By: Caroline

As cute as it is for you to identify Oregon with covered wagons and all, the absence of Oregon’s unique and complex history of *solid victories* against powerful rapidly anti-gay forces is a glaring hole. Granted, most of you were probably not following the news when Lon Mabon’s Oregon Citizens Alliance launched first Measure 9 and then Measure 13, but people fighting the good fight today need to know how it was, long before anyone considered marriage equality a real possibility, that in a largely rural state people stood up, came out for the first time ever, appealed to fair-mindedness and changed the minds of their religious conservative relatives and neighbors. (Talk about “Legalize Gay.”) It was the opposite of the campaign to defeat Prop 8, and it was very close. But it worked, and Mabon afterward abandoned his life’s work of building state-wide anti-gay campaigns. He gave up.

I was in college in Portland at the time and it was fucking frightening to live through it. It was also inspiring and amazing and you should know about it. Among the things that stick with me: I once saw three preppy, average-looking 11 or 12-year-old boys on a city bus discussing amongst themselves what they could do to protect the rights of gay people.

That’s the relevant history in Oregon, not O! Pioneers!. You should look into it.