BROTHERS AND SISTERS (AND EVERYONE IN BETWEEN): SEXUALITY AND 
CLASS IN THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST, 1970-1995 
by 
CHRISTA ORTH 
A THESIS 
Presented to the Department of History 
and the Graduate School of the University of Oregon 
in partial fulfillment of the requirements 
for the degree of 
Master of Arts 
June 2002 
111 
Copyright 2002 Christa Orth 
"Brothers and Sisters (and everyone in between): Sexuality and Class in the Pacific 
Northwest, 1970-1995," a thesis prepared by Christa Orth in partial fulfillment of the 
requirements for the Master of Arts degree in the Department of History. This thesis has 
been approved and accepted by: 
Dr. Matt Garcia, Chair of the Examining Committee 
Date 
Committee in charge: Dr. Matt Garcia, Chair 
Dr. Martin Summers 
Dr. Peggy Pascoe 
Accepted by: 
Dean of the Graduate School 
lV 
An Abstract of the Thesis of 
Christa Orth for the degree of Master of Arts 
in the Department of History to be taken June 2002 
Title: BROTHERS AND SISTERS (AND EVERYONE IN BETWEEN): SEXUALITY 
AND CLASS IN THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST, 1970-1995 
Approved: __________________ _ 
Dr. Matt Garcia 
In the past decade, national attention has focused on political battles in the 
Pacific Northwest, such as the World Trade Organization protests in Seattle in 1999, and 
Measure 9 in Oregon in both 1992 and 2000. Although these events are usually 
considered in isolation, they reflect a rich history of growing alliances between labor and 
gay activism. My close study oflesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) 
organizations and political activity reveals gay rights activism took on another venue 
beginning in the seventies: the workplace. 
My study explores the history of the LGBT workers' rights movement through: 
ways they negotiated working-class issues within the gay rights movement through 
vocational groups and labor unions; how response to the HIV/ AIDS epidemic facilitated 
this workers' rights activism; and how the case study of the Northwest AIDS Foundation 
in Seattle resulted in class and identity conflicts when gay workers organized a gay 
workplace in 1989. 
V 
CURRICULUM VITA 
NAME OF AUTHOR: Christa Orth 
PLACE OF BIRTH: Phoenix, Arizona 
DATE OF BIRTH: May 25, 1976 
GRADUATE AND UNDERGRADUATE SCHOOLS ATTENDED: 
University of Oregon 
Western Washington University 
DEGREES AW ARD ED: 
Master of Arts in History, 2002, University of Oregon 
Bachelor of Arts in Women's Studies, 1998, Western Washington University 
AREAS OF SPECIAL INTEREST: 
Twentieth-century United States and Labor History 
History of Sexuality 
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE: 
Graduate Teaching Fellow, Department of History, University of Oregon, 
Eugene,2000-2002 
HONORS AND GRANTS: 
A warded the Center for the Study of Women in Society Graduate Research 
Support Grant, 2002 
Awarded the Center for the Study of Women in Society travel grant, 2001 
Awarded Seattle Out Front Labor Coalition scholarship to the Pride At Work 
Convention, June 2001 
vii 
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 
I would like to thank the Department of History and the Center for the Study of 
Women in Society for their financial contributions to my project. I would like to 
acknowledge the invaluable work of the archivists who assisted me along the way at the 
Oregon Historical Society, University of Washington Manuscripts, and the University of 
Oregon Special Collections. I extend special gratitude to the individuals who participated 
in my oral history project that became a central piece of my research. I have many kind 
words for my family, friends, colleagues, and the unstoppable Writing Group, who all 
helped me through this thesis in their own ways. I would like to thank my committee 
members Dr. Martin Summers and Dr. Peggy Pascoe, for their thoughtful critiques and 
suggestions in reading this paper. Finally, I would like to thank my advisor, Dr. Matt 
Garcia, whose skillful guidance and constant encouragement truly inspired every page of 
this thesis. 
Vlll 
TABLE OF CONTENTS 
Chapter Page 
I. INTRODUCTION ................................................................................ 1 
Sources and Methodology ............................................................... ? 
Chapters .......................................................................................... 9 
II. TIES THAT BIND:SEXUALITY AND CLASS IN THE 
POST-STONEWALL LESBIAN,GA Y, BISEXUAL, 
TRANSGENDER COMMUNITY IN THE 
PACIFIC NORTHWEST ................................................................ 12 
LGBT Working-Class Activism ..................................................... 15 
Class Splits and Formal Politics ..................................................... 24 
The Harsh Realities of Discrimination at Work ............................. 33 
Conclusion ...................................................................................... 41 
III. THE STRUGGLE FOR LEGITIMACY: 
WORKERS' RIGHTS, HIV/AIDS, AND 
ANTI-GAY POLITICS IN THE 1980S 
PACIFIC NORTHWEST ............................................................... .42 
The Need for Workplace Legitimacy ............................................ .44 
AIDS and the Workplace ............................................................... .48 
Anti-Gay Politics and the Workers' Rights Movement.. ................ 54 
Conclusion ...................................................................................... 58 
IV. "WE'RE NOT WIDGET WORKERS" 
THE UNIONIZATION OF NORTHWEST 
AIDS FOUNDATION, 1985-1995 ................................................. 60 
From Family to Business: Why did they Unionize? .......................... 63 
Real Workplace Issues and Ambivalence Toward the Union ...........7 0 
"We Are Family! I've Got All My Sisters and Me" ......................... 75 
Learning Lessons from Organizing LGBT Workers ......................... 80 
V. EPILOGUE ........................................................................................... 84 
BIBLIOGRAPHY ...................................................................................................... 90 
ix 
Secondary Sources .......................................................................... 90 
Prin1ary Sources .............................................................................. 93 
X 
LIST OF FIGURES 
Figure Page 
1. "Support Your Local Gay Activities Council," 
NW Fountain, February 1979: 10. .............................................................. 89 
1 
CHAPTER I 
INTRODUCTION 
In the past decade, national attention has focused on political battles in the Pacific 
Northwest, such as the World Trade Organization protests in Seattle in 1999, which 
pitted anti-globalization forces against transnational corporations; and Measure 9 in 
Oregon in both 1992 and 2000, which pitted lesbian and gay activists against right wing 
Christian extremists. Although these events are usually considered in isolation, they 
actually reflect a rich and little-known history of growing alliances between labor and 
gay activism in the Pacific Northwest. The close study of lesbian, gay, bisexual, 
transgender (LGBT) organizations and political activity demonstrates that gay rights 
activism undertook another venue beginning in the seventies: the workplace. 1 
My thesis explores the history of the LGBT workers' rights movement and how it 
developed over two decades, beginning in the post-Stonewall era of gay liberation and 
changing to the more inclusive labor movement it is today. 2 Workplace issues, such as 
job discrimination and harassment, have always shaped the LGBT rights movement. In 
the seventies, formal political threats to the gay community, such as anti-gay initiatives, 
1 In this thesis I have used several terms to refer to the sexual identities of these historical actors. I 
use LGBT, gay, and queer interchangeably. At times I do make distinctions between lesbians and gay men, 
as they did occasionally act as separate political groups. The term transgender is meant to encompass 
individuals who identify as transsexuals, transvestites, crossdressers, intersexuals and anyone who 
transcends gender identity. 
2 For a look at the status of the national LGBT labor movement see the special edition, "Labor 
Comes Out," of the New Labor Forum (Spring/Summer 2001). 
2 
along with workplace homophobia, moved activists to organize. On-the-job prejudice 
continued throughout the eighties for LGBT employees, and the HIV/AIDS epidemic 
only exacerbated these problems. Homophobia and AIDSphobia facilitated a growing 
workplace movement for LGBT rights that labor unions eventually supported. Mounting 
anti-gay politics in the Pacific Northwest also sparked class debates among LGBT 
activists themselves. The late eighties and early nineties brought new challenges for 
unions working with LGBT workers. The case study of the Northwest AIDS Foundation 
in Seattle demonstrates that this collaboration resulted in class and identity conflicts when 
gay workers organized a gay workplace in 1989. Despite the shifts and changes in 
activism, the LGBT movement headed toward a gay-labor alliance while maintaining its 
sexual integrity. 
Starting in the seventies, gay rights activists agitated for social dignity and 
respect. Similarly, LGBT employees struggled for an economically based recognition 
that I refer to as workplace "legitimacy." Legitimacy in the workplace has always been 
the main goal of the working-class LGBT movement in the Pacific Northwest. Gay 
employees fought to be taken seriously for their workplace contributions no matter \Vhat 
their sexual orientation or gender identity. Legitimacy for LGBT workers is a theme 
throughout this thesis and is a component of other scholarship on the history of gay 
communities. 
Many scholars in the fields of LGBT studies, and more recently, LGBT labor 
studies, have addressed this history of legitimacy for gay people. My study of the Pacific 
Northwest borrows the frameworks of the emerging literature that examines community 
3 
political, social and economic conditions through class and sexuality.3 Out At Work: 
Building A Gay-Labor Alliance is the most recent collection in which the contributors 
centralize the ways class and sexuality influence LGBT workers' experiences. The 
book's editors, Kitty Krupat and Patrick McCreery, assert that this text "challenges 
political and intellectual debates that treat class and identity separately or argue their 
merits as opposing modes of social and political action." 4 The assertion that class and 
sexuality cannot be considered without one another is the basis for my study and for other 
writers of LGBT labor history. A fundamental contribution that these new labor scholars 
have made to the history of working people is to understand that the acknowledgement of 
sexual identity is critical to the success of trade unionism. Conversely, as Kitty Krupat 
argues in her article, "Out of Labor's Dark Age: Sexual Politics Comes to the 
Workplace," class identity carries equal weight with sexual orientation in the LGBT 
workers' movement. Citing bargaining victories for gays and lesbians at companies like 
DaimlerChrysler, Barney's, and Village Voice, she writes: 
At the risk of oversimplification, I would suggest that the mere fact such 
movements have developed in the workplace-the fact they have been advanced 
3 
For studies on class and sexuality see David K. Johnson, "'Homosexual Citizens': Washington's 
Gay Community Confronts the Civil Service," Washington History, (fall/winter 1994-95): 43-63; Allan 
Berube, Coming Out Under Fire: The History of Gay Men and Women in World 
War Two (New York: Free Press, 1990); Gerald Hunt, ed. Laboring/or Rights: Unions and Sexual 
Diversity Across Nations (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1999); Bryan K. Garman '"Heroic 
Spiritual Grandfather': Whitman, Sexuality, and the American Left, 1890-1940," American Quarterly 
(March 200 I): 90-126. 
4 
Kitty Krupat and Patrick McCreery, eds. Out At Work: Building a Gay-Labor Alliance 
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001 ). 
4 
through workplace struggle--demonstrates that sexual identity is intimately 
com1ected to class and to the ways class is asserted. 5 
Krupat draws on Robin D.G. Kelley's assertion that class is lived through race and 
gender, but she expands this notion to include sexuality. 6 Her thesis argues that the 
LGBT community in the Pacific Northwest lived class through sexuality when sexual 
oppression and economic hardships affected them. Moreover, I argue that social and 
political conditions shaped the identities of working LGBT people. Krupat's astute 
contribution reverberates throughout the field to illustrate the way class and sexual 
identities shape social and political mobilization. 
Examining sexual politics from a class perspective has been a useful way for 
scholars to assess working-class involvement in the LGBT rights movement. Patrick 
McCreery' s study of the practical effects of national anti-discrimination legislation on 
gay workers demonstrates that many LGBT workers are not ready to sacrifice open 
sexual expression for protective legislation. In his article, "Beyond Gay, 'Deviant' Sex 
and the Politics of the ENDA Workplace," McCreery acknowledges the homophobic 
politics that exist even within the gay community. 7 He argues that until gay workers are 
truly free to express their sexualities at work, the labor movement will never gain 
5 
Kitty Krupat, "Out of Labor's Dark Age: Sexual Politics Comes to the Workplace," in Out At 
Work, 8. 
6 
Ibid., 18. Also see Robin D.G.,Kelley, Yo' Mama's Disfunktional!: Fighting the Culture Wars 
in Urban America (Boston: Beacon Press, 1997), 114. 
7 
Patrick McCreery, "Beyond Gay: 'Deviant' Sex and the Politics of the ENDA Workplace," in 
OutatWork, 31-51. 
5 
legitimacy for the LGBT community. I draw similar conclusions about the importance 
of the deconstruction of homophobia in social and political contexts. I argue that without 
the inclusion of gay identity politics in campaigns for rights, the legislative/political 
successes of LGBT workers will be only superficial. Not every gay rights group would 
agree. In 1988, for example, the pro-gay campaign against the passage of an anti-gay 
initiative in Oregon, subsumed sexual politics with class arguments. Yet whether sexual 
identity is prominent or hidden, it has always played a significant part in the history of 
anti-gay legislation. 8 
Making the link between sexuality and everyday work life has been a challenge 
for the field of LGBT labor studies. Amber L. Hollibaugh eloquently asserts that 
sexuality is ever-present at work in her published discussion with Nikhil Pal Singh in Out 
At Work: 
So someone will say to you, "Sexuality doesn't have anything to do with the way 
you organize a workplace." And then you think about all the eruptions that 
happen in the workplace because somebody gets pregnant, somebody has an 
affair, somebody finds out she's HIV positive, somebody is having sex with 
somebody else behind the factory building. 9 
I have taken her description of the centrality of sexuality in the workplace and applied it 
to "out" gay sexuality in a different way: by examining an LGBT workplace where out 
gay sexuality permeates every aspect of the employees and their jobs. 10 The case study 
8 For more on the history of the anti-gay Briggs Initiative campaign in California in 1978, see 
Christian Arthur Bain's article, "A Short History of Lesbian and Gay Labor Activism in the United States," 
in Laboring/or Rights, 58-86. 
9 Amber L. Hollibaugh and Nikhil Pal Singh, "Sexuality, Labor, and the New Trade Unionism: A 
Conversation," in Out At Work, 66. 
6 
of the Northwest AIDS Foundation illustrates that in a workplace even where LGBT 
workers were out, sexuality affected the workplace and, furthermore, impacted the 
workers' efforts to unionize. 
In the past decade scholars in the field of LGBT history have rarely made issues 
of sexuality and employment fundamental themes in their books, they have peripherally 
dealt with class and offered some ideas about how labor shaped gay communities. 
Although these studies do little to place LGBT communities outside of white, middle-
class culture, they have nonetheless provided me with insights about the way that class 
and sexuality affects LGBT working spaces and social spaces. 11 George Chauncey's 
study of pre-WWII New York City describes gay identity formation in the Bowery, 
where gay men negotiated oppression and resistance in working-class social spaces. 
This influential book briefly mentions the importance of work in this history because 
typical gay male jobs created a space for the expression of sexuality. 12 Work is also a 
theme for the history of the working-class lesbian community in Buffalo, New York. 
Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold, Madeline Davis and Elizabeth Kennedy's study of 
economic and social self-sufficiency, highlights the notion of a "prepolitical" community 
10 By "out" I mean not hiding expressions of sexuality or gender identity which do not fit a 
hegemonic heterosexual model. 
11 See also John D'Emilio Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities: The Making of a Homosexual 
Minority in the United States, 1940-1970 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1998); Marc Stein 
City of Sisterly and Brotherly Loves: Lesbian and Gay Philadelphia, 1945-1972, (Chicago, University of 
Chicago Press, 2000). 
12 . 
George Chauncey. Gay New York: Gender Urban Culture, and the Makzng of the Gay 
Male World, 1890-1940 (New York: Basic Books, 1994), 274. 
7 
that emerged from lesbian bar culture. 13 Nan Alamilla Boyd's 2001 study of San 
Francisco similarly argues that gay bar culture was political because early resistance to 
police raids translated into formal political action. 14 Just as working-class bar culture 
influenced LGBT rights politics, so too did work-based demands for anti-discrimination 
legislation by gay employees in the Pacific Northwest. 15 
Sources and Methodologv 
This project is a culmination of my research in a variety of Pacific Northwest 
LGBT community sources that have helped me answer questions about the workers' 
rights and the LGBT movements. Archives in Seattle, Washington, and Portland, 
Oregon, and gay community publications contained rich information on the intersections 
of sexuality and class in the post-Stonewall era. Oral history interviews of LGBT labor 
leaders and rank-and-file workers have been invaluable. I interviewed ten individuals 
from local unions such as the Service Employees International Union, the Oregon Public 
Employees Union, and the National Association of Letter Carriers, all of which had or 
13
Madeline D. Davis and Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy, Boots of Leather, Slippers of 
Gold: The Hist01y of a Lesbian Community (New York: Routledge, 1993). 
14 Nan Alamilla Boyd, Wide Open Town: A Queer History of San Francisco, forthcoming book. 
15 A few community studies have been written recently about the Pacific Northwest, treating both 
class and political issues as central to community development. Peter Boag's forthcoming book Same-Sex 
Affairs: Male Homosexuality and Scandal in Portland and the Nor_thwest, 1890-1930, highlights the 
oppression of same-sex relationships in Progressive-Era vice districts. In her 200 I book on the anti-gay 
Measure 9, Arlene Stein shows how homophobia and gay rights politics struck up a fierce debate in a small 
Oregon town even though it did not have a large gay community. Stein, The Stranger Next Door: The 
Story of a Small Community's Battle Over Sex, Faith and Civil Rights (Boston: Beacon Press, 200 I). 
8 
have openly gay members and leaders. These personal stories provided me with 
wonderful insights about Pacific Northwest labor history and LGBT rights activism. 
