GLAPN is pleased to share a Queer Hero per day,
through the month of June, 2021!
As part of our celebration of Pride, GLAPN announces a Queer Hero for each day in June through our website and social media.
Nominations are always open (see the lightning bolt link, bottom left?) We rely on our community to tell us which folks whose risk, sacrifice, service, inspiration or example have made them heroes to the LGBTQ community at large.
Anybody is eligible – living or dead, straight allies, or any color of the LGBTQ rainbow. We get our share of community celebrities, but we love to recognize folks who work hard and don't get the appreciation they deserve.
In late April every year, a committee of former Queer Heroes makes the selections, and we announce a Queer Hero for every day in June, both here and on our social media.
Go back to the Queer Heroes Main Page to see our Heroes from previous years.
 Normally, GLAPN & Q Center collaborate in a gallery show and reception to recognize each year's Queer Heroes. We missed out on gathering altogether during the 2020 shutdown, and as we approached the easing of COVID-19 restrictions, we still weren't sure what we could do about honoring our 2021 Queer Heroes. We planned a parking lot party at Q Center, but between the initial planning and the actual event, restrictions eased. Q Center leadership helped us expand our party to include screening the Basic Rights Oregon 25th Anniversary virtual celebration, and we moved into the air-conditioned building to share an informal program with the Heroes who were able to attend. GLAPN's Bev Standish captured and produced the video, which may be viewed at this link. |
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In April, 2021, Stephanie Eminowicz initiated a petition to have two educators in her Grants Pass school district fired after they posted an anti-trans video on YouTube that violated district and state guidelines. Stephanie, a student at North Middle School, was one of the first to protest the "I Resolve" video that asked community members and leaders to speak out against proposed LGBTQ legislation. In a process that eventually made national headlines, a vice-principal and a teacher were removed from their positions in July of 2021. Read more … |
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Allinee "shiny" Flanary is a farmer on unceded Wapato territory that is now known as Sauvie Island. She is part of the Raceme Farm Collective. She grows herbs and both sells and teaches at local farmers markets, teaching and organizing for Community Supported Agriculture and Black and Indigenous farmers and makers. Read more … |
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Lulu Luscious' life began in 2013 when James, the son of Vietnamese immigrants and a graduate of Parkrose High School, grew unhappy with his 9-5 life in the corporate world. He looked around for a more community-oriented life. Only a year later, Lulu was crowned Miss Gay Pride of Portland. She helped form the Cascade AIDS Project (CAP) Junior Board in 2017 and currently sits on the Red Dress Party Board, a non-profit organization she’s been a part of for 11 years. The COVID-19 pandemic didn't slow her down, and she's currently head of the Portland Chapter of Official Drag Queen Story Hour, reading to a national audience. Read more … |
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Melissa Cornelius Lang is a historian, educator, and activist in Portland's LGBTQ+ community. She served as secretary of the NAACP (2015-2018), is one of the authors of the Pride Forever Walking Tour that Know Your City used to teach about local LGBTQ history, is a cofounder of the George T. Nicola LGBTQ History Fellowship administered jointly by GLAPN and Pride NW, currently serves as vice-president of GLAPN, and has been Development Manager of Sisters of the Road Café through the COVID pandemic. Read more … |
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In 2008, Patt Bekken went to her first PFLAG meeting. Her college-age son had come out to her, and she needed information and support. Today's she' s president of the Portland PFLAG chapter, working with the many parents whose kids have come out on the LGBTQ+ spectrum and who need some help navitating the new space. She brings her strong dedication to anti-bias work and the ability to connect many communities and service organizations into her PFLAG work.Read more … |
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Isaiah Tillman was a shy and withdrawn kid with body image issues. Music and dance gave him the tools to help deal with all of that. Today Isaiah is ranked among the top 50 most influential burlesque performers in the world. He still describes himself as an "introverted hermit of a person," but in addition to his professional successes he teaches locally and internationally to inspire, educate, and mentor other B.i.P.O.C. He sais, "Someone needs to see me because I am like them." Read more … |
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After being institutionalized in the 1970s to "cure" her of same-sex attraction, Beverly Standish earned a degree in music therapy, and has spent most of her life in the arts-and-music scene in Portland. Along the way she discovered a knack for photography, video, special effects, music and all things computer. She currently runs a video/animation/special effects studio called Digital Elf Studios and a camp for kids called Cinema Arts Camp which encourages kids who are interested in learning movie magic and the digital arts. Read more … |
