- Published: Sep. 03, 2024 (oregonlive.com)
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Toni Jaffe grew up in Portland and came out in the 1980s. Back then, gay people around the world faced prejudice, but Multnomah County seemed welcoming, she said.
Since then, so many lesbian couples have settled here that the 2020 Census found nearly as many — roughly 4,700 — live in Multnomah County, population 816,000, as in all of Manhattan, population 1.6 million.
No other U.S. county with at least 65,000 residents has a higher share of female-female couples who live together, whether married or unmarried.
“That fact doesn’t surprise me,” said Jaffe, who counts the area’s previously low cost of living, its rich outdoor recreation, Portland‘s status as a pet friendly city and other factors as attractive to female couples.
One huge turning point: the 1992 failure of Oregon Citizens Alliance’s harshly anti-gay Ballot Measure 9, followed by the defeat in 1994 of Measure 13, which would have ended state civil rights protections for LGTBQ individuals
Opposition efforts to both measures by organizations like Basic Rights Oregon laid the foundation for much of the state’s gay rights movement.
Those ballot measures forced Oregonians, “even in progressive Multnomah County, to have the conversation about same-sex couples and that created more openness in the community,” Jaffe said. “We had to be open to fight for our rights.”
Continued efforts led to Portland-area businesses pledging as early as the 1990s to hire openly gay employees, and Subaru and Oregon companies Nike and Columbia Sportswear targeting “the gay dollar” with national advertising. The business firsts have continued more recently, with the 2022 opening of the world’s first female-focused, lesbian-owned sport bar, Northeast Portland’s Sports Bra.
Still, Oregon has not proved as much of a draw for gay male couples, who remain highly concentrated in just three large cities: San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and New York City.
Many Oregon counties have few lesbian or gay male couples, including Gilliam County, where the 2020 Census reported there was just one lesbian pair. (The Census Bureau sometimes fudges small numbers a bit to provide survey respondents more privacy.) And Oregon’s Deschutes County, home to Bend and its famed outdoor recreational opportunities, ranks at the middle of the pack among large and medium population U.S. counties in its share of couples who are lesbian, just under 1%. In Multnomah County, by contrast, it’s 2.8%.
In 2004, from March through July, Multnomah County was briefly one of the first places in the U.S. where it was legal for two women or two men to marry. More than 3,000 of them did.
Several Portland-area school districts let same-sex parents know decades ago that their child would have fellow schoolmates with two moms or two dads, said parents interviewed for this story, including Jaffe, who has a son with her former wife. From 2007 to 2016, Portland Public Schools was led by Carole Smith, who was open about her 30-year relationship with a woman.
Jaffe, 68, a retired chief human resources officer who worked in education and health care sectors, also credits Oregon for advancing options for same-sex couples to become parents, including through surrogacy. Since 2008, the state has been recognized for its fertility clinics, surrogacy agencies and legal process for assigning rights to parents who might not be genetically related to their children.
Portland-area voters also helped Oregon notch numerous other notable LGBTQ political firsts. In 1992, Gail Shibley was elected as the first openly gay person to serve in the Oregon Legislature and in 2009, Sam Adams was elected Portland’s first openly gay mayor. Kate Brown, who was Oregon’s governor from 2015 to 2023, identifies as bisexual and current Gov. Tina Kotek is a lesbian, one of the first of two lesbian U.S. governors, both elected in 2022.
A federal judge in Oregon legalized same-sex marriage in 2014, a year before the U.S. Supreme Court made that the law of the land.
All of this, along with community-building social gatherings, from LGBTQ+ choral groups and church services, add up to Multnomah County being seen as a friendly, inclusive sanctuary for same-sex couples. “The word gets out and people move here,” said Jaffe.
Multnomah County is home to the longest running drag venue, Old Town’s Darcelle XV Showplace, which in 2020 was listed in the National Register of Historic Places. That was followed in August by the inclusion on the national register of downtown Portland’s former Majestic Hotel and Club Baths (now McMenamins Crystal Hotel) and Northeast Portland’s women’s softball field, Erv Lind Field, which from 1948 to 1964 was seen as a safe space for women to connect over sports.
Nori La Rue and Kate Richardson celebrated their 15th wedding anniversary Aug. 29.
They live in Southeast Portland’s Mount Tabor neighborhood and enjoy long distance road cycling and performing: Richardson plays saxophone in the Rose City Pride Bands and La Rue sings in the Portland Lesbian Choir, which has 150 members. Choir members identify as gay, bisexual, transgender, nonbinary and people who are straight allies.
“I find the wide array comforting,” said La Rue, who is nonbinary. “Some of the songs we sing really touch deep for a lot of us and bring out emotions that we don’t really talk about as a rule in our society, like who do you talk to when you have a problem in a relationship or run up against discrimination?”
The choir sang “Chosen Family” at the Love Who You Love concert in June.
“Portland lets us live in a bubble,” La Rue said. “There are so many things here that I can take for granted, like walking down the street and holding my wife’s hand. I don’t know I would do that in a lot of other cities across America. People from out of state have been coming to the choir looking for community and that’s something we provide.”
Evan and Nora Smiley where living in Oklahoma and traveled to Portland to elope in 2016, even though same-sex marriage was legally recognized in all 50 states.
“Portland culturally felt like a place we could be ourselves and live our lives without issue and it has been,” Evan Smiley said. She appreciates Oregon’s natural beauty and active lifestyle, she added. “We can do the things we like. We can have the health care we need. Our rights aren’t constantly up for discussion with great credit to activists and organizations.”
Smiley, 29, a software engineer, said seeing lesbian couples who are in their 50s and 60s is reassuring. In other parts of the U.S., she said, “Queer and trans folks don’t always get a chance to live until their hair is gray.”
And the slogan Keep Portland Weird rings true, said Smiley: “Between Darth Vader on a unicycle, adult soapbox derbies and naked bike riders, a couple of gay women in athleisure at the farmers market isn’t going to make anyone look up.”
— Janet Eastman | 503-294-4072
(Contributed by Gwyllm Llwydd)