To determine the political and economic climate for LGBT workers in the Pacific 
Northwest, I looked at the Tim Mayhew Collection on Gay Rights at the University of 
Washington in Seattle. This collection contains extensive papers on political issues such 
as the 1978 King County Initiative 13, which sought to repeal Seattle's ordinances 
protecting gays and lesbians from discrimination in housing and employment. The 
papers of the 1970s Mechanica Collective, an organization dedicated to training and 
placing women in the trades, are housed in the University YWCA papers in Seattle. At 
the Oregon Historical Society, the Roger Troen Gay Liberation Collection and the Gay 
and Lesbian Archives of the Pacific Northwest both contain valuable source material 
about the gay political action committees such as the Portland Town Council and Right 
To Privacy. Gay news publications The Fountain, Just Out, and the Seattle Gay News, 
as well as organizational newsletters, have been helpful in placing my findings in a larger 
context. I looked for references to working-class groups, formal political struggles, 
discrimination cases, and labor union activity. I found these historical examples and then 
examined how sexism, homophobia, AIDSphobia, and transphobia complicated LGBT 
activism on the job. 
To examine working conditions and issues for LGBT workers, I looked at 
collections and papers from the Northwest AIDS Foundation (NWAF). This agency was 
founded in 1983 and was largely staffed by openly gay and lesbian-identified workers. I 
chose this organization as a case study because the unionization efforts of the workers 
9 
themselves and Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Local 6, provide a 
poignant example of the relationship between queer identity and working class identity. 
The NWAF and SEIU archives contain records of organizing efforts, including the 
minutes of labor/management and union membership meetings, records of contract 
negotiations, and collective bargaining agreements from 1990 to the present. These 
records also include worker-satisfaction surveys from 1992, 1995, and 1997, which 
provided a window into how workers related their sexual identities to their jobs and their 
work environment. 
Chapters 
This project examines the ways that class and sexuality merged to create an 
identity for the LGBT rights movement in the Pacific Northwest. Working-class 
elements within the LGBT rights movement shaped the gay rights movement in the 
Pacific Northwest, not only in activist strategies, but also in post-Stonewall gay identity 
formation. Working-class identity connects to the LGBT identity in two ways. First, 
because working-class groups were diverse in terms of gender and class inclusiveness, 
their history debunks the stereotype that gay activists were white, rich and male. Second, 
political and social threats to the livelihoods of LGBT people compelled the community 
to fold trade union activism into their gay rights campaigns. Fighting for political, social 
respect for the LGBT community and the right to be economically viable inherently 
connects to labor issues. 
My study begins in the post-Stonewall era of the 1970s, the period that witnessed 
the expansion of the LGBT rights movement into the context of work. The gay rights 
movement of the 1970s provided a public space for working-class LGBT activists to rally 
support for working-class issues. Their responses to job discrimination, anti-gay 
initiatives, and HIV/ AIDS fueled the movement throughout the 1980s. I end my case 
study of an AIDS service organization in 1995 because the introduction of the "cocktail," 
or protease inhibitor treatment, dramatically changed the needs of the HIV/AIDS 
community and the workers that served them. 
The first chapter traces the origins of the working-class elements of the gay rights 
movement in the Pacific Northwest from 1970-1980. I argue that working-class issues 
held a prominent place in the movement and that organizing done during the 1970s 
became the foundation for more formal labor organizing in the 198 0s and '90s. I also 
argue that class and gay identities emerged together, shaping and forming the way that 
the LGBT community saw each other and the issues. 
The second chapter shows that homophobia on the job affected LGBT workers 
profoundly. The onset HIV/ AIDS epidemic in the 1980s became a watershed moment 
for LGBT labor activism. In the midst of extreme suffering and loss, gay employees 
formed alliances with labor unions to combat homophobia and AIDSphobia in the 
workplace. Oregon's anti-gay Measure 8 marked the beginning ofright-wing 
conservatives' backlash against LGBT state workers. The gay community's response to 
these politics shows the tension between the sexual and class identities of the LGBT 
community. 
11 
Finally, chapter four examines the unique conditions of an LGBT workplace, 
owned and operated by LGBT people. Unionization affected both the sexual and class 
identities of workers at the Northwest AIDS Foundation when they unionized in 1989. 
The union struggled with cross-class sexual affinities throughout 1989 and beyond. The 
workers and the union taught each other valuable lessons about the importance of 
recognizing sexual orientation and class as complimentary categories in organizing. 
The title of this thesis comes from the notion that class solidarity in unions creates 
community among "brothers and sisters" in the struggle for justice. It occurred to me that 
while brotherhood and sisterhood can apply to the queer community, LGBT workers 
oftentimes remain on the fringe of the movement because of the challenges they face in 
their own lives with their sexual and gender identities. Transgender workers, for 
instance, may choose not to identify as a brother or sister at all because of more fluid 
gender identities. I have altered the traditional (heterosexual) class solidarity language 
that often permeates union culture to be inclusive of all queer workers with "Brothers and 
Sisters (and everyone in between)." 
12 
CHAPTER TWO 
TIES THAT BIND: SEXUALITY AND CLASS IN THE POST-STONEWALL 
LESBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL, TRANS GENDER COMMUNITY IN THE PACIFIC 
NORTHWEST 
Even in the early days of the post-Stonewall gay rights movement, the lesbian, 
gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) community in the Pacific Northwest organized around 
working-class issues. 16 In the beginning, these issues ranged from police brutality to 
housing and employment. Working gays and lesbians fought for basic citizenship rights 
that included protection from discrimination and harassment on the job. Legitimacy at 
work became a major issue within the gay rights movement, especially among groups for 
workers' rights. Social respect and economic viability emerged simultaneously as goals 
of the LGBT community in the Pacific Northwest. The history reveals that gay-
identified working-class groups successfully achieved employment protections based on 
sexual orientation, which, in turn, engendered social respect for sexual minorities. 
The myth that the gay community is made of gay, white, upper-class men is 
perpetuated in popular discourse about class and sexuality. Kitty Krupat argues that 
"sexual identity is rarely defined as a component of class," in her book Out at Work: 
Building a Gay-Labor Alliance. 17 Looking critically at workers' rights movements 
16 Working-classi ssues are those that relate to survival and economic sustainabilitys uch as 
housing and employment. 
17 Krupat, Out At Work, 4. 
13 
within the LGBT community in the Pacific Northwest teaches us that sexual minority 
activists were not all white and upper-class men, and further, the actual class 
backgrounds of workers fundamentally shaped the politics of gay rights. The intersection 
of sexuality and class within gay rights changed the movement. In this way, class was 
not merely tacked on or shuffled into sexual identity, rather it is integral to the LGBT 
community's workers' rights activism. 
This chapter examines the relationship between the LGBT community and 
workers' rights issues in the Pacific Northwest in the seventies. There is a 
multidimensional history in the LGBT community that began with discrimination and 
working-class resistance which first took the form of efforts to educate and provide 
resources for sexual minority workers. Focusing on distinctly working-class campaigns 
within the LGBT community in the seventies I show that activists in Portland and Seattle 
resisted discriminatory legislation and harassment at work by engaging in education and 
resource gathering. These groups worked to build self-sufficiency through job referral 
services and educational activities. Rather than decoupling issues of sexuality and class, 
these organizations took on the task of exploring relationships and (re)defining identities. 
Mechanica Committee for a Cooperative Garage, Union of Sexual Minorities, the Gay 
Community Center, and the Seattle Committee Against Thirteen and Women Against 
Thirteen performed gay sexual identities and class identities simultaneously. 18 
18 Alhough these organizations were located in Seattle, WA, their work is representative of 
Eugene, Portland, and Seattle activism. Christine Frazer described gay political activism in these three 
cities as one, unified front. Christine Frazer, interview by the author, tape recording, Eugene, Or. 3 
February 2002. 
14 
The Pacific Northwest movement consisted of political, social, and economic 
organizing drives spearheaded by diverse groups of people: women and men, gay and 
straight, transgender and other sex radicals. 19 For the most part, these groups fought 
classism as well as racism, heterosexism, and sexism. Coalitions with other movements 
such as feminism and anti-racism facilitated work toward this goal. At the same time, 
however, complex identity politics marked the strategies and goals of working-class 
groups. Working-class groups struggled with sexism within their ranks and endured 
fierce separatist debates. Activists' responses to sexism both challenged the LGBT 
movement and propelled working-class activism forward. 
Transgender activism is often overlooked in gay rights history, but it was alive in 
the Pacific Northwest in the seventies. Working-class gay rights groups were transgender 
inclusive and advocated for transgender rights even when they were unpopular with more 
mainstream activists in formal politics. Though transgender advocacy groups did not 
officially form until the eighties, transgender activism was vibrant within sexual minority 
working-class organizing in the seventies and must not be overlooked. 20 
In a cold world of domination and discrimination, the workers' rights component 
shaped the gay rights movement in the Pacific Northwest, not only in activist strategies, 
but in post-Stonewall gay identity formation. The diligent workand the early organizing 
19 I use the terms sexual minorities and sex radicals to include lesbian, gay, bisexual and 
transgender individuals and communities. 
20 The Ingersoll Gender Center was founded in 1977, and was formally incorporated as a non-
profit in 1984 in Seattle, WA. Marsha Botzer, interview by author, tape recording, Seattle, Wa., 29 March 
2002. 
15 
efforts of the LGBT community in the seventies that laid the groundwork for the formal 
labor organizing and alliances with labor unions that would come in the eighties. 
LGBT Working-Class Activism 
The Mechanica Committee Toward a Cooperative Garage is a fine example of a 
working-class women's organization. Founded in 1970 in Seattle, Mechanica was a 
"skilled trades referral service for women."21 They provided job training for women in 
automotive mechanics, first through the University of Washington Women's Commission 
and then independently through support from the Young Women's Christian Association. 
The automotive classes were popular with hundreds of women, and though Mechanica 
did not describe itself as a lesbian organization, many lesbians taught and attended the 
classes. Promoting self-sufficiency in both the women's and the lesbian community was 
important to Mechanica' s mission. In a 1973 talk on the Herstory of Mechanica, Julie E. 
Coryell said: 
Mechanica serves as a window on the feminist movement. [Mechanica] raises 
questions about the responsibility and training for that responsibility which 
women do carry ... we can rethink the nature of our own work and training 
possibilities ... Elizabeth Duncan Koontz, then head of the Department of Labor's 
Women's Bureau spoke in Seattle two years ago: "Why earn $2.50 ~er hour 
typing when you can make $6.50 an hour repairing the typewriter?" 2 
21Gay Heishman, Seattle, to Mr. Lucas, Seattle, 21 November 1975, YWCA Collection, Special 
Collections, University of Washington, Seattle, Box 3. 
22 Julie E. Coryell , "Herstory of Mechanica Committee," 17 January 1973, YWCA Collection, 
University of Washington, Seattle, Box 1. 
16 
In 1972, Mechanica opened a small cooperative garage where women could pay a 
small use fee to use the garage to work on automobiles and motorcycles. By 1973, they 
boasted 75 members and the organization and continued to grow in terms of their 
numbers and their mission.23 They began an employment referral service for women in 
the trades. Mechanica counseled women about job opportunities and encouraged 
construction contractors and manufacturers to hire women in the skilled trades.24 Women 
would register their contact information and skills with Mechanica and the organization 
would attempt to refer women to available jobs. These expanded services encouraged the 
self-sufficiency of women in traditionally male occupations. 
The Mechanica example is one indication of the changing identity politics in the 
working world and in feminism in the seventies. During the period women sought to 
assert their own interests and skills in traditionally male occupations both for economic 
and social mobility. This way they could make more money and at the same time break 
down gender barriers that held women to traditionally female occupations. Mechanica 
legitimized women's interests in the technical trades, thereby redefining gendered roles in 
the workplace. Mechanica also created a space for lesbians to be out on the job. Out 
lesbians associated with groups such as Gay Women's Alliance and the Gay Women's 
Resource Center both taught and participated in Mechanica's classes.25 Mechanica 
23 Julie Argue Lee, "Women Invade the Grease Pits," The Seattle Times, 13 May 1973, Pictorial 
Section: 8. 
24 Heishman to Lucas. 
25 For instance, Bev Anderson, one ofMechanica's automotive technology instructors was also on 
the Advisory Board of the Gay Women's Resource Center. 
17 
welcomed lesbians into their collective at a time when mainstream society stigmatized 
homosexuality. This group, though not exclusively lesbian, carved a place for legitimacy 
that asserted workplace rights for gender minority workers. The example of Mechanica 
shows that a concerted effort to encourage economic self-sufficiency and workplace 
rights for sexual minority workers were themes in the gays and work movement. 26 
Other examples of working-class themes in the gay rights movement included 
resistance to on-the-job discrimination. Resistance to job discrimination came in many 
forms, sometimes clever, but always practical. One of the eariiest crusades for gay rights 
was fought to get assistance for a job-training program for gays and lesbians. In 1971, 
Kathleen Timmons of the Mechanica Committee, mentioned just above, tried to use the 
argument that homosexuality should be classified as a disability to insure that employers 
gave potential employees protection in hiring. 
This week, my application for the ESP (Employment Supplement Program) was 
rejected on the grounds I did not meet the disadvantaged criteria. Specifically, the 
administration in the Seattle office [o f the Employment Securities Department] 
ruled that homosexuality is not a handicap in seeking and holding a job ... The 
Governments's [sic] policy either prevents me from obtaining Federal 
employment or forces me to live a lie in order to secure a Government job. The 
first is an economic strain. The other is a far more serious emotional game, a 
forced schizophrenia leading to acute paranoia, which many times results in 
suicide. But the Federal Government's sphere of damage does not stop here. Its 
image of the homosexual as a pervert, as unstable and immoral sets the standard 
from employers throughout American society. It is an image that misrepresents 
me and all homosexuals. It is an image that handicaps me in seeking 
"professional" type employment.27 
26 Mechanica became one of the first women-in-trades groups in the Pacific Northwest that 
welcomed lesbians, but they were not a lesbian-identified organization. 
27Kathleen Timmons, Seattle, to Maxine Daly, Seattle, 29 June 1971, YWCA Collection, Special 
Collections, University of Washington, Seattle, Box 6. 
18 
In September 1971, Timmons' application was reconsidered and accepted.28 This early 
strategy, though effective in gaining recognition for lesbian workers, was misguided. By 
arguing that homosexuals had a disability, Timmons was only reinforcing stereotypes 
about the gay community, rather than working to find proactive solutions to being out at 
work. 
The Gays and Work Symposium in 1977 was an event that demonstrated the 
', 
significance for LGBT workers of on-the-job discrimination and out gay identities. 
\ 
Several gay-identified working-class groups, including the Union of Sexual Minorities, 
sponsored the symposium, held at the University of Washington. 29 Over 100 gay 
workers and advocacy organization attended the symposium. Their intent was "to raise 
the awareness of the special oppression gay people face at work, to explore their 
relationship to the problems of women and other minorities at work, and to find ways to 
fight discrimination against gay people at work." 30 Presenter Judith Scalise led a 
discussion on these vital issues: 
Lesbians and gay men have to conspire to pretend that we do not exist and are 
socially acceptable only until somebody discovers the secret. Most live in fear 
that we will be found out and will lose our livelihood. Those who come out on 
the job, or who seek work as openly gay people, may find themselves relegated to 
low-paying or menial work.31 
28"Homophile News Fronts," The Fountain, September 1971: 10, Oregon Historical Society, 
Portland. 
29 Other sponsoring organizations were Committee for Organizing Sexual Minorities (Tacoma, 
Wa.), Gay Resource Center, Evergreen State College (Olympia, Wa.), and Morning Due Collective 
(Seattle, Wa.). 
30 Hal Nelson, "Gays and Work Forum Set," Seattle Gay News, March 1977: 3. 
19 
The breadth of issues presented at the 1977 symposium showed the political, 
social and economic consciousness that had developed in the Pacific Northwest among 
LGBT activists. Many issues were discussed at this gathering. Workshops were held on 
fighting discrimination, union protection, double-jeopardy for lesbian mothers, 
"traditional" gay jobs, and transgender discrimination. 32 Not only was the LGBT 
community aware of the prevalence of discrimination against gay workers, working-class 
groups encouraged LGBT workers to fight back and gave them the tools to do so. 
The symposium, the first event of its kind in the Pacific Northwest, was the 
fledgling project of the Union of Sexual Minorities (USM).33 Founded in 1975, the USM 
developed their own strategies for gaining political and economic equality for sexual 
minorities. Besides putting on educational programs such as "gays and work," "gays in 
the McCarthy era," and "the history of the gay liberation movement," USM mobilized the 
LGBT community to combat local issues such as police brutality, protective legislation 
extending beyond the Equal Rights Amendment, 34 fair housing protection for gays, and 
anti-sexism. 
Working with other minority groups on these issues became an important strategy 
for the USM, who believed a broad-based coalition would gain power for sexual 
31 Judith Scalise and John Sheets, The Other Side, April 1977: 6, Charles Harbaugh Collection, 
Special Collections, University of Washington, Seattle, Box 5. 
32 "Gays & Work Symposium," Charles Harbaugh Collection, Special Collections, University of 
Washington, Box 12. 
33Scalise, 6. 
34 The ERA was passed in Washington State in 1973. It was defeated federally, of course, in 
1982. 