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Brian Bergquist was a champion for LGBTQ+ rights in Idaho in the 1980s and 1990s. He organized Idaho's first Pride Parade, and when Oregon's Mabon/Lively team began to expand their anti-gay political activity into other states, Brian led the battles against the Idaho Citizens' Alliance. Proposition One was defeated at the polls, though only by the slim margin of 3,000 votes statewide. Read more … |
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Matt Alber is an openly gay singer-songwriter, filmmaker, and youth advocate based in Portland, Oregon. He makes time in his own career for ongoing mentorship and collaboration with Portland's Bridging Voices Queer Youth Chorus, providing opportunities and visibility, and lending his professionalism to young musicians in the city. Read more … |
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The Westside Queer Resource Center was founded in 2019 to address the needs of the LGBTQ+ community in the suburbs and countryside west of Portland. The board and staff are doing heroic work in managing a startup in the time of COVID, and they're already discovering a long-suppressed demand for an LGBTQ+ presence in Washington County. Read more … |
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S.A.F.E. (Students Advocating for Equality) at Sandy High School – On March 20, 2021, two rallies took place in Sandy, Oregon. One was sponsored by a local pentecostal church and was attended by Proud Boys. The other was called Have a Gay Day, produced by a coalition of community groups led by this group from Sandy High School. A community's historical narrative changes anytime minority groups step up to claim their space in civic life, and the organizers can be proud of their friendly and nonviolent event. Read more … |
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Jann Carson has been on the staff of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Oregon since 1986. She not an attorney, but over the years she has been involved in most of the cases that advanced LGBTQ+ legal rights in Oregon. Jann served on Basic Rights Oregon’s legal advisory group for nearly 20 years and was a member of the founding board of the Lesbian Community Project. Read more … |
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Jax Wheatley (thon/thons/thonself) is a Certified Public Accountant who has tended to the fiscal health of LGBTQ+ individuals and businesses since coming out in 2003. Jax has managed to run Rainbow Tax & Accounting, keep tabs on Portland Area Business Association (PABA), and do substantial pro bono work for Portland non-profits, while very publicly coming out twice – once as a lesbian in 2002, and again as non-binary transgender a decade later. Read more … |
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Rita Schenkelberg recently became the first person of color and first openly queer person to be elected to the City Council in Bend, Oregon. When the most recent filing period opened, Rita watched for a candidate who would represent LGBTQ people of color on the council. When no one stepped up, Rita decided to run for the position. Read more … |
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Eliza E. Canty-Jones is Editor of the Oregon Historical Quarterly and Director of Community Engagement at the Oregon Historical Society. Eliza is one of Oregon’s most accomplished public historians, working in ways that surface historical and present patterns of white supremacy, patriarchy, and other oppressive systems and lifting up the voices of the many people in our past and present whose stories should be part of the historical record. Read more … |
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Jamie McLeod-Skinner is an engineer, planner and attorney. In her current role on the Jefferson County Education Service District Board, Jamie was the first out lesbian elected east of the Cascades. She championed the JCESD’s adoption of the OAESD Task Force on Equity and Racial Justice policy statement, a remarkable feat in a conservative county. She ran for Congress in 2018 from Oregon's most conservative district, and ran for Secretary of State in 2020. She wasn't successful either time, but she has brought rural progressives "out of the closet" and is changing Oregon's political landscape. Read more … |
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Transpose PDX is a non-profit choral arts organization, centering the transgender, non-binary, and gender nonconforming community in leadership, membership, and focus. They follow a long tradition of performing arts in the LGBTQ+ community, polishing their skills, learning to perform together, and taking their particular branch of outreach in front of audiences, touching hearts and minds across the community. Read more … |
