashby’s parents were the very prominent Louis Boston and Clariner Boston, who took many leadership roles in the community.
“(Measure) 9 changed my life,” Boston Ashby said. “I was age 12, and the ballot measure helped me find my own personal sense of activism … as a young person who had no idea I was queer at the time.
“I remember being ostracized as a young Black child by other Black children about this but I also remember looking at white people who were very much ‘No on 9’ but didn’t care about Black people at all. And I just think that that social analysis … really struck me as a 12-year-old. It really helped me have a high threshold for complexity and what it meant for me as a 12-year-old to show up.”
Hardesty recalls the early days working with the campaign were very painful.
“... You didn’t think that maybe the African American community and the Latinx community needed strategies that spoke to our community?” Hardesty said. “Not unusual and not unexpected that Black folks are asked to work for free … and be grateful we had the opportunity, but man, if we got that same kind of reciprocation, we would have a much more equitable city.”
The Balaboostehs
Beginning in the 1960s during the counter-culture westward migration, hundreds of queer women left their hometowns and relocated to Eugene, where a “lesbian mecca” of sorts was growing.
“Oregon’s reputation as a rural, forested state with cheap housing was a draw for those looking for communal living and collective work,” states the Eugene Lesbian History Project. They established a thriving arts scene and used a collective model to run women-owned businesses, service agencies, and a printing press. It didn’t take long for this community to become a bastion of feminist culture.
One particularly potent subculture within the thriving hub was the women who left their homes and families of origin but not their faith or culture: The Balaboostehs, “a group for Jewish lesbians that met to explore Jewish feminist spirituality and shared culture.” The creator of which, Sally Sheklow, was a powerful cultural, social and political force among these women.
Inspired by the late Civil Rights Movement tradition of Freedom Seders, which started following the murder of Martin Luther King Jr., Sheklow, with the support of the Balaboostehs, organized their own.
“The idea came from the need to create allies … expanding our fight for liberation and involving allies in that,” Enid Lefton, a Balaboosteh and wife of Sheklow said.
Many of the 400 people who showed up, Lefton said, “had never been to a seder before … as a Jewish queer person who had been to a lot of seders, it was really interesting to have non-Jewish persons experiencing their first.”
They served Matzah Ball soup, and Haroset, a traditional part of the seder usually made up of apples, walnuts, wine or figs and dates and oranges, depending on what Jewish tradition one follows, and represents the mortar used by Israelite slaves in Egypt. Gefilte fish (a traditional Ashkenazi food) and horseradish were flown in from New York.
“Horseradish,” Lefton explained, is part of the ceremony of a seder and “represents the bitterness” of Jewish oppression and diaspora. Lefton recalls the moment everyone dipped into the horseradish as part of the ceremony, which she remembers being particularly strong, there was this moment of silence and then this “whooooo.”
A Haggadah is a guide to the Passover that speaks to the historical moment folks are in, and connects the communities’ freedom struggle with those of others. The Eugene Freedom Seder Haggadah was written by Ballaboostehs Nadia Telsey and Ellen Rifkin.
Telsey recalls it connected the struggles of drag queens, runaway kids, houselessness, racism, parents’ need to pass through walls of fear and shame, all in the context of their struggle as queer folks alongside the oppression of others. It was rooted in the history of Stonewall, stating, “to acknowledge our ancestors means that we are aware that we do not make ourselves by ourselves.”
Through these efforts and more, the women of Eugene protested and organized tirelessly. They spoke with thousands of people, and built relationships that helped move persuasions away from the fear tactics of the OCA to a more welcoming community geared up to vote no on Measure 9.
Satire in Portland
Long before Measure 9, folks from the Special Righteousness Committee, or SRC, used humor to break down the weight of hatred and highlight the absurdity of the OCA’s bigoted arguments. Cartoonist Vaughn Frick moved to Portland in 1988 and produced an environmental strip for the Portland Alliance Community newspaper called the Portland Bird when Measure 9 arrived. He met Marvin Moore — a gay radical, founder of the SRC and former Estacada City Council member.
Frick and Moore established a deep work and personal relationship.
“He would come to me with that initial concept, and (we’d) pass it back and forth,” Frick said.
Their satirical, sometimes crude political artwork fighting the OCA was very popular and had been utilized going back before Measure 8. So, by the time Measure 9 came around, “people were kind of expecting (them) to come up with something.” And they did.
Under the banner of the SRC, they started selling and passing around their very popular Lon Mabon Paper Doll. Mabon was one of the main and more visible leaders of the OCA. The paper doll used the OCA’s hate-filled language to poke holes in the Christian right’s arguments with humor.
The SRC protested at seafood restaurants, satirically arguing against them for serving oysters and would show up at rallies dressed as members of the hate group.
“We would always be in character,” Frick said. “My character was Vaughn Mabon, Lon Mabon’s very, very, very lost brother. I (had) this very huge oversized Bible, people would ask questions, and I would slam the Bible down and find a random passage, and read it out loud like it had some relevant meaning to what they said, and with absolute certainty.”