20 
minorities. Their work on the issue of fair housing for gays shows this dedication. When 
the City of Seattle drafted an ordinance to protect the rights of tenants under housing law, 
the USM advocated for the protections of sexual minority rights. When the City 
proposed a new draft of the ordinance that did not include gays, the USM organized a 
rally at a City Council committee meeting to demand rights for all working people. A 
flier read: 
.. .let's not fool ourselves by thinking that only sexual minorities were denied a 
place to live under the proposed new ordinance. People were also excluded on 
the basis of age, legal status, political ideology and physical handicap ... Demand 
that the housing ordinance include rights for all the citizens of this city, sexual 
minorities, the elderly and handicapped, politicos, ethnic minorities-everyone! 35 
In addition to reaching out to many communities, USM' s dedication to an anti-
sexist movement is illustrative of a dynamic discourse in the LGBT community about the 
roles of lesbians in the movement. The USM included a panel of lesbian workers at the 
"Gays and Work" symposium. According to this panel, lesbian workers faced many 
forms of sexism,including restricted access to jobs, lack of affordable childcare for 
working mothers, and the failure of labor unions to defend the rights of women and 
minorities. 36 These issues were in the forefront of the working-class movement, and 
many of the organizations that focused on gay workplace issues were careful to be 
inclusive of women and minorities. 
35 "Care To Move?" Charles Harbaugh Collection, Special Collections, University of Washington, 
Seattle, Box 25. 
36 Sam Deaderick, "Gays Discuss Work Discrimination,'' The Seattle Gay News, April 1977: 4. 
21 
Though the USM took up other issues, it was first and foremost a gay rights 
organization. Their mission stated, "Our work is aimed toward and focused specifically 
on the particular oppression of sexual minorities. In any work we do, this issue will not 
be subordinated." 37 The identity politics of the USM shows their awareness of class and 
sexual identities and the importance they placed on the recognition of both. Thus USM, 
I 
like gay rights groups in the Pacific Northwest, worked to preserve both working-class 
and sexual minority identities within the gay rights movement.38 
Representatives of the USM attended the 1976 conference Faggots and the Class 
Struggle, held in Wolf Creek, Oregon. Conference organizers encouraged "gay men to 
talk cooperatively about class struggle and faggot oppression."39 The workshops focused 
on socialist revolution, the history of class struggles around the world, gender hierarchies 
in society, and how to integrate class struggles into the gay rights movement. 
Presentations on class struggle "practice" were given by gay groups such as the San 
Francisco Bay Area Gay Liberation (BAGL), Seattle's anti-sexist group Morning Due 
Collective, and Seattle's USM. 
Conference participants discussed sexism in terms of class at great length at this 
all-gay male gathering. This conference, which excluded women from participating, 
37 "Sexual Minorities Union, Wh.o We Are-What We Do," Charles Harbaugh Collection, Special 
Collections, University of Washington, Seattle, Box 12. 
38 
Radical Activists for Sexual Minorities (RASM) in Portland was a comparable group to the 
USM at this time. Roger Troen Collection on Gay Rights, Oregon Historical Society, Portland, Box 2. 
39 
"Faggots and the Class Struggle: A Conference Report," Morning Due: A Journal of Men 
Against Sexism 2, no. 6 (November-December, 1976): 4, Charles Harbaugh Collection, Special Collections, 
University of Washington, Seattle, Box 2. 
22 
ironically included workshops on topics such as the history of the father-dominated 
family and socialist feminism. The feminist sentiments of the conference activists 
indicated their sensitivity to issues of gender discrimination in society. The conference 
statement of purpose included: 
We cannot ignore that, in our experience, male supremacy is a special source of 
the oppression of women and gay men. All men benefit, in the short run, from 
sexism; and, therefore, most do not as quickly see why it is in their interest to 
struggle against it. It is clear that in the long run all people will benefit from that 
struggle. The ruling class derives the greatest advantages from sexism. Some of 
these are: keeping the working class divided (e.g. straight men won't show their 
tenderness and support for fellow working men to avoid fag-baiting); and a free 
source of labor in the home. We are eager to explore further these 
m• terconnect1•0 ns b etween ma 1e  supremacy an d c 1a ss soci•e ty. 40 
Gay men explored ways to utilize feminism in the gay rights movement, in this case, by 
equating women with gay men in the labor force. They ignored the sexism within the 
gay movement, even as they held a conference that excluded women. 
While the Faggots and the Class Struggle conference was effective in elevating 
issues of sexism and class among gay male activists from San Francisco to Seattle, 
criticism abounded about the outcome of the conference. One of the criticisms came 
from the Working-Class Caucus at the conference: that working-class participants 
criticized being talked down to by presenters who wrapped their arguments in academic 
theory. The caucus reported, "During many of the presentations the work class was 
talked about in a very abstract way as if there were no working class faggots here. We 
were sitting at your feet." Another criticism came from the sissy caucus. Sissies, who 
self-identified as gay men who were "cross-gender dressers," argued they were 
40 Ibid., 11. 
23 
marginalized at the conference because their way of life was labeled "petit-bourgeois" by 
the larger gay community. The sissies demanded that the rest of the conference 
participants respect their sexual identities as sissies and take their contributions to the gay 
community seriously. 
It is taken for granted that drag queens and sissies are petit-bourgeois and that 
cross-gender dressing comes from a bourgeois state of mind. In fact, sissies, like 
women, are forced into low-paying jobs because of their feminine identification 
while STIFS [straight-identified faggots] can visually hide behind their straight-
man drag ... Drag queens have carried the brunt of straight men's terror on the 
street and then are forsaken as tired stereotypes by gay liberation.41 
This class analysis of the sissy identity shows the complications of diversity within the 
LGBT working-class movement. "Straight-identified" faggots enjoyed gender privilege 
because they passed in the straight world. Sissies identified more with women than other 
gay men because of the class disadvantages of cross-dressing gay men. These criticisms 
represent the challenges faced by the early working-class LGBT movement. Class 
solidarity and sexual affinity were not enough to prevent prejudice within the LGBT 
community. 
Identities of LGBT working-class people were culturally, ethnically and socio-
economically diverse. Both sexuality and class defined the gay rights movement, but 
more work had to be done to make the class movement within LGBT struggles a 
friendlier place for working-class people, women and all sexual minorities. The 
marginalization of the sissies at the conference corresponded with middle-class groups' 
41 Ibid., 66. 
24 
exclusion of "radical" sexual identities as they worked to homogenize the image of the 
gay community for acceptance in the straight world. 
Gay men were not the only group within the LGBT community that had to deal 
with sexism. Christine Frazer, a working-class lesbian who moved to Oregon in 1971, 
recalled a rift with separatist lesbians. Frazer attended the first all-lesbian conference in 
Los Angeles in 1974, with her young daughter, Juniper. Gay men had volunteered to do 
childcare, but separatist lesbians opposed the inclusion of men in the conference. Some 
of the separatists made disparaging comments about lesbians having children at all. 
Frazer recalled, "That was the first [time] I had somebody tell me that I had spawned the 
seed of man. It made me mad, so my reaction would be to irritate them, and say 'I did it 
the old fashioned way!' Or I'd tell them I was bisexual, which wasn't true. "42 Separatist 
lesbians discriminated against lesbian mothers and gay men alike.43 Like sexism, class 
splits in the gay community became an issue, especially in pursuing LGBT civil rights 
through formal politics. 
Class Splits and Formal Politics 
While many gay organizations agitated for working-class issues, many of the 
members were not working-class. Class rifts among these groups manifested themselves 
42 Christine Frazer interview. 
43 Discrimination against lesbian mothers by the gay community was so prevalent that the group 
The Lesbian Mothers Union formed in Seattle in the seventies. YMCA collection, Special Collections, 
University of Washington, Seattle, Box 13. 
25 
in the strategies that activists used to fight for LGBT rights. In early gay rights struggles, 
middle-class groups utilized formal politics and working-class groups employed more 
grassroots approaches. These groups also differed from each other in the choices they 
made about whom to include and exclude. In 1977, a representative of the Union of 
Sexual Minorities made reference to the "class split" in gay organizations: 
We face a class split in the Gay movement ... Not all Gay people have the same 
interests, some of us are fighting for all sexual minorities-women, men, 
minorities-others try to dilute the movement to include only white men. Some 
of us are fighting for a better society, some only for personal careers.44 
The brand of activism USM criticized was that of the middle-class gay political action 
groups which worked for gay civil rights in the formal political realm. In their opinion 
this facet of the gay rights movement was classist and transphobic. 
A 1979 ad in the Portland gay newspaper NW Fountain revealed the relationship 
between class and gay identity in the Pacific Northwest at this time [See Figure 1]. The 
ad was for the local gay activities councils known as the Dorian Group (TDG)45 in 
Seattle; the Portland Town Council (PTC) in Portland; and the National Gay Task Force 
(NGTF) in Washington D.C. The ad pictured a respectable-looking white man in a suit 
vest and tie, Jerry Weller, the acting Executive Director of the PTC. The text of the ad 
read: 
I'm a gay civil rights worker. I represent the gay community as a Commissioner 
on the Multnomah County Democratic Party. I sincerely believe that gay people 
44 The Seattle Gay News, April 1977: 4. 
45 The Dorian Society was founded in 1967 and dissolved in 1971. A later incarnation, The 
Dorian Group, was founded in 1974 and continued to work throughout the 1980s. 
26 
can and will achieve civil rights by working through and with the political system. 
Join me in what I consider the fastest growing civil rights movement in history by 
supporting one of the organizations listed here.46 
TDG and PTC represented gay organizations with middle-class sensibilities. Though 
these groups fought for the rights of gays in employment and housing, their main 
strategies entailed lobbying the legislature and campaigning to elect gay officials. Gay 
business-owners made up a large portion of the membership and elected legislators 
remained their central political target.47 While these groups enlisted the assistance of 
working-class people, their ranks and their strategies were oftentimes exclusively middle-
class.48 The significance of the newspaper ad was as a prescriptive visual representation 
of a gay civil rights activist as white, male and wearing men's clothes. There was no 
room for stereotypical flamboyant gays in the TDG/PTC brand of political action groups. 
The Dorians in Seattle represent a gay group concerned with upholding an assimilationist 
image. This is evident in the aforementioned ad, but also demonstrated clearly by their 
political choices surrounding the police harassment of gays. The Seattle police attacked 
gays in parks and bars throughout the seventies, coupling the arrests and beatings with a 
46 "Support Your Local Gay Activities Council," NW Fountain, February 1979: 10. 
47 The topics in The Dorian Group newsletter reveal that the TDG's main goals were legislation 
for gay rights. Charles Harbaugh Collection, Special Collections, University of Washington, Seattle. 
48 David K. Johnson's work addresses issues of employment discrimination based on sexual 
orientation in Washington D.C. in the 1950s and '60s and described how the homophile organization 
Mattachine Society combated homophobia during McCarthyism in the federal government. Johnson's 
work shows that the homosexual activists accessed the resources of the middle-class to get what they 
wanted in the political arena. Many members of the homophile organization, Mattachine Society of 
Washington were, in fact, government workers with middle-class backgrounds. "'Homosexual Citizens': 
Washington's Gay Community Confronts the Civil Service," Washington History ( fall/winter 1994-95): 
23-43. 
27 
public rhetoric about gays as prostitutes and pedophiles. 49 Radical gay groups such as the 
Gay Liberation Front distributed literature and held demonstrations to call public 
attention to the harassment. The Dorian Group, however, ignored this avenue of 
resistance, fearing that it would inflame stereotypes of homosexuals. In fact, at one point, 
TDG sided with the Seattle Police Department in their use of vice squads in gay districts, 
further affirming the class split among gay groups in the Pacific Northwest. 
Middle-class gay groups chose to address the issue of LGBT legitimacy through 
formal politics. The Portland Town Council, for instance, lobbied for gay rights 
legislation. In 1976  the PTC published its Legislative Guide to Gay Rights, which 
detailed its goals, both statewide and nationally, to make consensual sex acts legal 
between adults and to include sexual orientation in civil rights law. 50 PTC had an early 
success with the repeal of the law criminalizing sodomy in Oregon in 1971. 51 The group 
then turned its efforts to gaining protections based on sexual orientation in housing and 
employment. Their legislative guide read: 
49 Seattle gays in the seventies resisted police harassment through community education projects. 
Seattle's Gay Liberation Front (GLF) distributed literature and published newsletters that included 
information about covert operations by the police to entrap homosexuals. This literature also informed 
people of their civil rights if they had a police conflict. The gay community resisted police harassment by 
publicly demanding cooperation from the police. The Seattle Gay Alliance (SGA) called for a meeting 
with Seattle's police chief and demanded his cooperation in and endorsement of anti-harassment campaigns 
in the police department. When the police chief ignored their requests repeatedly, the gay community 
mobilized demonstrations. 
50 The Legislative Guide to Gay Rights is an incredibly rich source in understanding the history of 
gay rights legislation in the Pacific Northwest and nationally. Portland Town Council, "The Legislative 
Guide to Gay Rights," 1976. Roger Troen Gay Rights Collection, Oregon Historical Society, Portland, 
Box 2. 
51 Oregon was the first state to repeal a law that proscribed sexual behavior between consenting 
adults. 
28 
Everyone knows the uncomfortable feelings, antagonism and hatred which our 
society often shows to homosexual men and women. Discrimination in every 
sector-jobs, housing, public accommodations, and so on-is a direct result of 
these feelings. And all gay people are familiar with the actuality or fear of this 
discrimination. Oregon has laws which protect other vulnerable groups such as 
women and Blacks from discrimination, but it has no laws protecting 
homosexuals. 52 
PTC's civil rights arguments gained support for gay rights from prominent politicians in 
Oregon. Another early victory came in the form of city ordinances to protect gay 
workers. In 1974, Portland City Council adopted a resolution for non-discrimination 
based on sexual orientation in city employment. 53 Seattle passed a similar ordinance in 
1972.54 
Though political action groups in the Pacific Northwest were successful in getting 
mainstream politicians to take issues of gay civil rights seriously, their proposed state 
legislation never passed during the seventies. 55 This may have been because TDG and 
PTC did not enlistthe support of a working-class constituency or anyone else who might 
threaten middle-class homosexual respectability. 
52 Oregon was the first state to adopt the recommendations of the Criminal Law Revision 
Commission. "The Legislative Guide to Gay Rights": 67. 
53 "Portland protects city workers," NW Magazine (6 April 1975): 5. 
54 It was reported that Seattle's ordinance did not prompt an upsurge in complaints in employment 
or housing discrimination. By 1977 only 19 claims of employment discrimination had been reported in six 
years and only six instances of housing discrimination since 1975. Hal Nelson, "Kopay, Uhlman, Push 
Rights Bill," Seattle Gay News (April 1977): 1 and 3. 
55 For instance, in 1973 Oregon state representative Vera Katz introduced House Bill 2930 that 
would have outlawed discrimination based on sexual orientation. It was the first sexual orientation anti-
discrimination bill ever to be voted on by a state legislative body in the United States. The bill never got 
past the Oregon House. Roger Troen Collection, Oregon Historical Society, Portland, Box 2. 
29 
Working-class groups criticized middle-class organizations for excluding 
transgender individuals in the proposed legislations' definition of sexual orientation. For 
instance, the USM criticized the transphobia ofTDG's 1977 proposed Gay Civil Rights 
Bill, which would have afforded protections for gays and lesbians only. Instead of 
offering their support for the bill, the USM "proposed a coalition to push for the inclusion 
of sexual minorities not considered by the legislation," namely transvestites and 
transsexuals. 56 In an article about the summit concerning the gay rights bill between 
TDG and USM, a USM member commented that exclusion of transgender people created 
divisions in the gay community: 
The political differences that surfaced during the meeting [about the Gay Civil 
Rights Bill] obviously make it difficult to mount a unified response when we are 
under attack, but those differences are real and must be worked out in atmosphere 
of mutual respect. We must dispense with the red-baiting from the right, the 
elitism from the left, and the sexism from the males. We're in this together: an 
injury to one is an injury to all.57 
Transgender people in the Pacific Northwest were involved in political and social 
campaigns for workers' rights from the very beginning. The Union of Sexual Minorities 
was an organization that was open and adamant about protecting the rights of transgender 
people. In a 1976  article in their newsletter, the USM wrote: 
As implied in our name, we as the Union of Sexual Minorities feel the need to 
fight for the rights of all women and men who define themselves as sexual 
minorities, e.g., transsexuals and transvestites, as well as gays. It is a mistake to 
56 
The Gay Civil Rights Bill never made it out of the Washington House of Representatives. Hal 
Nelson, "Rights Bill Stalled," Seattle Gay News (May 1977): l and 3. 
57 "An Injury to One ... ," Seattle Gay News (March 1977): 1. 
30 
believe that the need of these other sexual minorities are completely separate from 
those of gays. To the contrary, those of us who are gay share a similar type of 
oppression with these other minorities along lines of sex role expectations, and in 
some cases, choice of sexual partners or activities.58 
The exclusion of transgender people from middle-class gay groups illustrates 
another reason for the class split in gay rights and formal politics. The fact that the USM 
included and welcomed transgender activists into their ranks shows an awareness of the 
importance of coalition-building across class, sexual and gender idenitites. The class 
split among gay organizations manifested itself through the methods and strategies 
groups used to achieve gay rights. Though the goal of equal protections was clear 
enough, working-class and middle-class groups operated differently within the movement 
to achieve this goal based on their class status. However, these groups came together in 
the late seventies when nationally-based anti-gay groups proposed initiatives that would 
ban protections for gay workers. 
The convergence of working-class and middle-class gay rights groups happened 
at a time when anti-gay political campaigns were on the rise around the United States. In 
California in 1978 the Briggs Initiative or Proposition 6 sought to ban gay teachers from 
public schools. 59 At the same time in Dade County, Florida, Anita Bryant spearheaded a 
crusade to eliminate protections for gay citizens that stretched west to Wichita, St. Paul, 
to Eugene, Oregon. Voters in Eugene repealed the city's gay rights amendment to the 
58 "Moving On," The Other Side 3 (winter 1976-77): I. Charles Harbaugh Collection, Special 
Collections, University of Washington, Seattle, Box 5. 
