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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (March 17, 1995)
12 ▼ m arch 17. 1905 ▼ Jus« ou« à local news together and form a political action group. Thus was the beginning of the Portland Gay Liberation Front. According to Cook, during the group’s short lived existence (it lasted about a year and a half), members lobbied against state sodomy prohibi tions and picketed the premiere of the film The Boys in the Band, which depicts a group of gay men o f the region’s sexual minority as losers who revel in hedonism yet drown in a sea of unhappiness. “The [Portland Gay Liberation Front] didn’t last all that long, but we credit them with getting things going,” says Cook. “Hart was the first woman to really become active in the group. For a while she was the only one, but she, too, started writing pieces urging women to get involved in gay liberation.” Cook says more women eventu ally joined, and they formed what could be viewed as the female arm of the group; it is reported that as many as 100 women attended the meetings each week. Not surprisingly, both Wilkinson and Hart went on to work for gay and lesbian causes. Cook says Hart, who became a lawyer, served on a statewide task force on gay and lesbian issues in the late 1970s; Wilkinson was instrumental in getting the City of Seattle to approve a domestic partnership ordinance in the early 1990s. “Political activism made the difference,” says Wilkinson, “but what I think really changes things is people coming out. If people were still afraid to come out of the closet, we wouldn’t have made the progress we have.” During the ceremony, a plaque commemorat ing the Portland Gay Liberation Front’s first meeting was placed at the church-tumed-altema- tive nightclub. “The owners of LaLuna think it’s great. After all, they do host a Q ueer Night every Monday night,” says Cook, who adds the event for sex as marked the official much as he kick-off of the Gay was reach and L esbian A r ing out to chives of the Pacific find others Northwest. like him- “We think it’s vi s e l f . ” tal we preserve as W ilkinson m uch of our eventually community’s heri became tage as possible,” he more com- says. “We have been fortable with his Above: items from the archives on display at the ceremony; overlooked and ig identity and below: Holly Hart ( left center) and John Wilkinson ( right center) nored by historians and society in gen began writ help mount the plaque eral for so long. It’s ing pieces about what it was like to be gay. Unlike many time to see that change.’ lesbians and gay men of that time who lived their Anyone interested in becoming involved in the lives underacloak of anonymity, Wilkinson signed project can write to: Gay and Lesbian Archives his name to the articles. o f the Pacific Northwest, PO Box 3646, Wilkinson took it a step further when he placed Portland, OR 97208-3646, or call 284-1872. an ad calling upon gay men and lesbians to come Preserving our past helps create a brighter future Ceremony kicks off a new project that chronicles the history communities by Inga Sorensen ctivism can have its payoffs, not only politically but per sonally as well. John Wilkinson can certainly at test to that. The 47-ycar-old engineer and his part ner will soon celebrate their 25th anniver sary. The couple met a quarter of a century ago during the second gathering of the Portland Gay Liberation Front, a now- long-defunct gay and lesbian rights group that is considered by some to be the city’s first political organization dedicated spe cifically to gay and lesbian rights and visibility. “It’s fun to look back and think about some of the things we did,” says Wilkinson, who now lives in Seattle and works for Kodak. “And it’s great to see how far we’ve come since then.” Wilkinson and Holly Hart, owner of the popular Portland eatery Old Wives’ Tales, were honored March 13 for their involvement in the Rose City’s early gay and lesbian rights movement. The cer emony, which was sponsored by the Gay and Lesbian Archivesof the Pacific North west in cooperation with the Oregon Historical Society, was held at LaLuna nightclub, which was formerly the Centenary Wilbur Methodist Church, site of the first meeting of the Portland Gay Libera tion Front in March 1970. “The historic Stonewall riots took place in June 1969 in New York. It seemed to take months for the effect of that event to ripple across the country,” explains Portland resident Tom Cook, a historian who is a member of the newly founded Gay and Lesbi an Archi ves of the Paci fic North west, a group that collects and preserves materials chronicling the experiences of gay men and lesbians through out the region. “As far as we can tell, March 1970 was the first time in Portland that a political group came to gether to work exclusively for gay rights. There were other groups in existence, but they were social and charitable organizations,” he says. According to Cook, Wilkinson and Hart were initially involved with the Willamette Bridge, an underground newspaper that was bom out of oppo A sition to the Vietnam conflict. Cook says Wilkinson had been a college student at the University of Washington before journeying to Portland to assist friends with the then-fledging KBOO community radio station. Hart, meanwhile, was a student from Berkeley, Calif., who landed in Portland after she transferred to Reed College. “In December of 1969, the Willamette Bridge ran an article by a gay anti-war activist named David McReynolds. It was the first mention of Stonewall in that paper,” says Cook. “John, who was doing some layout for the paper—and was struggling with his sexual identity at the time— was very influenced by the article.” According to Cook, the following month the newspaper received a personals-style advertise ment from a young gay man. 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