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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (April 4, 1997)
ju s t o u t ▼ aprii 4 . 1 0 0 7 ▼ 13 An April 12 nn and Bill Shep herd didn’t settle for quiet acceptance. Sure, maybe they initial ly found it unnerving when Susie, one o f their five daughters, came out to them in December 1971—just two years after Stonewall (and light years away from the celebrated phenomenon known as Lesbian Chic). Rather than wallowing in fear or even quietly tolerat ing their daughter’s sexuali ty, the couple went on to become leading advocates for lesbian and gay rights. ft seemed in keeping with their nature— Bill Shepherd, a Portland attor ney, had written a number of scripts for the Oregon State Bar Association for a television series called The Fountain o f Justice, about civil disobedience and the law. Ann Shepherd, mean while, was a “newspaper writer/editor-tumed-house- wife who was the publicity committee of every civic group for which she volun teered,” says Susie Shepherd, a legal secretary. In 1975 the Portland Town Council, an early gay rights group, was lining up testimony for statewide leg islation barring discrimina tion based on sexual orien tation in housing, public accommodations and em Bill and Ann with M isha the Dog, sum m er ¡994 Ann at the breakfast table, ¡995 ployment. Portland. The Shepherds were asked to testify. While Bill nursing home and the attending nurse was inquir was working that day, Ann agreed and, says Susie, It wasn’t the only way Bill utilized his legal ing about this man she never got to know. Mother “took Salem by storm.” expertise to assist the gay and lesbian community. was talking about PFLAG, which prompted the In the m id-1970s when, says Susie, Portland police The bill eventually was voted out of committee nurse to say that her own daughter had come out to “were very fond of harassing gay men, especially with a do-pass recommendation, only to lose on her just the summer before. And then she ran and entrapping them in downtown public rest rooms the floor by one vote, because, says Susie, the brought in another nurse who had just moved to and arresting them,” Bill started the PTC Legal swing legislator had to run home to tend to an Oregon with her partner of several years. emergency. Resource Committee, whose initial goal was to let “As Mom shared area gay resources with the gay men know “that they didn’t have to take this During that time Susie was herself very active two nurses, we realized that Daddy had just in PTC. She’d share ideas and discuss her projects kind of harassment and that unbiased legal repre slipped on out, secure in the knowledge that so sentation was available.” with her parents, who willingly opened themselves much of the work he pioneered with Mother two up to gay kids who had less-supportive parents. According to Susie, after two years police final decades hence was continuing to be carried on.” “Many young people started calling Bill and ly “got the message and backed off,” which in turn On April 12, Metropolitan Community Church Ann ‘Dad’ and ‘Mom,’ because they had been allowed Bill and other supportive attorneys to of Portland will host the first Shepherds’ Award begin focusing on educat kicked out of their homes or churches. Mom and ing the gay community Dad couldn’t understand any parent rejecting his about the need to acquire or her own offspring, and proudly watched their wills and other documents family grow exponentially,” says Susie. designed to “prevent In an effort to extinguish so much misunder homophobic families from standing, Bill and Ann Shepherd, along with Rita destroying years of mem and the Rev. Charles Knapp, good friends who ories when one partner were also parents of a gay child, decided to form a would die.” parents’ support group called Parents of Gays, When the Oregon which met monthly at the Shepherds’ home. “For a long time if they had four couples it was Citizens Alliance stepped a big meeting,” recounts Susie. forward with a series of anti-gay-rights initiatives Despite its small size, the group made its pres beginning in the late ence felt, producing a brochure to pass out at Gay 1980s, the Shepherds were Pride Day. there providing outspoken All the while the Shepherds appeared on televi resistance. sion programs and in newspaper articles. They In March 1995, Bill were a hot item on the gay speakers’ circuit. They lobbied for antidiscrimination legislation. Shepherd passed away. In 1980, when the organization was created that Yet according to Susie, her father “practiced law until eventually was named Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, Bill drew up legal 10 days before he died, and he went out quite liter documents making Portland’s POG a national ally passing message.” affiliate. Five years later the Shepherds were She shares this story: instrumental in organizing the International “He was in a coma at the From left: Susie, Ann and Jean Shepherd in March 1996 Convention o f PFLAG, which was held in A dinner honors longtime Portland-area civil rights activists Bill and Ann Shepherd by Inga Sorensen Dinner at the Portland Hilton. Community leaders, along with keynote speak er Kathleen Saadat, will honor the Shepherds for their numerous contributions to the community during the past quarter century. According to MCC, Ann Shepherd has given her approval for the event to become the church’s signature fund raiser. (The Shepherds were active in the spiritual community as well, both serving as ordained ministers in the First Presbyterian Church.) Ann Shepherd has a moving memory about the early days of Portland’s MCC: “ I vividly recall Mother’s Day back when MCC was still meeting at Centenary Wilbur Methodist Church,” she says. “My own pastor had made a scurrilous attack on gays in his sermon, and I was hurting badly when Bill and I walked into MCC that evening so that I could say a few words to my surrogate children. The love and peace there was overwhelming and strengthening. We both felt whole again.” As for the event honoring her and her husband, she says: “ I feel humbled, proud and over whelmed, and frankly, am as close to speechless as is possible— for me, that is. I say ‘me,’ although it certainly is ‘us,’ since my gay-rights efforts back in the early 1970s couldn’t have amounted to a fistful of dandelion fuzz if Bill hadn’t been there beside, behind and ahead of me— always strong, always supportive and always bursting with new ideas, getting across the message of what wonderful human beings gays and lesbians are, and that they must receive all the civil rights the rest of us auto matically have.” For ticket information about the Shepherds’ Award Dinner, call MCC pastor Roy Cole at 281-8868.