59 Bain, 66. 
31 
Human Rights Code in 1978. 60 The anti-gay campaigns in the Pacific Northwest were 
modeled after the Briggs and Bryant campaigns. 
In 1978, the threat of anti-gay Initiative 13 brought the Pacific Northwest's LGBT 
community together to fight for a common cause. Sponsored by Anita Bryant's 
organization Save the Children, Initiative 13 sought to repeal Seattle's ordinances 
protecting gays and lesbians from discrimination in housing and employment. The 
Washington Coalition for Sexual Minority Rights (WCSMR) was created to fight the 
initiative and began a massive grassroots organizing campaign. WCSMR and its political 
action committee, Seattle Committee Against Thirteen (SCAT) made a widespread 
appeal to the people of Seattle in their mission statement: 
... to build a united front of the gay, women's, and Third World communities and 
labor to fight Initiative 13 ... We are a coalition of organizations and individuals 
committed to achieving full human and civil rights for sexual minority people. 
These include gay women and men, sexual minority parents, bisexuals, 
transgenderals, and transvestites. Although organized and activated in response to 
the need for passage of the Gay Rights Bill, our work will continue as long as 
sexual minorities suffer discrimination and intimidation in any aspect of life.61 
SCAT formed from the ranks of the Gay Community Center (GCC), and although the 
group's activists held working-class values, they utilized the strategies of the middle-
class political action committees. The formal political challenges posed by the Initiative 
13 campaign resulted in the formation of committees for publicity, media, education, 
6°F or a detailed account of Eugene's anti-gay Initiative 51 and the gay rights groups that tried to 
stop it, see Laurie McClain, Ellen Greenlaw, Connie Newoman, Charles Spencer, and Shoshana Cohen, It 
Could Happen to You: An Account of the Gay Civil Rights Campaign in Eugene,Oregon (Boston: Alyson 
Publications, Inc., 1983). 
61 "Washington Coalition for Sexual Minority Rights," I May 1978, Charles Harbaugh Collection, 
Special Collections, University of Washington, Seattle, Box 23. 
32 
fundraising, and outreach in the gay community. This was the first time working-class 
and middle-class LGBT activist tactics came together to fight for a common cause in the 
Pacific Northwest. Yet, SCAT was able to maintain an inclusiveness that the political 
action committees lacked in the mid-seventies. 
SCAT reached out to both the LGBT and mainstream straight community in order 
to gain support for gay rights. One advertisement entitled, "But I'm Not Gay ... " targeted 
straight workers. It read: 
How Initiative 13 Could Attack You 
If Initiative 13 passes, anyone could be fired or evicted solely on the assumption 
or accusation of being gay. All someone has to do is think or say you are gay. 
The burden of proof then rests on you, the accused, rather than on the accuser. 
You will be vulnerable if: You are single, divorced, or live alone; You share your 
house or apartment with a friend; You are not liked, or you speak up too much at 
work. Vote No on 13.62 
The strategy to appeal to workers and renters based on their class and not their sexuality 
was successful for SCAT. Not only did this gain the attention of straight voters, but it 
brought the gay community's identity as a legitimate, work-for-a-living group to the fore. 
The legitimacy of gays as working-class people helped defeat Initiative 13 in Seattle, and 
reinforced the dignity of the LGBT community as working citizens who contributed to 
the economy and the culture of the Pacific Northwest. 
Formal political battles for gay rights in the seventies inspired a hybrid LGBT 
activism between working-class groups and middle-class political action committees. 
While studying these legislative struggles for gay rights makes clear the class divisions in 
62 
"But I'm Not Gay ... ", Charles Harbaugh Collection, Special Collections, University of 
Washington, Seattle, Box 23. 
33 
the realm of gay politics, it does not address the history of the real experiences of LGBT 
workers. The issue of coming out at work was a very real one in an era before 
widespread policies protected gays in employment. 
The Harsh Realities of Discrimination at Work 
LGBT workers had immediate problems to deal with in the seventies: how to 
make a living and how to maintain an "out" gay existence. Post-Stonewall gay rights 
activism encouraged gays to come out. Activists at gay pride marches chanted "Say it 
loud! Gay and Proud!" and "Out now! Never going back!"63 But the harsh realities of 
gay workers fired for being open about their sexualities made coming out difficult and 
impractical for many workers. The Portland gay newspaper, The Fountain, published an 
article in 1982 that encouraged gays to think twice about coming out on-the-job: 
A handful of communities have enacted laws barring job discrimination on the 
basis of sexual preference, and in theory there is protection for the gay employee 
working under a union contract. But these protections can be illusory. In almost 
any other job, the employer can find some basis other than sexual preference for 
firing a gay employee. Here are some questions to ponder before you come out at 
work: 
Is there another openly gay employee in a position comparable to yours? Do you 
work where laws or regulations forbid discrimination on the basis of sexual 
preference? Are you liked by fellow employees? Have you been reprimanded for 
anything that could serve as a pretext for firing you? Do co-workers tell 
homophobic jokes? 64 
63 "Chants and songs for the Gay Pride March 1977," Charles Harbaugh Collection, Special 
Collections, University of Washington, Seattle, Box 13. 
64 "The Ins and Outs of Coming Out," NW Fountain, November 1982: 8A. 
34 
On-the-job discrimination affected sexual minorities in very real ways. Three 
widely publicized cases in the Seattle and Portland show that sexual minority workers 
faced the threat of discrimination because of their sexual orientation. In 1972, the 
Tacoma School District in Washington State fired teacher Jim Gaylord because he 
allegedly "publicly admitted being homosexual." 65 In this case, the Washington State 
Supreme Court ruled that the school district could fire an employee for being gay. The 
Seattle Gay News wrote that the Court "decided that as a 'publicly known homosexual' 
Jim Gaylord was an immoral person unfit to teach children." 66 Even after appealing 
rulings several times, Gaylord was never reinstated to his high school teaching position. 
Institutionalized homophobia made school districts unsafe places for out gay 
employees in the Pacific Northwest and nationally. 67 In 1971, Cascadian High School 
fired Portland teacher Peggy Burton for being a lesbian. A rumor circulated about her 
sexual orientation and the school dismissed her immediately. In a dramatic 
demonstration of the principal's resolve to eliminate Burton's influence on the school, 
htindreds of yearbook pages were torn out because students had dedicated the book to 
her.68 The American Federation of Teachers, the union that both Gaylord and Burton 
belonged to, passed a resolution in 1970 to protest employment discrimination based on 
65 Hal Nelson, "A Teacher Who Fought Back," Seattle Gay News (March 1977): 1 and 4. 
66 Ibid. 
67 For the history of LGBT caucuses in teacher unions, see Miriam Frank, "Lesbian and Gay 
Caucuses in the U.S. Labor Movement," in Laboringf or Rights: Unions and Sexual Diversity Across 
Nations, ed. Gerald Hunt (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1999), 87-102. 
68 "ACLU Defends Teacher," The Fountain (June 1972): 1. 
35 
homosexuality. 69 But even after long appeals to win back their jobs, these gay teachers 
lost to a homophobic system. 
Employment discrimination based on sexual orientation remained in the most 
unlikely places. In 1972, the Seattle Equal Employment Opportunity Commission 
(EEOC), an organization dedicated to ensuring fair employment practices, fired John F. 
Singer for being gay. Singer filed several appeals citing unlawful discrimination. He 
filed his last and final appeal with the Federal Employee Appeals Authority in 1978, six 
years after the EEOC terminated him. This appeal said Singer was "disqualified for 
employment in the Federal Government because of immoral and notoriously disgraceful 
conduct and [the EEOC ordered] his removal from Federal Service." 70 Singer, a well-
known radical gay activist also known as Faygele Ben Miriam, was charged with kissing 
a man in the lobby of his workplace and driving around publicly with the words "Faggots 
Against Facism" painted on his car windows. After a six- year battle to prove that his 
termination was based on his sexual orientation, and therefore, unjust, the Appeals 
Authority found in favor of Singer/Miriam. He went back to work for the EEOC and 
remained a pillar of LGBT activism in the Pacific Northwest community until his death 
in 2000.71 
69 Bain, 62. 
70 "Appeal of John F. Singer Under Part 731, Subpart D of the Civil Service Regulations," 
Decision No. Seo71380002 (21 July 1978), Charles Harbaugh Papers, Special Collections, University of 
Washington, Seattle, Box 28. 
71 Faygele Ben Miriam was the plaintiff in a well-known gay civil union lawsuit brought against 
King County, Washington (Singer v. Hara) in 1973. Roger Troen Collection, Oregon Historical Society, 
Portland, Box 2. 
36 
The cases above only account for the few discrimination cases documented in the 
gay and popular presses. Many more cases of discrimination and harassment in 
employment existed in industrial jobs and the trades. Discrimination and the threat of 
discrimination drove the LGBT community in these jobs to organize and educate 
themselves about how to negotiate being out at work. 
Out gay workers faced a volatile and discriminatory climate on the job. An 
acknowledgement of the hostile climate toward gay workers is clear in an article 
published in the NW Gay Review, a Portland gay newspaper, in 1974 entitled "Looking 
for a Job," 
The battle for liberation is not won by meaningless things, but is won by ideas and 
being productive citizens. A person has a right to be proud of whatever they are-but 
phony masculinity or feminity [sic] has been forced upon us by the heterosexual 
world and it is time that we stop playing their destructive game and become natural in 
our mannerisms. This is particularly true for the person who wants to work, to be 
productive and contribute to society. Even in the occupations that are called 
traditional for the Gay person, you are not allowed these exaggerations for they are 
offensive to others. Be yourself-but be the self that people will like, that which fits 
you as a man or a woman. 72 
The priority of keeping your job over coming out was critical for many working-
class sexual minorities. According to a 1979 survey of gay and lesbian workers in 
Seattle, 15 percent reported they had been denied jobs, 12 percent had been fired, 8 
percent were denied promotions, and 12 percent had their duties reduced, all because they 
were homosexual. 73 Incidences of discrimination and the need for community-wide job 
72 David VanW agner, "Looking for a Job," NW Gay Review (March 1974):7 . 
37 
resources compelled LGBT organizations to focus their resources on the issue of gays 
and work. 
The Gay Community Center (GCC), founded in 1974 in Seattle, was one such 
group. The GCC was dedicated to providing counseling and referral services, including 
job referrals, to sexual minorities. GCC operated a Jobline/Emergency Services program 
to assist gay people with employment and housing resources. From 1974  to 1980, the 
Jobline provided two full-time counselors to assist with job or career planning, skills 
assessment, resume writing, and information on community resources and training 
programs. Their job listings varied, "ranging from supportive situations in Gay-owned 
businesses and organizations to traditional situations in the straight job market. "74 
Hundreds of LGBT people accessed these services each year, which demonstrates the 
necessity for these kinds of services in the gay community. By 1975, the center was 
receiving approximately twelve hundred drop-in visits and four hundred calls for 
information and referrals. 75 Nearly four hundred people received GCC job referral 
services four years later in 1979.7 6 
73 "Job Discrimination: are we protected?" GCC Newsletter (July 1980): 1, Charles Harbaugh 
Collection, University of Washington, Seattle, Box 24. 
74 "Jobline," GCC Newsletter (December 1979): 2, Charles Harbaugh Collection, Special 
Collections, University of Washington, Seattle, Box 24. 
75 David Neth, "View from the Center," GCC Newsletter (October/November 1975): 4, Charles 
Harbaugh Collection, Special Collections, University of Washington, Seattle, Box 24. 
76 "Jobline," GCC Newsletter (February 1980), Charles Harbaugh Collection, Special Collections, 
University of Washington, Seattle, Box 24. 
38 
The GCC suffered through periods of funding crunches and was always making 
pleas to private donors and public entities for money to fund their projects. In 1975, the 
King County Council terminated funding for the Jobline. The GCC experienced the same 
kind of discrimination LGBT workers were used to; out of 1600 other applications the 
County considered that year, the gay Jobline was apparently the only project that got 
rejected. 77 The GCC recognized that the program was vital in connecting LGBT people 
with employment and struggled to stay open with a volunteer staff. 
The GCC served as a clearinghouse for gay groups in the Pacific Northwest and 
was associated with the radical Gay Liberation Front, the Sexual Minority Prisoners 
Caucus, and the Venereal Disease Clinic. Like many early gay resource centers, the 
GCC faced challenges associated with pleasing all factions of the gay community: 
In our innocence [sic] we didn't realize the extent of division, hostility, and 
refusal to interact between the various gay groups [sic] and lifestyles ... We failed 
to consider the number of gay street people who had no place to go.78 
The post-Stonewall gay identity was complicated by diversity among LGBT people by 
racism, sexism and classism. On-the-job discrimination was one of those challenges and 
a few formal groups of gay employees formed to address it at their workplaces. 
In 1973 the Gay Public Employees Federation of Oregon formed as the first gay 
union in the Pacific Northwest. An article published in a mainstream newspaper 
77 Mike Kenney, "City Council Axes Funds for Gay Jobline," GCC Newsletter 
(October/November 1975): 4, Charles Harbaugh Collection, Special Collections, University of 
Washington, Seattle, Box 26. , 
78 Neth, ibid. 
39 
reported that the GPEFO formed because "homosexuals are fired regularly by state, 
federal and other government agencies because of their sexual preferences, not their work 
records." The group's organizers reported that only five members showed up to their 
first meeting and attributed the low attendance to the fact that "all except 2 of 100 notices 
posted in public buildings were torn down soon after they were put up."79 The political, 
social and economic climate at this time made it nearly impossible for gay employees to 
organize at work. Working-class LGBT groups formed outside of the workplace in the 
seventies in the Pacific Northwest. Although short-lived, the GPEFO was not the last 
effort to organize gay workers against discrimination in the Pacific Northwest. 
In the early days of LGBT activism at work, protection against discrimination 
based on sexual orientation was the goal for gay workers and helped them to gain 
legitimacy. Employees of the Seattle Public Library workers recognized that rights 
based on sexual orientation were a professional concern for librarians and they fought to 
gain protections in hiring and firing. Library workers submitted evidence that "sexual 
orientation" should be included in their first contract in 1974.8 0 The main objective of 
this campaign was to gain protection for gay library workers in hiring and firing: 
The Library Journal that came out just before the ALA [American Librarians 
Association] convention in Chicago featured a half page guide to the gay bars of 
that city. Obviously the Library Journal is aware of the very high percentage of 
gay persons employed in libraries. As shown above, discrimination based on 
79 "Homosexuals Fighting Bias in Public Jobs," Oregon Journal 23 March 1973, 2. 
80 Margaret Baughman and D. Carl Harder, "Sexual Orientation," Tim Mayhew Gay Rights 
Collection, Special Collections, University of Washington, Seattle, Box 4. 
40 
sexual orientation does exist. We fee that the individual's choice of lifestyle 
should have no effect on his or her job security.81 
If employers knew that many of the workers were homosexual, they should be afforded 
protections based on sexual orientation. The Seattle Library workers got their contract 
with protections based on sexual orientation in 1974 . 82 These library workers wanted to 
be able to safely and confidently come out on the job and the union contract achieved this 
goal. Very few gay groups organized at work in the seventies but the groups that did exist 
were testaments to the need for gay worker alliances in the workplace. 83 
LGBT workers were lucky to find places to work where they did not have to fight 
for their sexual rights. Starflower Natural Foods and Botanicals, Inc., in Eugene, Oregon, 
was such a place. When Starflower closed in 1987, the Women's Press ran a celebratory 
article: 
Starflower was ... a pillar of the gay community. Lesbians and gay men who 
worked at Starflower were able to be outspoken and active without risking their 
jobs. 84 
While it was risky, being out on the job was a form of activism, in itself. LGBT workers 
took advantage of this unique position to assist the larger gay community. Christine 
81 Ibid. 
82 AFSCME, Council 2, Everett, Washington. 
83 
In1977 the Washington State Nurses Association's Board of Directors adopted a policy of 
nondiscrimination on the basis of sexual or affectional preference, which was the first in the country. Tim 
Mayhew Collection, Special Collections, University of Washington, Seattle Box 4. 
84 Constance Newoman, Sally Sheklow, and Jain Elliot, "Starflower closes its doors," Women's Press 
(January/February 1987): 1, The Lesbian Periodical Collection, Special Collections, University of Oregon, 
Eugene. 
41 
Frazer, a former Starflower truckdriver, remembered fondly that though it was illegal for 
them to distribute goods that were not their own, Starflower proudly distributed LGBT 
publications up and down the West Coast in their trucks.85 
Conclusion 
For gay workers, the threat of on-the-job discrimination was a real one. In the 
seventies the Pacific Northwest, the LGBT community faced homophobic challenges 
from mainstream society and the class and gender divisions within its own ranks. The 
political, social and economic activity of the 1970s in the Pacific Northwest laid the 
groundwork for organizing and activism in the 1980s. Though stratified by class, sex, 
and gender identity, the LGBT community overcame immense challenges. Tragedy 
struck the Pacific Northwest LGBT community with the onset of the HIV/AIDS epidemic 
in the eighties, changing the gay working-class and labor organizations which advocated 
for queer workers. 
