PORTLAND, OREGON

Since initial settlement in 1843, Portland has been a center for Pacific import–export trade. In 1910 its population reached 207,000. Nearly a century later its metropolitan area counted 1.7 million residents.

The Scene through the 1960s

Portland's most visible early homosexual community revolved around the racially and ethnically diverse male laborers who crowded into the North End lodging district beginning in the 1880s. Same-sex sexual activities were an established part of this working-class culture and therefore the atmosphere of the North End. A separate middle-class male homosexual community had appeared in the city's white-collar central business district by 1900. In apartments, the Imperial Hotel's restroom, Lownsdale Park, and along Washington Street, men met each other for sexual affairs and more. In late 1912 a scandal involving the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) brought this homosexual side of Portland to public awareness and led to repressive reforms (see sidebar). Another scandal in 1928 reminded locals again of the local male homosexual underworld.

Lesbians in the pre–World War II period were less visible, but records indicate that some were incarcerated by the Women's Protective Division. Committed working- and middle-class lesbian couples also made Portland their home. Marie Equi, a physician and political activist, and her partner Harriet Speckart maintained a relationship in the city between 1906 and 1921. Equi supported a variety of radical causes such as birth control, abortion, and the Industrial Workers of the World.

One of the earliest known "transsexual" surgeries occurred in Portland when Alan Hart, born Alberta Lucille, underwent a hysterectomy and psychological treatment between 1917 and 1920. Hart then assumed the clothing of a male and married twice. Hart was a licensed physician who eventually worked in various parts of the United States. He also wrote several novels. The Undaunted (1936), set in a fictional northwestern city, tells the tragic story of a male homosexual lab technician.

World War II revolutionized Portland's LGB community. Thousands flocked to the city's war industries and military installations. This added to the homosexual population and it transformed formerly straight bars into cruising spots for military personnel and civilians alike. The Harbor Club, which in time served both gays and lesbians, was among the best known; the navy declared it off-limits. The corner of Park and Oak Streets in the downtown area served as a G.I. pickup spot, while Hayden Island on the Columbia River became a male nude beach.

After the war some bars became exclusively LGB while other venues, such as the Music Hall, with its drag performers, grew increasingly popular. Bathhouses, such as the Aero-Vapor, came into their own in the 1960s. A crackdown on bars, drag shows, and cruising areas in city parks occurred between 1949 and 1964; the latter year is when alarmed authorities worried that Portland was "fast becoming a small San Francisco." But during this time some homosexuals pursued other forms of private and public socializing. For example, although Portland's Imperial Sovereign Rose Court originated in 1966, a short-lived predecessor, the Court of Transylvania, appeared in 1958. Originally more for fun and socializing, in the 1960s the court system grew into a non-profit organization that sponsored drag balls and raised funds for various charities. A number of lesbians also played for The Florists, Portland's nationally known softball team, as early as the 1940s, while others flocked to their games or played in local clubs.

Institutions and Accomplishments, 1970–2002

Police harassment waned in the second half of the 1960s, which might explain why homophile organizations were slow to develop in Portland. Only after Stonewall did LGB people really organize. In 1969 a group of female impersonators founded the Portland Forum. At the same time a local chapter of the Gay Liberation Front appeared. It dissolved within a year over a controversy that led lesbians to form a separate group. Between the fall and winter of 1970–1971 the LGB Second Foundation organized. It began publishing Portland's first LGB newspaper, The Fountain, in 1971, and opened the first Gay Community Center in May 1972. Also in 1971 the Metropolitan Community Church arrived in the city, LGB people began the Homophile Half Hour on a local radio station, and the first gay pride activities were held. But it was not until 1975 and 1978, respectively, when the first Gay Fair and the first LGB march took place, both in association with the commemoration of the Stonewall Riots.