It was always a show. The crown jewel perhaps of the SRC was when Moore got their satirical argument in favor of Measure 9 published in the voters' pamphlet that year:
“The state condones adultery by not punishing it with death as required by Leviticus. It promotes oyster-eating by licensing seafood restaurants, and it allows people to take mixed fibers out of the closet and flaunt them right out in public without fear of being fired or evicted! The state is encouraging sin! ... Agree with us or burn in hell!”
“This was the same time that we were seeing the worst of the HIV pandemic … and the OCA was exploiting the paranoia associated with (the pandemic),” Frick said. “It was just a terrible, terrible time. We wanted to do something that got people’s attention and made them laugh … We all bring our strengths and weaknesses into the great debate as it is.”
The leather community blue-balling the OCA
Over the many years I have had the privilege to interview folks about Ballot Measure 9, many people have advised me, sometimes enthusiastically and sometimes abashedly, to talk to someone from the leather community. One phone call with Andy Mangles, Mr. Leather 2004, made it perfectly clear why.
“The Oregon Guild Activists of S&M (ORGASM), that I co-founded, put on fundraising events called Super Jacks. They were a way for us to do events (generally) for men,” Mangles said. “Basically, it was a jack-off party, so no other kind of sexual expression was allowed. It was hands-only. Super Jacks (were) an opportunity to donate to fight the OCA while ‘getting a hold of yourself’ … I’m not sure you can put that in the paper, but that's what it was.”
The leather community is considered by some to be the largest grassroots contributor to the “No on 9” campaign in part because they used humor and satire (and more) to entertain folks, and because they had already been a well-organized force fighting against all sorts of anti-gay and anti-fetish legislation well back into the 1980s.
Much of their success was due in part to Susie Shepherd: Miss Leather 1989, and a well-respected voice in the LGTBQIA+ community.
“Shepherd was so well respected (she was) on first name basis with every lawmaker in the state that nobody could really stand up against (her) when it came to you know ‘do I need to call the mayor?’…’do I need to call the governor?’” Mangles said. “She was an incredible source of being able to have access to politicians and the people who were … important.”
As Miss Leather 1989, Shepherd campaigned all over the country raising money to fight bigot politician Jesse Helms through a campaign called “Beat Jesse.” At this point, Mangles pauses during the interview to make sure I got the pun. Using humor and satire was a signature strategy of the leathers.
“When you make fun of things, it can dismantle your opponent and shine light on the truth (in a way) that can sometimes be difficult to fight back against,” Mangles said. “In the fetish community, we are great at poking some fun at ourselves.”
They knew the OCA would have a hard time trying to shut down events centered around masturbation, being legal and safe because the OCA at the same time was trying to weaponize the AIDS-HIV pandemic.
“(The OCA) had a hard time fighting masturbation,” Mangles said. “There was nobody in the general public who would say masturbation is wrong, so when you are doing an event that is legally giving money to fight the OCA through masturbation, how do you not find that kind of funny? One of Scott Lively’s favorite words was ‘perverts,’ so we took that and said OK, we are going to have fun with that … that’s why I (held anti-OCA) events called …Night of the Living Perverts.”
After the OCA got wind of these events, they got their followers into a frenzy and started to go door to door in the neighborhood of the Super Jacks venue, which was in the mostly Black Northeast Portland. Many argue the OCA targeted African American communities and other communities of color to garner support, arguing that these “perverts” were trying to gain “special rights,” which was a slap in the face against those who had worked hard for their rights.
So, the OCA called a community meeting. In attendance were then-Mayor Bud Clark, then-Police Chief Tom Potter and community leaders. Potter was and remains prominently known for standing up for LGBTQIA+ rights, despite the public chagrin of fellow officers, in part because his daughter, Katie, also a cop, was an out lesbian.
“The OCA expected they would be able to use (the community event) as a massive publicity stunt to show how deviant everybody was and by having footage of all these community leaders decrying us,” Mangles said. “They felt it would be their master stroke against the (queer) community.”
But anti-OCA folks weren’t going to let that happen, so Potters, the leathers, their lawyer Ben Merrill, and Clark quickly gathered for a side meeting. Their goal was to get ahead of the OCA in such a way that wouldn’t “allow (them) any footing whatsoever.” Through back-and-forth negotiations, folks from ORGASM conceded to halt all activities immediately. They agreed, Mangles remembered, because they didn’t want to give the OCA an inch.
Meanwhile, media personnel and OCA members set up dozens of cameras pointed at the podium, waiting for the community leaders to protest the Leather’s fundraisers. Instead, according to Mangles, their lawyer, Merrill got up on stage and said, “in order not to allow the OCA to continue to defy the Portland communities by fomenting anger against each other, the proprietors of this location and these events have agreed with community leaders to cease doing all future activities immediately and I will not be taking any questions.”
The host then, according to Mangles, approached the podium and said, ‘if there is no further business, we will end this meeting.’
Mangles burst into laughter when recalling this story, “the OCA was so angry because not only had they not gotten anything out of that video footage,” but any footage taken by the media showed the OCA as “the bad guy.”