85 Christine Frazer interview. 
42 
CHAPTER THREE 
THE STRUGGLE FOR LEGITIMACY: WORKERS' RIGHTS, HIV/AIDS, AND 
ANTI-GAY POLITICS IN THE 1980S PACIFIC NORTHWEST 
Political and social innovations by working-class LGBT groups in the seventies 
paved the way for gay/labor alliances in the eighties in the Pacific Northwest. Fights 
waged against discriminatory initiatives in employment and housing politicized the 
LGBT community and more workers expressed their sexual and class identities at work. 
LGBT workers "came out" at their jobs, forcing a new discourse about discrimination 
and accommodation on the job. Workers' rights struggles continued to be fought in both 
the gay rights and labor arenas, and these movements began to overlap agendas in the 
eighties. The workplace remained a major site for this coalition for resistance against on-
the-job discrimination. 
Several scholars have examined LGBT social spaces as sites of socioeconomic 
and political resistance. 86 In the eighties, LGBT employees sought workplace 
legitimacy-which I define as economic and social dignity. Being able to concurrently 
earn a living and be comfortable with sexual expression at work became a goal of the 
LGBT labor movement. To working-class LGBT activists, there was no difference 
between social, political, and economic activism or public and private legitimacy. 87 
86 See George Chauncey, Gay New York; Madeline Davis and Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy, Boots of 
Leather, Slippers of Gold; and Nan Alamilla Boyd, Wide Open Town. 
43 
Workplace activism allowed LGBT people to rally simultaneously for their social and 
economic dignity. This dual goal encouraged gay and labor alliances. 
Although LGBT activists had established two goals and identified a new venue in 
the workplace, this gay-labor movement saw shifts on several fronts in the eighties due to 
the HIV/AIDS crisis. The onset of the HIV/AIDS crisis directly affected the tactics of 
the working-class LGBT activist community. HIV/AIDS threatened the LGBT 
community in concrete ways, presenting new challenges with AIDS discrimination in 
housing and employment. AIDSphobia amplified the workplace tensions already in place 
due to homophobia. The LGBT community enlisted help from labor unions to keep 
LGBT workers and HIV-positive workers safe in their workplaces. They did this both to 
pursue the goal of workplace legitimacy, and out of a dire need for protection due to the 
HIV/AIDS crisis. The language oflegitimacy and dignity became rooted in the early 
years of HIV/AIDS. 
The HIV/AIDS epidemic fueled, in part, a right-wing homophobia that appeared 
in a concrete way in the late eighties and nineties. Anti-gay political initiatives sought to 
eliminate workplace protections and other civil r1ghts for LGBT peole. The LGBT 
community's response to these new political challenges resulted in the importance of 
being 'out' about homosexuality. The anti-gay initiatives also brought gay workers out at 
the workplace to rally for rights for sexual minority workers. The eighties and early 
87 
For more on sexual and class identities as they relate to public and private spheres, see Amber 
Hollibaugh, My Dangerous Desires: A Queer Girl Dreaming Her Way Home (Durham: Duke University 
Press, 2000). 
44 
nineties political climate helped the LGBT community realize the importance of the 
intersection of sexual and class identities, and how to make them work together in the 
interest of resisting oppression. 
The Need for Workplace Legitimacy 
LGBT workers could not separate their social and economic experiences on the 
job and sought legitimacy at work where they did not have to hide their sexual identities. 
Homophobia fundamentally prevented workers from being dignified on the job. Even 
stellar work performances could not protect gay employees from homophobia. The work 
experience of Harriet Merrick demonstrates the extent to which LGBT workers dealt with 
daily discrimination. Merrick, a longtime employee with the University of Oregon and 
an out lesbian, was (and is) a prolific activist for gay rights who started out working for 
the student group, Gay People's Alliance in the seventies. She campaigned against Anita 
Bryant's anti-gay initiative in Eugene, Oregon, in 1978. Merrick put her longtime 
political experiences to work combating the Oregon state anti-gay measure in 1988, 
which I will discuss later in this chapter. Merrick chose to come out at work in 1976, 
when it became too "annoying" for her to conceal her sexual orientation. Though she 
kept her political activism separate from her job, she faced daily discrimination at work. 
Merrick described her workplace climate as "fairly homophobic." She said her co-
45 
workers would have been more forgiving of her homosexuality if she just would have 
kept it to herself. 88 
Merrick received the highest ratings at her job for many years, but several co-
workers and managers would not even acknowledge her when she said "hello" to them in 
the morning. She described relentless homophobia that manifested itself in daily 
confrontations with her co-workers, including one situation that became more serious: 
There was one individual that went beyond [not acknowledging Merrick]. She 
was really going after me. Kind of like a hunting expedition. My boss at that 
time had to set her down a couple of times to tell her to cut it out. 89 
What could LGBT workers like Merrick do in a hostile work environment? Merrick said 
that her supervisor supported her and took care of things when she felt discriminated 
against. But she said there was no doubt in her mind that she would have been treated 
worse if she had worked for other supervisors, some of whom clearly disliked gays. 
Because Merrick was out about her sexuality, daily prejudice affected her work life, and 
the lives of many other LGBT workers. Even excellent work ratings and friendly 
supervisors could not protect workers from homophobia. The gay rights movement 
gained some legal protections for LGBT workers beginning in the mid-eighties. 
The political obstacles to workplace organizing by gay workers in the seventies 
changed in the eighties. Both Washington and Oregon in 1985 and 1987 issued xecutive 
orders to protect state employees from discrimination based on sexual orientation for the 
88 Harriet Merrick, interview by author, tape recording, Eugene,O r., 12 March 2002. 
89 Ibid. 
46 
first time in the Pacific Northwest. 90 The executive orders, which were long-term 
projects of gay political action committees like Right To Privacy in Portland and the 
Dorian Group in Seattle, represented formal political support for working-class LGBT 
activism. Because it was now illegal to fire employees based on sexual orientation, gay 
activists could rally for their•workplace rights in ways that would have been dangerous 
before. 
Rank-and-file members in labor unions began to push for contractual protections 
for LGBT workers. Adding "sexual orientation" to non-discrimination clauses in union 
contracts was particularly important to ensure protections. State workers in the Oregon 
Public Employees Union got protection based on sexual orientation in September 1987, 
following a nine-day strike.91 Though the focus of the strike was on pay equity, LGBT 
strikers made sure protections for sexual minorities remained a priority. 92 
Feminism still played a large part in the LGBT movement. Women in unions 
worked in coalition with gay groups to fight discrimination. In 1984 Seattle's Radical 
Women hosted a large conference to build coalitions against workplace inequality called, 
"Breaking the Barriers of Job Discrimination." Over one hundred thirty participants from 
sixty unions came together to "rally the labor movement in defense of its most 
discriminated-against sectors-women, people of color, the disabled, and sexual 
90 Washington Governor Booth Gardener signed Executive Order 85-08 on December 24, 1985. 
Oregon Governor Neil Goldschmidt signed Executive Order 87-20 on October 15, 1987. 
91 Robin Saxton, "State workers gain little from first strike," Women's Press (November/December 
1987): 4, The Lesbian Periodical Collection, Special Collections, University of Oregon, Eugene. 
92 
Ann Montague, "We Are Union Builders Too: Oregon Union Tackles Discrimination 
Based on Sexual Orientation," Labor Research Review 20 (1994). 
47 
minorities." Conference participants passed a resolution to add protection for the 
category of sexual orientation to union contracts.93 Union members encouraged each 
other to use anti-discrimination campaigns at their workplaces as organizing tools: 
Cheryl Peoples, Equity Committee Chair and executive Board member of the 
Communication Workers of America (CWA), Local 9102, said that by setting up 
an equity committee to address discrimination on the job and inside the union, 
Local 9102 has begun to demonstrate to its members that countering racism, 
sexism, and other forms of discrimination is the way to build solidarity within, 
and thus strengthen the union. 
Rank-and-file workers orchestrated awareness-raising campaigns to bring these issues to 
the fore of their own unions' agenda. 
Informal social organizations existed as resources for LGBT workers when formal 
workplace support was absent. These organizations included Cascade Union of 
Educators (CUE), Portland Professional Organization of Women (PPOW), Lesbian 
Entrepreneurs, and Blue Collar Guys, who met monthly for potlucks and networking. 
These groups became important social support networks for LGBT employees who could 
not be out at work. They provided a social space for gay workers' discourse about 
employment issues. 
Institutional protections for LGBT workers emerged in the eighties in the form of 
executive orders and labor union activism. These protections made it safe for workers to 
be 'out' and to demand workplace equity. But despite these considerations, 
discrimination continued to be a problem for working-class LGBT people. It is the 
93 Mary An·n Curtis, "Women workers and unionists demand job equality," Just Out (January 
1985): 7 and 15. 
48 
stories of brave individuals such as Harriet Merrick that point to the ways in which social 
and economic dignity still had to be gained at the workplace. Legitimacy at work was 
not the only issue for the LGBT community, though. In the mid-eighties the HIV/ AIDS 
crisis hit the Pacific Northwest and changed LGBT working-class activism. 
AIDS and the Workplace 
Although workplace prejudice based on sexual orientation was a problem, 
legitimacy at work was not the only issue for the LGBT community. The onset of the 
HIV/ AIDS crisis became a watershed moment with LGBT activists simultaneously trying 
to protect workers from discrimination and a deadly disease. The formation of LGBT-
labor alliances became vital for the survival of the working-class LGBT movement in the 
eighties. The HIV/ AIDS epidemic was a watershed moment for LGBT community 
activism. I periodize the beginning of the HIV/AIDS crisis in the Pacific Northwest in 
1983, simply because this is when large-scale organizations formed to prevent the spread 
of the disease and care for people with HIV/AIDS. 94 Among scholars and activists, 
Seattle and Portland are known as "second wave" cities, feeling the full effects of AIDS a 
couple of years after "first wave" cities such as New York and San Francisco. AIDS 
organizing was spearheaded by groups founded in first wave cities, but the AIDS 
94 Northwest AIDS Foundation and Chicken Soup Brigade were begun in Seattle, and Cascade 
AIDS Project in Portland in 1983. 
49 
response in Seattle and Portland response was in step with the spread of the disease in the 
Pacific Northwest. 
The LGBT working-class movement looked very different before and during the 
struggle with the epidemic. Whereas before AIDS the main issue had been fighting anti-
gay discrimination for the preservation of economic livelihood, LGBT activists now 
struggled to save the lives of people affected by AIDS. HIV/AIDS crossed class lines 
and created an air of vulnerability in society. Gay workers in all professions, in 
particular, became susceptible to AIDS discrimination. AIDS and homosexuality became 
synonymous so that out LGBT workers had to combat AIDSphobia and homophobia. 
This made it especially difficult for LGBT workers to be out about their sexual 
orientations. The discrimination gay workers faced ranged from wrongful termination to 
denial of benefits for family members. Homophobia and AIDS-phobia worked hand-in-
hand to marginalize and undermine LGBT workers; however the working-class LGBT 
movement found ways to respond. 
HIV/AIDS represented new challenges for LGBT workers who faced AIDS 
bashing. For instance, Vince Wetzler had the courage to come out as a gay man to his 
co-workers at a Portland flexible packaging plant in the seventies. Although he endured 
jeers and homophobic graffiti, his co-workers' ridicule died down after a few months. 
But when AIDS became a prominent issue in the media with the death of Rock Hudson in 
1985, harassment against Wetzler started up again. A co-worker photocopied fliers 
reading, "Hey Vince, Got AIDS Yet?" In January 1986, a supervisor told him, "Since 
you're gay, you're a second-class-citizen and you have to work twice as hard to keep 
50 
your job." When his supervisors found out that Wetzler tested positive for HIV in 1987, 
they fired him.95 The homophobia and AIDS-phobia Wetzler braved at work ultimately 
ran him out of his job. Although Wetzler fought these discrimination charges by filing a 
complaint against his company, Crown Zeller back, the Oregon Bureau of Labor and 
Industries dismissed his case in 1988, citing "no substantial evidence found." 96 Wetzler's 
story shows that homophobia and AIDSphobia often worked together to oppress LGBT 
workers. Discrimination cases that targeted gay workers for their sexuality and their 
perceived HIV-status were on the rise in the Pacific Northwest and nationally. 97 AIDS 
and homosexuality became synonymous, so workers had to simultaneously combat 
AIDS-phobia and homophobia. 
AIDS changed the ways that employers treated their employees, gay or otherwise. 
New policies on workplace safety, health insurance benefits, and disability discrimination 
had to be established in order to educate employees and provide for their basic rights. It 
was always illegal for employers to discriminate against workers based on their HIV 
status.98 State policies, however, made mild mention of AIDS discrimination, and 
officials rarely enforced anti-harassment statutes. An example of the state's mild-
mannered approach to educating employees about their rights surfaced in 1988. Oregon 
state employees received a brochure outlining workplace policies about workers with 
95 Anndee Hochman, "AIDS discrimination suit pending," Just Out (October 1988) 7. 
96 Email from Christine Lanuza to the author, 20 May 2002. 
97 In 1992 discrimination against people with HIV accounted for 10.5% of the Americans with 
Disabilities Act charges nationally. http://www.eeoc.gov/stats/ada-merit.html 
98 Washington Law Against Discrimination, Americans with Disabilities Act. 
51 
HIV/AIDS. The policy regarding HIV status and discrimination stated, "Generally, 
medical records of employees are protected from public disclosure. Self-disclosure is 
voluntary and should not result in harassment." 99 The state's disciplinary policy to 
discourage discrimination against HIV-positive workers read as a warning: 
When an employee's refusal to work with an affected co-worker is not based on a 
reasonable risk of exposure, the employee should be counseled as to current 
medical information. A continued unreasonable neglect of duty could be subject 
to normal disciplinary action. JOO 
Oregon state policies protected employees from AIDS discrimination, but the 
precedent that the anti-discrimination policies set was a mild one. While the state 
emphasized the importance of educating employees to be sensitive to the needs of 
workers with HIV/ AIDS, workers themselves did not have strong advocates. At the same 
time, LGBT activists did not expect special rights on the job, just equal respect for 
themselves as workers. "Safety" held a different definition for straight workers and 
LGBT workers when it came to the AIDS issue. While occupational safety and HIV-
infection may have been foremost on the minds of straight workers, LGBT workers had 
job discrimination to worry about. For an LGBT worker, homophobia and AIDSphobia 
threatened their jobs and jeopardized the legitimacy that LGBT workers had been seeking 
since the seventies (and for decades before). JOI 
99 "AIDS in the workplace: state employees get instructions," Just Out (August 1988): 8. 
00 
' Ibid. 
IOI For pre-Stonewall LGBT history see Allan Berube, Coming Out Under Fire; and Nan 
Alamilla Boyd, Wide Open Town.. 
52 
AIDS organizations and labor unions teamed up to educate workers about the 
risks of HIV and the legal restrictions of AIDS discrimination in the workplace. Labor 
unions orchestrated the dissemination of knowledge to working people at a time when 
accurate HIV/AIDS education was virtually non-existent. 102 In 1988, rank-and-file 
workers from the Oregon Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals held the first 
conference in the Pacific Northwest. The nurses invited the community AIDS 
organization, Cascade AIDS Project, among others, to present workshops focused on 
basic education about HIV/ AIDS, including guidelines on occupational safety for 
healthcare workers and employee rights in dealing with AIDS discrimination. Though 
two hundred people participated in the conference, and two hundred more would have 
attended ifthere had been space. President of OFN Kathy Schmidt said the conference 
was an "overwhelming success ... Healthcare workers in this state are hungry for any 
shred of information about AIDS." 103 Labor unions in the Pacific Northwest did address 
HIV/AIDS education at a crucial time in the epidemic, but the motivation for them to do 
so came from their rank-and-file membership. The AFL-CIO dragged its feet on taking 
HIV/AIDS issues seriously. The labor and AIDS alliances in the Pacific Northwest came 
two years before the AFL-CIO national office called for AIDS awareness in unions. 104 
102 For a discussion ofSEIU and AIDS education in the early eighties see Miriam Frank, "Lesbian 
and Gay Caucuses in the U.S. Labor Movement," in Laboring for Rights: Unions and Se.xual Diversity 
Across Nations, ed. Gerald Hunt (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1999), 87-102. 
103 "Conference on AIDS draws 200 participants," The News/oft (January-February 1989): 5. 
104 AFL-CIO president Lane Kirkland called on union members "to resis hysteria surrounding the 
A IDs [sic] epidemic, to learn about the disease, take precautions to prevent it, and protect the rights of 
workers who have AIDS or who may be HIV positive ... Union members who have AIDS have a right to 
53 
Labor unions urged employers to protect HIV-positive workers from 
discrimination. Rank-and-file workers found ways to make their voices heard on matters 
of workplace safety, AIDS education, and non-discrimination. The Oregon Federation of 
Teachers (OFT), for instance, passed a resolution at their 1988 convention to advocate for 
people with AIDS: 
WHEREAS, AIDS/ARC victims are currently facing discriminatory practices 
involving breaches of confidentiality and loss of insurability; and 
WHEREAS, AIDS/ ARC victims are facing prohibitive health care costs; be it 
therefore RESOLVED, that OFT directs AFL-CIO to lobby for legislation which 
guarantees nondiscrimination against AIDS/ ARC victims in their workplace; 
resolution also directs lobbying in [sic] behalf of AIDS/ ARC victims retaining 
healthcare and health insurance benefits. 105 
The rights to health benefits were especially important to workers with AIDS due to the 
high cost of treatment. Additionally, if a person living with AIDS lost her/his job and 
health insurance, it was impossible to pay for health care. Health insurance companies 
discriminated against people living with AIDS as well. OFT' s first overture to workplace 
protection for LGBT union members was important to protecting workers from AIDS 
discrimination. But it was a mild step in advocating for LGBT workers. ' 06 The same 
protections for workers based on sexual orientation did not crop up in union contracts 
until the nineties. But the rank-and-file activism in unions responded to the challenge 
that HIV/ AIDS posed to LGBT workers in the eighties. 
work with dignity and without discrimination." "AIDS Awareness encouraged by AFL-CIO President," 
The News loft (September-October 1990): 5. 