While Portland's LGB scene remained centered in downtown, from the 1970s through the 1990s lesbian and LGB residential neighborhoods emerged in the northwest and the inner southeast sections of the city. During these years various organizations, restaurants, bars, and newspapers came and went, but a few had staying power. Darcelle's drag nightclub, now a Portland institution, has operated continuously since 1969. The Portland Gay Men's Chorus began in 1980 and the Lesbian Choir formed in 1986. Just Out, Portland's longest-running community newspaper, started in 1983. The Lesbian Community Project formed in 1985 as a grassroots, multicultural organization to promote Portland's lesbian community. The Lavender Menace, an openly lesbian softball team, competed in the Portland Parks League in the early 1970s. Racial and ethnic minority groups also appeared, including the Asian Pacific Islander Lesbians and Gays in 1990. In the early 1980s the Northwest Gender Alliance for cross-dressers and transsexuals formed. During these years AIDS also took its toll on the community. Oregon's first reported AIDS death occurred in 1981. By 1996 more than 2,400 had died. A number of groups and institutions organized in response. The Cascade AIDS Project was among the largest. AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) appeared in Portland in 1988 and disbanded in 1991. Portland's first AIDS hospice, Our House, opened in 1990.

The Portland City Council in December 1974 banned discrimination against homosexuals in municipal employment. An unsuccessful attempt to repeal the ordinance occurred during the conservative times of the 1980s. That conservatism—promoted in part by the Oregon Citizens Alliance, which from the late 1980s through the 1990s launched anti-LGB campaigns throughout Oregon—only clarified the need for the legal protection of sexual minorities. The city council responded in 1991 by passing an ordinance that shielded homosexuals from discrimination in housing and employment throughout the municipality. In 2000 the city extended similar protections to transgender people. Adding emphasis to its support for the LGBT community, the city council in 2002 took steps to preserve the historic LGBT district in downtown Portland.

Bibliography

Boag, Peter. Same-Sex Affairs: Constructing and Controlling Homosexuality in the Pacific Northwest. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003.

Gilbert, J. Allen. "Homosexuality and Its Treatment." Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 52 (1920): 297–322.

Krieger, Nancy. "Queen of the Bolsheviks: The Hidden History of Dr. Marie Equi." Radical America 17, no. 5 (1983): 55–73.

Martinac, Paula. The Queerest Places: A Guide to Gay and Lesbian Historic Sites. New York: Henry Holt, 1997.

"Those fabulous Florists ! Women's softball and the flowering of a lesbian community in Portland." Northwest Gay and Lesbian Historian 1 (1997): 1, 6.

A Walking Tour of Downtown Portland: A Century of Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Historic Sites. Portland, Ore.: Gay and Lesbian Archives of the Pacific Northwest, 1999.

Peter Boag

see alsohart, alan.

portland's 1912 scandal

In mid-November 1912, Portland newspapers reported in outrageous tones details of a thriving male homosexual underground in the city and linked it to the local Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA). For weeks local and regional newspapers devoted ample space to coverage of the so-called YMCA scandal while authorities arrested dozens of men from as far north as Vancouver, British Columbia, and as far south as Fresno, California. Those apprehended included some high-profile individuals, including E. S. J. McAllister, a well-known lawyer and political reformer who had influenced Portland's municipal governmental system. Sensational trials followed. Several men ended up behind bars while others fled the city for good. As the sensational news spread to large dailies in cities throughout the country, many worried that a national ring of sex perverts were operating a system not unlike that of white slavers. In response, U.S. Representative A. W. Lafferty from Portland attempted to rally the federal government into action. The 1912 scandal, however, had a far greater impact at the local and regional levels, leading to legislation that would have an effect on LGB people for years to come. In 1913 the Oregon legislature expanded the definition of sodomy, hitherto rather vaguely worded in the statute, to include oral sex and "any act or practice of sexual perversity." At the same time, legislators lengthened the maximum sentence for sodomy from five to fifteen years. The scandal also broke the logjam in the legislature over eugenics, which had been debated for years. In response to the news from Portland, Oregon governor Oswald West declared the need to emasculate the "degenerates who slink, in all their infamy, through every city, contaminating the young, debauching the innocent, cursing the State" (Oregon, General Laws, 1913. Salem: Willis S. Duniway, 1913. Vol. 1: 18). The legislature passed the governor's sterilization bill, which specifically targeted "sexual perverts" who were "addicted to the practice of sodomy." Although Oregonians repealed (for reasons unrelated to homosexuality) the new statute in a referendum in the fall of 1913, the legislature adopted it again in 1917. Tinkered with over the years, the law remained on the books until 1965. The state's sodomy law was repealed on 1 January 1972.