Super Jacks were over, but folks in the leather community continued to raise tens of thousands of dollars to confront the OCA’s bigotry.
“The leather community brought to the fight against the OCA this cheeky way of taking everything they were throwing at us and turning it around on them in a way that amused people and made them want to know more … contribute (more) or made them want to fight a little harder.”
The Confluence
An activist since High School, Anne Galisky took time away from college to join a 7,000 mile interfaith peace walk that ended in the Middle East. It inspired her to bring the tactic to the fight against Measure 9.
By 1992 when Measure 9 had arrived, Anne was 29, living in Portland and working as a carpenter.
“I knew I needed to do something,” Galisky said.
She recalls going to the Lesbian Community Project offices, then in Union Station. Donna Redwing, who would become a powerful voice during the fight against Ballot Measure 9, was the Executive Director at the time. Galisky was there to propose an idea: what about a walk?
Initially skeptical, the Lesbian Community Project agreed to sponsor a walk as long as Galisky put it all together and was responsible for it. It was difficult, Anne remembers.
“Finding lodging for each night of the two-week journey … especially in that political climate with such a huge increase in hate crimes against queer folks … meant that our hosts also took on that risk with us,” Galisky said. “Many organizations, individuals and places of worship said no to hosting us, citing that risk. One church allowed us to stay but required me to sign a (memorandum of understanding) that promised we would not tell anyone we were staying … in any way.”
Galisky wasn’t deterred.
“I started contacting organizations, and individuals up and down the Willamette Valley fortified with a naïve but relentless optimism that people would come through,” she said. “And they did … I have to hand it to my dear friends — even though it was a crazy idea, nobody tried to talk me out of it, and a handful of them joined in one way or another.”
From June 7 to June 20, walkers joined “For Love and Justice: A Walk Against Hate,” which spanned 150 miles from Eugene to Portland and converged with the Portland Pride parade.
But before arriving in Portland, in Woodburn, the marchers and members of a farmworkers union would straddle a confluence of movements that would change organizing in Oregon forever.
Tired, sweaty, and ready for rest and a meal, in the last few days of the long walk, after experiencing joy, fear, inspiration and fatigue, the walkers could hear a sound that only over time became recognized as a mass of people clapping in unison. The farmworkers of Pineros Y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste, or PCUN, Oregon’s farmworkers’ union, were welcoming the group into town with the Farmworkers' Clap and shouts of 'Si Se Puede!'
“I just am gonna cry cause I have to say that day … The day you came out to the edge of town with (fellow) farmworkers and clapped us into the Union Hall,” Galisky said in a joint interview with Ramón Ramírez, a long-standing leader of the Latino community. "That day changed my life. You risked your lives for us."
Little did the marchers know, being clapped in was only the beginning of that long night.
Ramírez recalls how under the leadership of PCUN founder, President Cipriano Ferrel, the farmworkers posed a really hard question to the tired marchers, “Why hasn’t the … LGBTQ community come to the aid of farmworkers when we were actually in the midst of a fight for our lives just as big as Measure 9?”
Ramírez recalls that despite the marchers being tired, the conversation was lively and many realized they had to do more to defend farmworker and immigrant rights
Over the next three decades, folks from the LGBTQIA+ movement put the wisdom of Cipriano Ferrel and other rural activists like Marcy Westerling to action, maintaining all of our causes are interconnected and must be battled in unison.
“We began planting the seeds of a long-lasting coalition between the two communities that still exist today,” Ramírez said “In part, we were able to infuse immigrant rights into programmatic work of Rural Organizing Project and Basic Rights Oregon. They have become, ever since, strong coalition partners.”
More importantly, perhaps, Ramírez adds, “we are at a historical moment where we need to bring back those forces because we don’t have critical mass like (we did) in Oregon with people of color. So we have to learn how to build a coalition and build communities and respect one another and respect diversity.”
Beyond the many LGBTQIA+ activists who committed themselves to immigrant rights following that night, Ramírez adds that among PCUN’s sister organizations, “each one … have in their programmatic work defending the rights of LGBTQ people and so that work we laid out 30 years ago is paying off.”
“It's so important to keep talking about this very scary fight for justice in Oregon and the dynamics of the OCA, and the conditions of white supremacist-led violence in the 1990s,” Boston Ashby said. “Especially in terms of how right around then, hate crimes were rampant downtown, and Neo-nazism was well organized … We still have so much work to do.”
These five stories are just a fraction of dozens of ways Oregonians across spiritual, political, racial, gender and cultural spectrums forged their power and talents, sometimes together and sometimes apart, to protect all Oregonians from an assault on our basic human rights and dignity. Without even just one of these many parts, we could be living in a very different Oregon. For a more in-depth read into some of these stories and more, please visit the Western States Center: No on 9 Remembered.
In Part Three, Rev. Cecil Prescod will explore the lasting impacts of the racism that occurred within the movement against Measure 9.
Melissa Lang is a local historian and organizer in Portland.
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