105 "Resolutions reflect locals' concerns," The Newsloft, Convention Summary (l 988): 2. 
106 A search through OFT/ AFT newsletters from 197 5 to 1990 turned up zero reports on LGBT 
activism among its members. 
54 
Anti-Gay Politics and the Working-Class Movement 
The threat of anti-gay politics mobilized the LGBT community in the late eighties 
and early nineties in the Pacific Northwest. The HIV/AIDS epidemic had amplified 
homophobic and AIDS-phobic sentiment in society and conservative politicians used this 
to their advantage. Increasing right-wing activity against the LGBT community helped 
the community identify the seriousness of political threats and the need for widespread 
activism. Statewide initiatives threatened working LGBT people. But they also 
mobilized working-class LGBT individuals in terms of their visibility as gay people in 
the community and at work. The recognition of class identity became an important tool 
in fighting anti-gay politics. The late eighties and early nineties became an important 
time to be out at work even with homophobic forces mounting legislative stress on 
protections for LGBT people in the workplace. Rather than retreating back into the 
closet, many LGBT workers fought back against anti-gay measures. 
Oregon's Measure 8 challenged the gains that gay workers had achieved in 1988 
with the executive order to protect state workers. The right-wing Christian group 
Oregon Citizen's Alliance (OCA) headed the campaign. The OCA's goal of suppressing 
homosexuality at the state level was made clear in OCA campaign literature which 
expressed their intention: 
to distinguish between private behavior and public policy, and to prevent the 
establishment of special rights, taxpayer funding, or authorized access to public 
55 
schools for individuals or groups who promote, encourage or facilitate 
h omosexua 11• ty, sa d"is m, masoc h"is m, or pe d op h·1 107 1 i·a . 
The OCA used public sentiment about the link between homosexuality and the 
HIV/ AIDS epidemic as an anti-gay tool, as well. With the 1992 Measure 9, the OCA 
intended to ban all references to homosexuality in public schools, including eliminating 
HIV/AIDS education. 108 The OCA focused on campaign rhetoric that appealed to anti-
gay sentiments. A Measure 8 brochure claimed that the executive order that protected 
state employees from sexual orientation discrimination "implies to our children that 
perverse homosexual practices are morally neutral and normal... This executive order 
goes beyond tolerance. It promotes homosexuality." The OCA's propagandizing slogan 
of "no special rights" for homosexuals has reverberated around the state of Oregon and 
the Pacific Northwest since the eighties. This conservative group relies on the illogical 
argument that extending civil rights protections to the LGBT community would give 
them additional political rights. The OCA's campaigns have actually tried to strip 
citizens of their rights such as excluding sexual minorities from civil rights protections in 
employment, which would have significantly crippled the gay community economically. 
Measure 8, the OCA's first statewide measure, sought to overturn the governor's ban on 
discrimination against gays in state hiring and services. The Pacific Northwest LGBT 
107 "Statement of Legislative Intent," Oregon Citizen's Alliance Vote YES on Measure 9 ! (1992): 
2. Tim Mayhew Gay Rights Collection, Special Collections, University of Washington, Seattle, Box 16. 
!OS For in-depth studies of the 1992 No On 9 campaign in Oregon, see Patricia Young, "Oregon's 
Anti-Gay Measure 9," (MA thesis, Portland State University, 1997); and Arlene Stein's The Stranger Next 
Door. 
56 
community had found a formidable foe in the Oregon Citizen's Alliance's brand of anti-
gay politics. 
Despite the efforts of gay rights activists, Measure 8 passed in November 1988, 
making it legal to discriminate against state employees based on sexuality. 109 When 
Measure 8 passed, the gay community immediately criticized the campaign strategies of 
the No on 8 campaign, led by Oregonians for Fairness (OFF), which had chosen to focus 
on job discrimination rather than gay rights. Groups like Gays and Lesbians United 
(GLU) and Queers Against Closets (QUAC) criticized OFF for being in the closet, and 
for not directly combating the stereotypes of the LGBT community as immoral and evil. 
Fred Menard, a member of GLU, said in a Portland gay newspaper, "I was disappointed 
that OFF kind of wimped out in not wanting to refer to it as a gay issue." OFF took the 
words 'gay' and 'lesbian' out of campaign literature entirely. 110 
The OFF campaign tried to subvert the homophobic power structure by 
demanding workers' rights rather than drawing attention to archaic stereotypes of 
homosexuality presented by the OCA. While this strategy was not an ultimately 
successful in winning the campaign, nonetheless it brought workplace issues to the 
forefront of the gay rights struggle. Although some in the gay community questioned 
OFF's campaign tactics, protecting gay workers from discrimination was a fundamental 
109 Harriet P. Merrick, an employee of the Oregon Board of Higher Education, filed a lawsuit 
against the state with the help of the Oregon American Civil Liberties Union. The suit alleged that 
"Merrick, due to the inconsistency between Measure 8 and the Board's rules, 'is required by law to carry 
out and enforce two contradictory and mutually exclusive legal mandates."' "Lesbian sues to reverse 
Measure 8," Just Out (July 1989): 10. The Oregon Court of Appeals struck down Measure 8 on November 
12, 1992. "A real victory for Oregon," Just Out,(l December 1992): 15. 
110 Andee Hochman, "After Eight," Just Out (December 1988): 13. 
57 
right that the LGBT movement had to win to protect their economic viability. Working 
LGBT people should have had the right to be 'out' in daily life without fear and 
humiliation. A goal of the LGBT movement became to protect working people from 
discrimination. 
For working-class activists, coming out on the job was still a very volatile issue. 
Getting fired from one's job was hardly an option for working-class gays who depended 
on their jobs for their own livelihoods. This narrow approach to ending discrimination 
against LGBT people left out working-class people entirely. Wetzler's and others' 
experiences demonstrate increasing HIV/AIDS discrimination and homophobia at work 
created an inherently inhospitable climate for LGBT workers to come out. After the 
passage of Measure 8, when it had become legal for employers to discriminate against 
state employees based on sexual orientation, an editorial, written by activist Carol 
Steinel, ran in the gay newspaper Just Out that encouraged all LGBT people to come out: 
I am now absolutely convinced that there is only one tactic which has ·1arge scale, 
lasting impact in the advancement of gay and lesbian rights. COMING OUT. 
You coming out. Me coming out. 111 
For Pacific Northwest activists such as the one quoted above, coming out would lead to 
gaining institutional protections for LGBT workers. But to activists for workers' rights, 
the institutional protections for LGBT people through formal politics and union contracts 
would lead to a mass coming-out movement. This debate over the relative importance of 
class and sexuality began in the late eighties in the Pacific Northwest. 
111 Carol Steine!, "A Coming Out Primer," Just Out (December 1988): 2. 
58 
Patrick McCreery's scholarship on pro-gay legislation shows that this debate was 
going on in the nineties among gay rights groups, as well. 112 He would concur with the 
critique of the OFF campaign and argue that more emphasis needed to be placed on 
sexuality. McCreery brings the issue of sexual deviance to the debate, which, based on 
the right-wing Christian platform, is commonly understood as the fundamental root of 
homophobia. The OCA's rhetoric about equating homosexuality with masochism and 
pedophilia certainly shows that stereotypes of sexual deviance often drive anti-gay 
legislation. It may not seem like an important argument for the gay labor movement to 
pursue, but McCreery's approach radicalizes the issues and breaks the problem down to 
its fundamental element: that gay discrimination exists because of the emphasis people 
put on sexuality and morality. This is an effective way to bring attention to the question: 
What does sex have to do with work, anyhow? Unfortunately, in today's political 
climate, the logic of this argument does not override the bigotry of the heterosexist power 
structure. 
Conclusion 
The eighties were a time for growth and change for the working-class LGBT 
movement. Workplace issues that had been explored by gay groups in the seventies 
materialized in alliances between the labor and gay rights movements. Labor unions got 
involved on a larger scale to fight homphobia and AIDSphobia simultaneously. Anti-gay 
112 Patrick Mccreery in Out At Work, 42 . 
59 
measures appeared in both Oregon and Washington and the LGBT movement had to face 
the realities of homophobia and classism in formal politics. 113 
The struggles of the eighties Pacific Northwest show how LGBT workers' 
activism moved the gay rights movement toward a workplace rights movement. In turn, 
the labor movement met the LGBT community's demands in the wake of the HIV/AIDS 
crisis. However, labor unions could have done more in the past and should do more in 
the future to reach out to the LGBT community in fighting for their workplace rights. As 
I discuss in the next chapter, a case study of the unionization of an AIDS service 
organization in 1989 shows why sexual identity and worker identity must work together 
for the LGBT labor movement to be successful. 
113 Washington State saw its own challenges to the gay rights movement in the 1990s with 
Initiatives 608 and 610, which sought to eliminate protections for state and city workers based on their 
actual or perceived sexual orientation. Voters defeated both initiatives. The group Hands Off Washington 
existed from 1992-1997 to lobby against the initiatives and to promote gay rights in Washington State. 
http://www.acadweb.wwu.edu/cpnws/coll_display.asp?alpha=H Center for Pacific Northwest Studies 
website. 
60 
CHAPTER FOUR 
"WE'RE NOT WIDGET WORKERS" 
THE UNIONIZATION OF NORTHWEST AIDS FOUNDATION, 1985-1995 
If queer workers in the Pacific Northwest and around the country faced 
discrimination because of their sexual orientation or gender expression, what would a 
workplace look like where homophobia did not exist? Would a workplace free of 
homophobia and other kinds of discrimination still need a labor union? The case of the 
Northwest AIDS Foundation (NWAF) provides some answers to these questions. 114 
Founded in 1983 in Seattle, Washington, NW AF employed mostly out gays and lesbians 
and became the first AIDS service organization to unionize in the United States. 115 
Service Employees International Union, Local 6 was chosen by the workers to unionize 
NW AF in 1989. Workplace dynamics and the unionization campaign at NW AF reveal 
that even though gays and lesbians were out at work, their sexual identities affected their 
class identifications, and vice versa. The sexual and class identities of the workers 
presented challenges to the initial unionization efforts. There is a lesson to be learned 
114 Northwest AIDS Foundation merged with Chicken Soup Brigade, another AIDS service 
organization, in 2000, and changed its name to Lifelong AIDS Alliance. Workers retained the union 
throughout the transition. 
115 
AIDS service organizations in "first wave" cities unionized a few years after Northwest AIDS 
Foundation. Miriam Frank is conducting an in-depth study ofNew York City's Gay Men's Heath Crisis 
and their 1992 unionization campaign. 
61 
here about how class and queer identities work together in a workplace and how unions 
might approach LGBT workers. 
This case study provides a unique opportunity to examine a workplace where 
most workers identify as sexual minorities, an issue labor scholars have thus far not 
examined. I characterize NW AF as an "LGBT workplace" because it was a business 
founded and operated by LGBT workers that provided services to the LGBT community. 
"I was hired because I was gay," said Hazel Van Evera, one of the first employees hired 
by NWAF in 1983.116 The unique opportunities and challenges that this openness created 
in terms of class struggle will be examined in this chapter. The reasons that NW AF 
unionized were not unique to an LGBT organization. But as class dynamics surfaced in 
this LGBT workplace, SEIU faced new challenges with sexual identity politics. 
The management at NW AF tried to create a "family" atmosphere based on sexual 
affinity, and workers, in turn, became invested in this "family." 117 Leaders of the 
organization gave workers a set of standards to uphold the organization and the "family": 
to advocate for clients with HIV/ AIDS and to take pride in the openness NW AF provided 
for the LGBT community's sexualities. Consequently, NWAF provided an inherent 
legitimacy for its LGBT workers in terms of their sexual identities. This legitimacy at 
work convinced some workers they had power in the NWAF "family." But for others, 
the union became the vehicle for gaining protections at work that the "family" would and 
116 Hazel Van Evera, interview by author, tape recording, Bainbridge Island, Wa., 17 August 2001. 
117 The 1983 book Like a Family also discusses a labor community in terms of a family. The 
authors described this "family" as an interdependence and solidarity between workers. Jacqueline Dowd 
Hall, James Leloudis, Robert Korstad, Mary Murphy, Lu Ann Jones, Christopher B. Daly, Like a Familv: 
The Making o(a Southern Cotton Mill World (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1983). 
62 
could not provide. NWAF's rhetoric of "family" created problems for the union in terms 
of convincing workers that union benefits outweighed family benefits. The individuals in 
this family felt a certain sense of solidarity because they mostly identified as sexual 
minorities. Issues of sexuality and alliance with the LGBT community in general battled 
with the class solidarity that the union advocated. 
The struggle over the meaning of "family" at the union at NW AF lasted 
throughout the first decade at the organization. NW AF tired to maintain this company 
family in spite of the union. In attempting to do so, management's rhetoric and actions 
to discredit the union mutated this family from a caring, safe space for LGBT workers to 
a paternalistic relationship. The family analogy put NWAF workers in a subordinate, 
childlike role, rather than the union's "brothers and sisters" idea of workers solidarity. 
The family sentiment condescended to NW AF workers who had real concerns based on 
the power relationships between management and employees. I limit this case study to 
the period from 1989, the time NWAF unionized, to 1995, when the social, political, and 
economic climate changed for the LGBT community with the introduction of new 
treatments for HIV/AIDS in 1995. Though HIV-infection continued to spread throughout 
the Pacific Northwest, new medical treatments that slowed the disease in the body 
drastically prolonged the lives of people living with HIV/A IDS. 118 As the organization 
struggled to provide the best services and to advocate for the rights of their clients living 
118 I am not arguing that the HIV /AIDS crisis was over in I 995. I am simply pointing out the shift 
in operations of AIDS service organizations to accommodate the changing needs of people living with 
HIV/AIDS. 
63 
with HIV/AIDS, NWAF administration continuously denied their own employees the 
right to organize a union. NW AF viewed its "company family" as exceptional for 
recognizing the rights of their employees to be out as gay or lesbian, but simultaneously 
denied workers their right to organize. 
From Family to Business: Why did they Unionize? 
From its inception in 1983, the Northwest AIDS Foundation was the largest AIDS 
' 
service organization in the Pacific Northwest. The organization saw rapid growth in its 
first several years, expanding from just five employees in 1983, to thirteen in 1985, to 
forty in 1988, to over one hundred in 1994. 119 Though NWAF was a non-profit 
organization, its quick development and extensive growth made it into more of a 
company than a community-based organization. NWAF's staffing grew in proportion to 
the rapid spread of HIV infection. Case managers and housing advocates worked to 
provide people with HIV/ AIDS with medical referrals, subsidized housing, and health 
insurance continuation services. The federal subsidies and grants that provided for 
NWAF's initial growth carried only minimal restrictions for organizational 
accountability. 120 The agency moved in 1988 to larger quarters on Madison Street on 
Capital Hill to accommodate its growing services. Labor relations problems began to 
119 Jane Mortell, email interview by author, 9 April 2002. 
120 NWAF received federal monies from the Ryan White Funds and private funding from the 
Robert Wood Johnson grant, among others. 
64 
arise, as they would at any for-profit company that saw rapid expansion. NW AF became 
a business rather than a family, though they still used the rhetoric of family to rein in 
would-be workplace labor activists. 
The quick development ofNWAF's staff and expansion of services created a 
climate of transition and uncertainty for workers. In 1988, NW AF' s first executive 
director stepped down and made way for new leadership. The agency brought in an 
interim administrator, and the Board of Directors distributed personnel policies to the 
workers for the first time in the organization's six-year history. At the top of the list was 
a fire-at-will clause. While perfectly legal in the state of Washington, NWAF employees 
felt intimidated by the notion that anyone could be fired at any time for any reason. Van 
Evera described the mood of the workers during this time: "Employees felt alienated 
[because of the organizational changes] ... Everyone was panicking." 121 The workplace 
grievances that drove workers to unionize at NW AF were not unique. 
NW AF faced legal issues with employees prior to the Board unveiling personnel 
policies. One employee, for instance, had threatened to sue NW AF for AIDS 
discrimination. In a letter to the newly elected President of the Board of Directors, Carl F. 
Wagner claimed to have suffered "AIDS Health related discrimination" at NW AF and the 
issue had not been resolved by the Board. Wagner purported that the Board had ignored 
his requests for resolution. He resigned his position in 1988, "under protest," and 
intended to file grievances against NWA'F at the city, state and federal levels. 122 NWAF 
121 Van Evera interview. 
65 
blamed Wagner's work problems on AIDS-related dementia, which reveals a typical 
company response to an employee's complaint: blame the employee. Wagner's 
complaints also reveal the inadequacy ofNWAF's employee-relations policies. 
Wagner's consistent complaints and threats for over six months may have lead to the 
implementation of the strict personnel policies in 1989, including the fire-at-will clause. 
For NWAF workers, the prospect of a union offered fair resolutions for ongoing 
complaints ranging from unfair hiring and firing policies to gross salary inequities. These 
workplace issues, among others, moved employees at NWAF to seek help from the 
union. Jane Mortell, an NW AF case manager, called Service Employees International 
Union, Local 6 for help. Unlike most of her coworkers, Mortell had worked with SEID 
at a previous job as a mental health counselor. Though SEID usually organized larger 
companies such as hospital workers, they agreed to take on the case. Doug Kilgore, 
Vice President of SEID Local 6 was the organizer assigned to NW AF. He reported that 
SEID took on the project of unionizing NW AF because "the NW AF staff wanted our 
help and we felt it was within our mission to do that." 123 SEIU initially undertook 
NWAF in order to help workers gain protection from the fire-at-will clause and then 
encountered many more issues in the subsequent years. 
