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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (April 20, 2007)
APRIL 20. 2007 JUSt|OUt[l1 northwest OK to Be Gay SALE! SALE! SALE! New BRO executive director will spread the word by Julie Sabatier mid its success in the Legislature, Basic Rights Oregon made an impor tant announcement this month. After a lengthy search and several rounds of inter views, the state’s largest nonprofit gay rights organization has hired an executive director. John Hummel comes to BRO from Denver, where he has served as legal director for the Legal Initiative Project at the GLBT Community Center of Colorado since 2004- “When it came down to it, our decision to go for John was really pretty easy. Not that the other From left, Human Rights Campaign co-founder Terry Bean, candidates weren’t great, because former Gov. Barbara Roberts and Basic Rights Oregon's brand they were,” said BRO board co new executive director, John Hummel, spoke April 18 at chairwoman Cris Land. “He brings BRO's annual luncheon. a passion and a commitment to GLBT equality and to social justice work that’s His boss in the state office was supportive, he says, really outstanding and really set him apart from rhe when Hummel came out publicly and began organ other candidates.” izing Your Family Friends and Neighbors. Hummel, 48, is perhaps best known for his “I do know that it was an unusual thing for work in his hometown of Boise, Idaho, where he a deputy attorney general to come out as gay," he and his then partner Brian Bergquist helped organ explained. “I mean, no one had ever done that ize the state’s first gay rights organization, Your before. In fact, there weren’t any attorneys who Family Friends and Neighbors, the group responsi were out in the entire state. I was it." ble for Idaho’s first Pride celebration in 1990. After Proposition 1 was defeated, Hummel left Despite hostility toward sexual minorities in the attorney general’s office to begin a private prac the traditionally conservative state, Hummel and tice in 1994. Through the campaign, he had come the organization were able to defeat 1994’s homo- out to the entire state, and felt he was in it for the phobic Proposition I. The ballot measure was mod long haul. eled after Oregon’s failed 1992 Ballot Measure 9, “I wasn’t fleeing to a so-called ‘gay ghetto’ like which would have banned open discussion of San Francisco or New York or even Seattle or homosexuality in schools and changed the state Portland, which at that time had much more constitution to include a description of homosexu developed gay communities than Boise did,” he al behavior as “abnormal, wrong, unnatural and explained. “Today, it’s really OK to be gay in Boise, perverse." Idaho, and I do take some small credit for that in “One of the things that really attracted me to the work that 1 did and the groups I was organizing Basic Rights Oregon was 1 went through the same in, because I think we made it OK to be gay.” thing that people in Oregon did in Idaho through In 2003, Hummel closed his private practice to that anti-gay measure that we lived through,” said pursue gay activism full time. He continued to keep Hummel. “I fought on a different front in the anti- an eye on BRO from Colorado, he says, and he’s gay wars in Idaho, and the people in Oregon cer got some ideas about how to broaden the base of tainly they were on the main front, really.” support for BRO in his new capacity as executive Hummel, who attended University of director. Washington and graduated from Lewis & Clark “We can’t just be out; we actually have to go Law School in 1986, says he has always felt a soli that extra mile and talk to people in our lives about darity with Oregonians and has been on BRO’s what it means to be gay, and that is harder,” mailing list since the group’s inception in 1988. Hummel said. “One of the things I’m really He says his first inkling that gay advocacy was interested in is exploring ways that we can really in his future was shortly after he returned to Boise encourage people to do that in meaningful ways, after law school, and the U.S. Supreme Court and not just in Portland, and not just in Eugene, decided Bowers v. Hardwick, upholding state laws and not just in Corvallis, but in places like Bums, against sodomy. “I was so outraged in reading this in places like Malheur County and Pendleton, decision that, even though I didn’t follow through places where it’s still not OK to be gay.” (Hummel on it for a couple years, I made up my mind right says his extensive knowledge of Oregon geography then that 1 had to do something about it. I couldn’t is due in part to rhe fact that his mother grew up in be silent. I couldn’t be safe.” Huntington.) Hummel landed a prestigious position as deputy After three years in Colorado, Hummel says attorney general. He was assigned to the Idaho he’s ready to move back to the Pacific Northwest. Department of Employment, where he says he "To me, it’s almost like moving home,” he said. gained a lot of experience that has served him well Hummel and his partner, Ben Riggs, will rel«ate in his career as an advocate against discrimination. to Portland in May. 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