Most of the employees at NWAF were unfamiliar with the purpose of labor 
unions. This created a fundamental challenge for the organizing effort: first, to educate 
122 
Carl F. Wagner, Seattle, to Barry Bianchi, Seattle 5 July 1988, Charles Harbaugh Collection, 
Special Collections, University of Washington, Seattle, Box 13. 
123 
Doug Kilgore, interview by author, tape recording, Seattle, Wa., 2 November 200 I. 
66 
the workers about unions, and second, to convince them that class solidarity would help 
them with their workplace complaints. "It was a pretty bourgeois group," recalled former 
NW AF case manager Jeff Blum, referring to workers' educational and class 
backgrounds. 124 Most if not all the employees were college educated and came from 
middle-class backgrounds. 125 NWAF workers self-identified as middle-class, as 
evidenced by their self-classification as professional, white-collar workers. One worker 
wrote in the 1995 employee survey, "I despise being referred to as 'line staff.' I would 
prefer staff, employee, or team member." 126 A rejection of the perception of the 
working-class condition created a problem for the union. The presence of the union 
confused NW AF workers because they equated a unionized workplace with the working 
class. Hazel Van Evera recalled this worker sentiment, "We're not widget workers, 
we're white collar workers." 127 
Many of the workers at NWAF came from the gay rights activist tradition. For 
many employees, working for an AIDS service organization and being out on the job 
became extensions of the fight for LGBT rights. 128 Being out at work was a luxury that 
LGBT workers did not enjoy generally in either the Pacific Northwest or the rest of the 
124 Jeff Blum, interview by author, tape recording, Seattle, Wa., 27 March 2002. 
125 I arrived at this conclusion from my interviews with former NW AF employees Blum, Mortell, 
and Van Evera. 
126 "1995 SEIU Local 6 & Northwest AIDS Foundation Employee Survey Results," SEIU papers, 
Lifelong AIDS Alliance, Seattle, WA. 
127 Van Evera interview. 
128 
Several employees ofNWAF were involved in community gay liberation organizations such as 
AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) and Queer Nation. 
67 
nation at this time, and workers and managers had forged affinities based on sexuality 
and on gay rights activism. In this case, LGBT identity, gay rights, and the affinities 
workers and managers had based on sexuality subsumed class solidarity. Doug Kilgore 
recalled, "The gay activist tradition [of the workers] was resistant to uniformity. They 
were also resistant to solidarity when it involved "falling in line." Kilgore said that 
management used this gay activist sentiment to try to bust the union, "All the traditional 
tools were used to show that the 'union is not ofus.' We're an organization within this 
[gay] culture. The union is an outsider culture, a straight culture." 129 The LGBT sexual 
identity disrupted the work of the union because the company emphasized the affinities 
based on sexuality between the workers and management. 
The disruption of the non-hierarchical expectations of the workers with strict 
personnel policies such as the fire-at-will clause was what first compelled workers to 
organize. Yet, ironically, the class divisions that the union exposed between management 
and the workers were also uncomfortable for the workers. The class solidarity that rank-
and-file workers might otherwise have felt for one another was complicated by their 
"family" and LGBT community sentiments. The noble tradition of assisting LGBT 
brothers and sisters committed gay workers to the notion of family. The gay activist 
tradition actually interrupted the way that NW AF workers fought for their own workplace 
rights. These factors had tremendous impact on the effectiveness of the union at NW AF. 
The main goal became widespread support from workers once union activity 
began at NW AF in 1989. The initial drive for a union election exemplifies this struggle 
129 Ibid. 
68 
for pro-union support. From the time NWAF workers contacted SEIU, it took 
approximately six months to get membership cards signed in order to call for an National 
Labor Relations Board election on November 5, 1989. Management opposed the vote 
and did everything they could to deny their workers the right to have a union. The 
company challenged the voting eligibility of two of the union activists, including that of 
of Jane Mortell, who had initially contacted the SEIU. In Mortell's case, the issue was 
whether or not her position should be classified as management because she supervised 
other case managers: 
I moved up to a supervisory role out of expertise; and I did a combination of 
supervision and direct service work (I had a caseload) so I didn't make much 
distinction between myself and those I supervised; also, I didn't make much more 
p ay . 130 
But because ofMortell's background in union activism, management targeted her 
position to be classified as union ineligible. The union lost the NLRB hearing that 
determined the makeup of the bargaining unit, which defined Mortell's supervisory 
position as management. 131 Mortell was disappointed, but not surprised, at NWAF's 
union-busting tactics. Had she been allowed to stay union-eligible, she would have been 
an asset to the union, especially in negotiations. Management succeeded in weakening 
the bargaining unit by pulling key union activists into positions that were classified as 
management. With their votes and participation, the union may have attracted more 
long-term support from workers. The vote was controversial among workers and 
130 Mortell interview. 
131 National Labor Relations Board, Case# 19-RCI2047 (I 9 September 1989). 
69 
according to Van Evera, "everyone felt strongly about it. " 132 With 100% participation 
from the union eligible employees, the union approval vote squeaked by with nine votes 
for the union and eight votes against. 133 Despite the closeness of the vote, the workers 
continued to fight for a fair and just workplace. 
A victory for the union came when NW AF workers ratified the collective 
bargaining agreement in July 1990, the first union contract for an AIDS service 
organization in history. The negotiations had been drawn out for nearly nine months due 
to the company's unwillingness to compromise on issues that employees had been 
complaining about for years. The main issues included pay scales, seniority, discipline 
and discharge, and grievance procedures that led to binding arbitration. The language 
that the two parties settled on for this first contract included provisions on non-
discrimination based on HIV/ AIDS-related health issues and concrete grievance 
procedures, both of which would have addressed the problems Carl Wagner experienced 
a couple of years earlier. 
The union launched successful negotiations to alleviate workplace issues 
contractually, yet workers still remained ambivalent about the union. Worker solidarity 
culminated in accomplishments for the union, and improvements into every contract. But 
the idea of NWAF "family" continued to interfere with union organizing and workers 
continued to identify with sexuality over class. 
132 Van Evera interview. 
133 Kilgore interview. 
70 
Real Workplace Issues and Ambivalence Toward the Union 
Employment problems abounded at NWAF, presenting many issues around which 
the union needed to organize. NW AF workers complained about a range of employment 
issues, further emphasizing the need for a union. The union agitated for the company to 
address standard workplace issues that any other company would have to be concerned 
with, including parking for employees and improvement to the ventilation systems. Case 
managers who had to travel to visit clients with HIV/ AIDS wanted the company to 
provide parking. For years workers asked the company to replace the antiquated 
ventilation system, which contained the threat of tuberculosis, was a real health and 
safety issue for both employees and immuno-suppressed clients. Wages and 
compensation were continuing issues for NWAF employees. For instance, the 1995 
salary and benefits survey administered by NW AF' s labor management team, a group 
made of union activists and NW AF managers, found low wages to be the top complaint 
ofworkers. 134 In fact, the results of the 1995 employee survey revealed that workers at 
NWAF made less money than comparable staff at other social service agencies. 135 That 
year the union bargaining team successfully negotiated a pay raise for all union workers. 
Though NW AF was able to get health insurance coverage for its clients, they did 
not extend the same right to workers. Insurance companies discriminated against out gay 
134 "1995 SEIU Local 6 & Northwest AIDS Foundation Employee Survey Results," SETU papers, 
Lifelong AIDS Alliance, Seattle, WA. 
135 
Out of the 48 surveys returned, 20 employees reported making less salary than comparable 
positions in other agencies. All of those positions were union eligible. 
71 
workers and their domestic partners by refusing to insure them. This discrimination was 
based on sexual orientation and AIDS biases. 136 Rather than fight homophobia and 
AIDSphobia, NWAF reinforced it by putting it in the contract. NWAF's agreement to 
provide medical and dental coverage to workers read: "to the extent that insurance 
carriers agree to provide coverage." 137 This clause relieved NW AF of providing fair 
health insurance coverage to their workers. Moreover, this language represented a unique 
violation of workers rights. Kilgore had never seen a contract with this particular 
stipulation, and he attributed it to the fact that many of the workers were out gays and 
-
lesbians. For reasons similar to above, NWAF denied domestic partnership benefits to 
workers. 
Health care, parking, and ventilation did not have much to do with sexual identity, 
yet sexual orientation had everything to do with the challenges the union would face in 
the coming years. The sexual identities of the employees contributed to their self-
perceptions as workers. This, in turn, created challenges for the union, which relied on 
NW AF workers' class identities to keep union activity successful. The union struggled 
for membership and participation at NWAF. In 1995, out of thirty-one union-eligible 
employees, only seven paid dues to the union. 138 Only dues-paying members were 
eligible to participate in union decision-making. Having only 22% membership crippled 
136 
Miriam Frank and Desma Holcomb, Pride at Work: Organizing/or Lesbian and Gay 
Rights in Unions (New York: Lesbian and Gay Labor Network, 1990): 53-4. 
137 "Agreement between Northwest AIDS Foundation and Service Employees International Union, 
A FL-Cf 0, August 1990, Article XIV, Section I 4.1, SEIU papers, Lifelong AIDS Alliance, Seattle, WA. 
138 "1995 SEIU Local 6 & Northwest AIDS Foundation Employee Survey Results," SEIU papers, 
Lifelong AIDS Alliance, Seattle, WA. 
72 
pro-union sentiment among workers. Management's union busting further weakened this 
union of LGBT, non-participating employees. 
Class and sexual identifications made it difficult for SEID to organize NWAF. 
Former NWAF worker Jeff Blum commented on the tensions between the LGBT 
community and labor unions: 
When you're young, your sexual identity becomes more of an issue and if the 
unions are conservative and you have to conform to them to a certain degree to 
benefit from them, then they're riot going to be seen as any more attractive than as 
passing as a queen-in-the-closet heterosexual. Plenty of blue collar men out there 
are having sex with men and not identifying as gay as there are out gay people not 
identifying with unions. 139 
The tension between maintaining the management's idea of a workplace "family" and the 
union's idea of workplace equity caused many employees to be ambivalent or even 
adversarial toward the union. 
Blum recalled that NW AF workers did not understand why the union wanted to 
pick a fight with NW AF management. Many workers felt that the working relationship 
between the union and the agency should be amicable. NW AF workers, on the whole, did 
not recognize the class hierarchies between themselves and management. Workers' 
identification with the NWAF "family" and their middle-class backgrounds prevented 
them from seeing the power relationships that created the workplace problems. 
The issue of loyalty to people living with HIV/ AIDS complicated the work of the 
union, in terms of social service work and in terms of the LGBT community. Workers 
had strong loyalties to the community-based organization at a critical time in the 
139 Blum interview. 
73 
HIV/AIDS epidemic. "People would walk through the door just days away from death," 
recalled Van Evera. 14° Case manager Jeff Blum said, "At that time, the average life 
expectancy for clients was less than it is now ... It would be unusual for me to work with 
clients for two years." 141 Organizer Kilgore said: "People were confused between their 
roles as workers and their roles as helpers. They would ask, 'Why are we dickering over 
this stuff when people are dying?"' I42 For some workers, dedication to the job conflicted 
with their fight for labor rights. 
NW AF workers took the jobs they were doing very seriously. Blum commented, 
"People identified with their jobs very closely. We didn't see ourselves as radical, but we 
saw the organization as very radical, in terms of the resources we could provide for our 
clients." I43 The political and social atmosphere in the Pacific Northwest, and society in 
general, ostracized people with AIDS, and NW AF was a place to which they could turn. 
For instance, NWAF worked to help people living with HIV/ AIDS keep their heath 
insurance when they lost their jobs, get medical treatment, and find housing. Yet they 
refused to voluntarily provide these benefits to their workers. NWAF failed to recognize 
either the irony of this situation or that it went against their "family" rhetoric. Surely 
denying benefits to their workers was not for the preservation of the "family." 
Management simply wanted to keep labor costs as low as possible. 
140 Van Evera interview. 
141 Blum interview. 
142 Kilgore interview. 
143 Blum interview. 
74 
HIV/AIDS profoundly effected workers atNWAF. In 1989, unionization was not 
the main concern of many workers. SEIU organizer Kilgore said of the climate in 1989: 
"What was hanging around more than gay and straight issues was life and death. It was 
an atmosphere of gravity, transience and urgency. Union leaders lost partners. To me, 
and everybody else, [AIDS] was a big deal." 144 Some workers were not invested in the 
union because they did not think they would stay at the organization for a long period of 
time. One worker wrote in her/his 1995 survey that in a few years s/he would be "dead 
or burned out." 145 Jane Mortell said of the main challenge at the workplace, "For me, a 
major challenge at the Foundation was just keeping the morale up on the team; we lost so 
many clients [that] we had to support each other through humor and team support." 146 As 
a result of this loyalty to clients and co-workers, NW AF workers would not let the union 
negotiate a walkout policy or a strike clause into their contract. 147 Workers' ambivalence 
toward the union stemmed from affinities within the LGBT community. Though 
workplace issues such as compensation and benefits created some class solidarity among 
employees, the union struggled to strike a balance between class solidarity and sexual 
solidarity. 
144 Kilgore interview. 
145 "1995 SEIU Local 6 & Northwest AIDS Foundation Employee Survey Results," SEIU papers, 
Lifelong AIDS Alliance, Seattle, WA. 
146 Jane Mortell, email interview by author, 25 April 2002. 
147 Van Evera interview. 
75 
"We Are Family! I've Got All My Sisters and Me" 
NWAF management resisted union workers' efforts to identify as working-class, 
and subverted class divisions by calling on alliances based on sexuality. The presence of 
the union exposed power differentials between management and workers, class 
stratifications which had previously been hidden behind the "company family." Gay 
managers wanted gay workers to identify with them based on their sexual orientations, 
rather than be divided from them by their places in the job hierarchy. The following 
story, told by then rank-and-file worker Hazel Van Evera, shows the drama at NWAF 
based on class divisions and sexual affinities: 
Managers took [unionization] very hard. That was where the big "us-them" 
started happening ... there was one time when they came into a staff meeting and 
they were all wearing blue coats and pantsuits, and banners that said 
"MANAGEMENT SCUM" on it. It was a joke, but it really was the early days of 
"us-them." They were seeing it and trying to make a joke about it. 148 
Managers used this "class drag" performance to discredit workers who wanted to identify 
as working-class by joining the union. By making fun of the class divisions that existed 
between managers and workers, managers emphasized sexual affinities by calling on the 
power of queer culture's drag tradition. 149 Rather than admit that class identifications 
superceded sexual orientation in the context of the union, they tried to make a joke of 
class divisions between workers and management. 
148 Van Evera interview. 
149 Labor historian Andrew Ross discussed the power of drag theatrics in his article about LGBT 
workers at Barneys in New York. "Strike a Pose for Justice: The Barneys Union Campaign of 1996," in 
Out at Work, 78-91. 
76 
NWAF managers reacted strongly against the union in a way similar to any 
union-busting campaign. The Executive Director in 1989, Nancy Campbell, had a 
background in state corrections and she had experience working with unions in the 
past. 150 Workers described Campbell as "rigid" and as having "managerial 
limitations." 151 Campbell's strong personality and strict work style made relations with 
the union difficult. She led management in union-busting activities, including getting rid 
of union activists. Management fired one of the most active union shop stewards, Frank 
Kohel, in 1992. Kohel was officially laid off due to a "lack of funds," but the union 
disputed both the legality of his dismissal and the motives behind it. Kohel had planned 
to be on the bargaining team for the upcoming contract negotiations, and the union 
believed he was targeted by management and discriminated against because of his union 
activity. SEIU filed an Unfair Labor Practice with the National Labor Relations Board 
based on "illegal layoff, seniority clause, and discrimination against a union member." 152 
They later withdrew the complaint, citing "political and legal" complications, though the 
impact of Kohel' s layoff was more than enough to convince NW AF workers of the threat 
of future discrimination against union members. 153 Surely this kind of intimidation made 
150 Michael Harmon, "SpringBoard Interview: Nancy Campbell, Northwest AIDS Foundation's 
Executive Director," SpringBoard Newsletter (Summer 1989): 1. SEIU Papers, Lifelong AIDS Alliance, 
Seattle. 
151 Kilgore and Blum interviews. 
152 Diana Rainwater, Seattle, to Northwest AIDS Foundation Local 6 Members, Seattle, 12 June 
1992, SEIU papers, Lifelong AIDS Alliance, Seattle. 
153 
Diana Rainwater, Seattle, to Northwest AIDS Foundation Local 6 Members, Seattle, 17 July 
1992, SEIU papers, Lifelong AIDS Alliance, Seattle. 
77 
workers think twice about actively participating in the union. Uriion activists encouraged 
up-and-coming union shop stewards to wait until their six-month probationary period was 
completed before taking on this role. 
NW AF management used familiar rhetoric to discredit the union that SEIU 
organizer Doug Kilgore described as "very hostile": 
They [m anagement] were pushing issues of loyalty vs. disloyalty. And also the 
classic anti-union message that characterized the Union as a third party, 
interfering with the "normal" employee-employer relationship. For example: "if 
you [unionize] we won't be able to talk to you the same way, we won't be able to 
communicate directly ... and what does the union want? ... Your dues. 154 
The fact that NW AF used traditional union-busting arguments exemplifies that 
management operated NW AF as any other company. Management claimed that the 
union hindered the daily operations of the organization. 
According to the company, an inherent conflict existed between the mission of 
NWAF and the agenda of the union. Management played up this contrived conflict as 
often as they could through its union busting campaigns. Advocating for people living 
with HIV/AIDS, in NWAF's perception, carried more importance than advocating for 
workers' rights. The union made a more logical case, that both organizations fought to 
advance the quality of life for people. Yet, to protect their own interests, NW AF 
leadership saw a disconnect between the goals of NWAF and the union. 
Perhaps the company thought that dedication to their clients precluded them from 
being dedicated to their workers. A more likely scenario is that NW AF behaved with as 
154 Kilgore interview. 
78 
much hostility as any company would toward a union. Though NW AF was a non-profit 
organization, the loss of control over workers meant a loss of control over the company's 
resources in terms of salary and benefits. The NW AF "family" was really about power 
and control and the union threatened those power dynamics. 
Management also held one-on-one meetings to convince workers that the union 
was an outside entity, a third party that disrupted the harmony that workers and 
management had enjoyed before the union came to NW AF. Former NW AF employee 
Jeff Blum recalled these conversations: 
It was clearly conveyed to us that it was much preferred that [unionization] didn't 
happen. And if it did, the blue meanys would be invading our home and life 
would never be the same. It was cast in a very negative light. 155 
The "home" that Blum referred to was a recurring theme in NWAF's union-busting 
campaign. The NW AF "home" related directly to the "family" sentiment that 
management worked so hard to maintain for the company's own interest, rather than the 
workers. According to management the union posed a major threat to the communication 
between the family members, dividing the administration and workers. 
NWAF also distributed anti-union literature to all of its employees to intimidate 
union members during contract negotiations. During the bargaining sessions of 1992, 
NWAF distributed a flier entitled, "Northwest AIDS Foundation: The Real Bargaining 
Facts," which attempted to discredit the union by accusing SEIU of lying to the members: 
We were very disappointed to hear that the Union was claiming that the 
Foundation was bargaining backward. We wanted to let you know the true facts 
155 Blum interview. 
79 
about bargaining. We also wanted you to know the full package offered to the 
Union at the bargaining table ... The Union responded by adamantly objecting to a 
three-year contract. We believe this was done more out of the Union's own self-
interest than it was out of concern for what is best for all of you. 156 
The paternalistic tone of this literature is striking and reveals the attitude that only 
management knows "what is best" for NW AF workers. But the tactic of distributing 
anti-union literature proved successful for the company, contributing to an air of doubt 
that already existed at NW AF about the union. With challenges to SEID' s integrity, the 
union had to spend energy defending itself rather than pushing for more benefits for 
workers. 
NWAF was a workplace where sexuality could be expressed openly. One worker 
remembers that her first day on the job, she saw Education Department employees 
wearing penis and vagina costumes. 157 Though most of the workers and managers were 
gay, the Executive Director was straight. Campbell's experience influenced her 
perception of the organization. When asked in a 1989 interview about criticism that she 
was not qualified to head an AIDS agency as a straight woman, she replied, "My 
sexuality is not the issue. AIDS is the issue." 158 She failed to see that sexuality was part 
of the workplace issues at NW AF. It is not surprising that Campbell never admitted that 
workers' rights were legitimate issues at NWAF. Though the Executive Director tried to 
sweep points of sexuality aside, these issues were central to the culture of the workplace. 
156 "Northwest AIDS Foundation: The Real Bargaining Facts," 1992, SEIU, Local 6, Lifelong 
AIDS Alliance, Seattle. 
157 Theresa Louise Hathaway, phone interview by the author, 16 May 2002. 
158 Harmon, ibid. 
80 
Learning Lessons from Organizing LGBT Workers 
Anti-union sentiment continued to challenge union workers at NWAF throughout 
the 1990s. Management did continue union-busting tactics, but much of the discord 
came from rank-and-file workers. For instance, in 1998 a worker filed for an NLRB vote 
to deauthorize the membership clause. This vote would have changed union membership 
from mandatory to voluntary, 159 but union members mobilized a campaign to keep the 
union, and the issue did not pass. At the next union meeting, members held a party to 
celebrate their victory. SEIU organizer Debbie Foley brought a cake for the celebration, 
which she left in the lunchroom. In a show of maliciousness, an anti-union employee 
smeared the frosting on the cake, ruining it for everyone. Roberta Lord, rank-and-file 
union activist recalled, "We had such strong happy feelings, [someone] must have had 
strong upset feelings [that they lost the vote.]" 160 Lord said they suspected the person 
who destroyed the cake was a particularly rabid anti-union employee. This incident 
shows the continuing ambiguity, and even hostility, of some rank-and-file workers 
toward the union at NW AF. 
To many NWAF workers, SEIU remained an outside organization. On the whole, 
workers never felt like the union was their own. These challenges stemmed from class 
identity. While management purported a "family" atmosphere, management controlled 
159 The union voted in 1996 to change NW AF to a "closed" shop, where membership was 
mandatory for all union-eligible employees. 
160 
Roberta Lord, interview by author, tape recording, Seattle, Wa. 26 March 2002. 
81 
power in the company, which many NW AF workers did not recognize because of their 
middle-class and non-union backgrounds. If these union workers felt a sense of solidarity 
with the LGBT community affected by AIDS, then why did the union fail to emphasize a 
sense of solidarity with other LGBT union workers? The union should have approached 
LGBT workers with their sexual identities in mind, rather than using class as the 
benchmark for dealing with all union issues. Sexual orientation mattered to these 
workers and their dedication to the LGBT community could not be shelved to deal with a 
seemingly less important on-the-job complaint. While SEIU made important strides to 
include gay workers in its organized ranks, they still fell short for the employees at 
NWAF. Though the workers clearly expressed sexual affinities with their managers and 
clients, the union remained deaf to issues of sexuality. 
While SEIU saw that it was "within their mission" to take on organizing efforts of 
NWAF, they did not, and perhaps could not, anticipate the challenges that class and 
sexual identifications would bring to their projects. As I showed in Chapter Four, unions 
in the Pacific Northwest had only just begun to address LGBT issues in their contracts. 
Some workers saw SEIU as having an entirely different motivation: "They took us on as 
a prestige issue. We were an odd organization. If we were just making widgets, I don't 
think they would have gone to all the expense they did on our behalf." 161 Another worker 
also felt that prestige motivated SEIU to work with NW AF: "The union really wanted 
NWAF because they saw the national network of gay workers and gay activism." 162 But 
161 Blum interview. 
82 
SEIU recognized that organizations like NW AF were permanent in the community and 
worth organizing. The union had lessons to learn about organizing LGBT workplaces. 
The union tried to get workers to come together over salary issues and benefits. 
One union-sponsored recruitment flier sang the praises of the benefits of the union: 
The union is a strong ally for contract negotiations each year. Compensation 
issues that include salary and other benefits, like a vision plan, for example. As 
employee needs continue to evolve and change, the union can help to secure other 
benefits, too. 163 
This literature first mentions the union as an "ally" rather than as a body of NWAF 
workers, which did not help to encourage union members to feel ownership of their 
union. Second, the flyer made no mentions of class solidarity, gay pride, or adversarial 
relations with management, all of which were elements of the union at the time. The 
oversights in this flier illustrate SEIU's lack of awareness about the central issues. It 
also highlights the culture clash between the union and the LGBT community. 
The union needed to deconstruct the "family" to understand the elements that 
were keeping the union from being more effective. The paternalistic relationship that 
management wanted to have with rank-and-file workers simply shows the plan to keep 
power in the hands of the executive branch of the company. The union could have used 
the flaws in this rhetoric to gain the union support from workers. An emphasis on class 
solidarity among union "brothers and sisters" might have cut through the company family 
162 Van Evera interview. 
163 "Joining the Union ... some things you should know!", 1996, SEIU, Local 6 papers, Lifelong 
AIDS Alliance, Seattle. 
83 
sentiment. SEIU should have embraced rather than ignored the gay culture that existed at 
NWAF. An integration of gay issues into contract negotiations, i.e., advocating for 
health benefits for domestic partners, would have preserved LGBT issues within union 
activism. 
The case of NW AF leads me to ask this question: How can unions better approach 
gay communities? While answers to this question need to be studied further, the union at 
NWAF has taught me two possible solutions. First, unions should approach LGBT 
communities to advocated for protections at work based on sexual orientation and gender 
identity. This could come in the form adding protective language to non-discrimination 
clauses in contracts and gaining domestic partner benefits. Second, unions that organize 
LGBT workers should keep in mind that class solidarity is not necessarily subsumed by 
sexual/gender identity affinities. Gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender workers have 
real economic concerns with wages and benefits just as straight workers do. Unions must 
build sexual and class solidarity simultaneously. Similarly, LGBT community-based 
organizations should recognize the great political possibilities of gay workers' alliances 
with labor unions. The political power of queer workers in democratic unions gives 
political clout to the LGBT civil rights movement. 
84 
EPILOGUE 
Class politics and sexual identities have continued to clash in the years since 1995 
at Northwest AIDS Foundation (which, since 2000, has been called Lifelong AIDS 
Alliance). In fact, anti-union employees are currently campaigning, once again, to make 
their workplace an open shop, which would make membership in the union voluntary 
instead of mandatory. Though management proposed this union-busting move, there is 
widespread supp01i from rank-and-file workers, including one of the shop stewards. The 
crux of the objection to the union at this moment is that non-union workers can be 
terminated for refusing to pay dues (which they are contractually obligated to do). 
Management has been playing on the idea that they, as the employer, must protect their 
workers from SEIU, the enforcer of the contract. Ironically, Lifelong AIDS Alliance 
employees feel more connected to their co-workers who refuse to pay dues than they do 
to the union that exists because of rank-and-file worker solidarity. This campaign, which 
pits "family" sentiment against the extraneous union, and plays on the tension between 
class and sexual identities, could mean the end of the union's thirteen-year history at 
Lifelong AIDS Alliance. 
The situation playing out today at Lifelong AIDS Alliance is typical of the 
workers' apathy about union activity in the United States today. Only 13% of workers in 
this country are unionized, though the American economy is becoming more and more 
stratified. Chief executive officers (CEOs) of gigantic corporations have received pay 
85 
increases of nearly 20% compared with 3% raises for wage-workers in the year 2000. 164 
Women, ethnic minority, and sexual minority workers suffer immensely in an economic 
and social system that discourages workplace organizing and class solidarity among 
workers. There has been a breakdown of class-consciousness, even as our society 
becomes more separate. It is time for workers in the labor movement to make 
connections again, and sexual and gender identity politics could play a significant role in 
the building of a new labor coalition. 
The LGBT labor movement has a powerful potential by linking class and sexual 
identity politics to create real change in society. While New Left activism has eschewed 
identity as a dominant agent of revolution, queer worker-activists recognize the 
importance of this coalition. In Out At Work, Lisa Duggan writes that the book, 
offers us crucial information and sharp analyses about the relations between 
workplace organizing and queer politics-the collaborations, impasses, missed 
opportunities, and significant new horizons. But perhaps even more importantly, 
it provides substantial cause for sorely needed optimism. 165 
The history of the LGBT labor movement demonstrates the tensions between class and 
sexual politics. But it also reveals the need for workplace legitimacy for queer 
employees, and their full, out participation in a declining labor movement. 
Despite setbacks in individual union shops such as Lifelong AIDS Alliance, and 
in the national labor movement, the LGBT labor movement is alive in the Pacific 
164 "Layoff Leaders Cushioned from Downturn," www.FairEconomy.org/CEOPay. 
165 Lisa Duggan, "Afterword," in Out At Work, 258-259. 
86 
Northwest. Seattle's Out Front Labor Coalition and Portland's chapter of Pride At Work 
continue to strive for workplace legitimacy for sexual minority workers. Gay labor 
activists from diverse employment backgrounds are participating in these coalitions, from 
teachers to machinists, and letter carriers to cable splicers. When I attended the biennial 
convention of the AFL-CIO's LGBT caucus, Pride At Work, in Everett, Washington in 
2001, I was struck by the energy created by the mixture of worker solidarity and queer 
activism. 166 The mandate from the convention participants, which numbered over three 
hundred from around the United States and the world, was widespread inclusion of 
LGBT workers in the labor movement locally and globally. Out, queer workers from 
around the world are making links between their sexual and class identities so that their 
LGBT brothers and sisters (and everyone in between) can demand workers' rights. 
Transgender politics are becoming more prominent in this labor movement. The 
Pride At Work participants have encouraged their members to add protections for 
transgender workers in their union contracts. I took this mandate back to my own union, 
the Graduate Teaching Fellows Federation, at the University of Oregon. We fought for 
five months to get recognition for trans gender workers during contract negotiations, a 
battle which took us through arguments about sexual/gender identity categories, legal 
language, and the university's support for queer and other minority workers. In the end, 
we won the inclusion of the words "gender expression and gender identity" in our 
66 
t For a history of the national chapter of Pride At Work, see Out At Work. 
87 
contract's non-discrimination clause. 167 Currently, Whitman Walker Clinic in Maryland 
and the University of Oregon are the only two union contracts in the country that have 
protections for trans gender workers. 168 Several municipalities and counties around the 
country have made this a priority for city and state workers including Seattle and 
Portland. 169 
Significant change occurred in the LGBT working-class movement during the 
period between 1970-1995 in the Pacific Northwest. The quest for workplace legitimacy 
led LGBT workers and activists through job discrimination, HIV/ AIDS, anti-gay political 
initiatives, and struggles to maintain sexual identity politics. The LGBT community 
made strides toward legitimacy by allying with labor unions, or starting their own groups, 
to put sexual minority workers on a level playing field with heterosexual employees. The 
working-class LGBT movement also gained political protections that made the 
community economically stronger on the whole. There have been many successes for 
this movement since the seventies, but there is more work to be done for social and 
economic respect for LGBT workers. 
167 Collective Bargaining Agreement between the University of Oregon and Graduate Teaching 
Fellows Federation, American Federation of Teachers, Local 3544, AFL/CIO, April 1, 2002 through March 
31, 2004. 
168 Whitman Walker Clinic employees won protections in their SEIU contract in 1998. 
Participants at the AFT-Oregon convention in April 2002 passed a resolution encouraging all state locals to 
add protections for gender expression and identity into collective bargaining agreements. 
169 Seattle's City Council approved protections for transgender city workers in 1986. Portland and 
Multnomah County afforded protections to trans gender workers in 2001. Future scholarship on this topic 
should highlight the contributions transgender individuals have made to the LGBT labor movement. 
88 
In this thesis, I have shown that class and sexuality are linked, in both the LGBT 
and labor movements. Post-Stonewall gay rights groups always had working-class 
elements within their ranks in the Pacific Northwest. On-the-job discrimination 
profoundly affected the real life experiences of LGBT people at work, especially with the 
onset of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Furthermore, sexuality is related to work and 
unionization, which I have shown with the case study of out gay workers at the 
Northwest AIDS Foundation. LGBT scholars should use the categories of sexuality and 
class in tandem to study how working experiences have influenced the lives of sexual 
minority communities. Not only does this brand of study add much-needed dimensions 
to working-class LGBT history, it has a practical purpose in giving direction to the 
current LGBT-labor alliances. Class and sexuality must be treated simultaneously as 
categories of analysis in order to achieve effective social, economics, and political change 
for LGBT communities. 
89 
FIGURE 1 
"I'm a gay civil rights worker. I represent the gay 
,. community as a Commissioner on the Multnomah 
! County Democratic Party. 
i "I sincerely believe that gay people can and will 
achieve civil rights by working through and with the 
political system. 
"Join me in what I consider the fastest growing civil 
rights movement in history by supporting one of the 
organizations listed here." 
Jerry Weller 
Portland Town Council 
..t t" Acting Executive Director 
. 1"'>~ •••• SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL GAY 
,. .. •. ACTIVITIES COUNCIL, 
In Seattle: In Portland: 
THE DORIAN GROUP PORTLAND TOWN COUNCIL 
526 Smith Tower 320 S.W. Stark, #506 
Seattle 98104 
206/682-6044 Portland, OR 97204 503/227-2765 
National: 
N_ATIONAL GAY TASK FORCE (NGTF) 
80 Fifth Avenue 
New York City 1011 
Public ~rvice Ad donattd by NW FOUNTAIN 
"Support Your Local Gay Activities Council," NW Fountain, February 1979: 10. 
90 
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Carol Steine!, "A Coming Out Primer," Just Out (December 1988): 2. 
"Support Your Local Gay Activities Council," NW Fountain, February 1979: 10. 
"The Ins and Outs of Coming Out," NW Fountain, November 1982: 8A. 
Kathleen Timmons, Seattle, to Maxine Daly, Seattle, 29 June 1971, YWCA Collection, 
Special Collections, University of Washington, Seattle, Box 6. 
Hazel Van Evera, interview by author, tape recording, Bainbridge Island, Wa., 17 August 
2001. 
David VanWagner, "Looking for a Job," NWGayReview(March 1974): 7. 
Carl F. Wagner, Seattle, to Barry Bianchi, Seattle 5 July 1988, Charles Harbaugh 
Collection, Special Collections, University of Washington, Seattle, Box 13. 
"Washington Coalition for Sexual Minority Rights," 1 May 1978, Charles Harbaugh 
Collection, Special Collections, University of Washington, Seattle, Box 23. 
Patricia Young, "Oregon's Anti-Gay Measure 9," (MA thesis, Portland State University, 
1997).