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As a gay Black man, Travis Nelson had to fight through racism and stereotyping to realize his dream of becoming a nurse and a union rep for registered nurses. Travis graduated from Washington State University with BSN and RN degrees. Travis became an Emergency Room nurse, then a union representative, and a committed volunteer for the Democratic Party of Oregon.Within the Democratic Party he was the first black gay male to Co-Chair the 2020 OR Delegation to the Democratic National Convention and was the first out gay male as Director of the Western States Region Democratic Black Caucus. Read more … |
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Mary Schutten has been advocating for women and lesbians since she was in high school, when she marched with Take Back the Night. A Portlander since 1997, she demonstrated a knack for fundraising, and she volunteered for the Lesbian Community Project and Love Makes a Family. She ran the $456 billion bond campaign to rebuild three Portland high schools and repair several middle and elementary schools. Mary’s focus is on electing women, especially women of color and lesbians, to city, county, and statewide office. Read more … |
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James Waldner was on the Pride Northwest (PNW) board for 8 years, including 3 years as president. It's a high-profile position in the LGBTQ+ community, as well as the city at large, that routinely attracts criticism and threats of violence. James' commitment to his volunteer job, his business savvy and ethical sense, were fundamental to what PNW is today. James left the board in 2019 after he and his husband adopted a sibling pair out of the foster care system, and devoted themselves to raising their family. Read more … |
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Karol Collymore is an ally who has always fought for and stood shoulder-to-shoulder with her LGBTQIA brothers and sisters for long-denied respect and rights. Among other community service, Karol has served on the Cascade AIDS Project board since 2014, became president of the board in 2018, and has signed on for another two-year term. Karol currently works at NIKE, directing the Inclusive Community Portfolio, where she focuses a considerable amount of her work on the intersections of race and orientation. Read more … |
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For several years, Paul Iarrobino has helped represent what’s right about Portland, both within and outside the LGBTQ+ community. After retiring from working in the aging field, Paul started his own storytelling company, Our Bold Voices, to elevate the voices of diverse community members and create community dialogues. Read more … |
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Seven years ago, Laura Erceg founded Queers & Allies of Coos County, responding to a need for a safe space for LGBTQ+ young people.There was discussion about making Q&A part of the school system, but many LGBTQ+ youth didn’t feel safe being out at school – or weren’t part of the school system at all. The teens who joined Q&A in the early years are young adults now, still affiliated and sometimes helping with the programs, and there are youth involved in Q&A who never knew a time when there wasn’t support for LGBTQ+ young people in Coos County. Read more … |
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Our House of Portland launched in 1988 when a concerned group of Portlanders began working to provide housing and care for the growing number of low-income people living with HIV. Today they serve over 700 clients annually, all of whom experience ongoing barriers to stability such as low income, chronic homelessness, and housing and food insecurities. Read more … |
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Valerie Whittlesey was executive director of Phoenix Rising, one of the earliest LGBTQ+ youth service organizations, during the 1990s when our community was under attack by the anti-gay Oregon Citizens Alliance. Under her leadership Phoenix Rising got its first United Way funding, and she formed alliances across the community to deal with political pressure, AIDS, and homeless LGBTQ youth. Read more … |
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Harry Allen, aka Harry Livingston, was one of the most notorious men in the Pacific Northwest from 1900 until about 1922. He was a bronco-buster, a brawler, in and out of jail, raising hell up and down the west coast. It was never a secret that Harry was assigned female at birth. Read more … |
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Fay Stetz-Waters served her country as a U.S. Marine, and worked as a 911 dispatcher before attending Trinity College and Lewis & Clark Law School. She was appointed to the Linn Country Circuit Court by Governor Kate Brown to fill a midterm vacancy, but was not re-elected. Since April 2019, Fay has been Senior Assistant Attorney General, serving as Director of Civil Rights at the Oregon Department of Justice, managing the Bias Response Hotline, supervising civil rights litigation in Oregon and coordinating multi-state litigation on civil rights, education, and labor rights issues. Read more … |
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Michael Hsu was born in Taiwan, and came to the USA at the age of 9. He graduated from Lewis & Clark Law School and was admitted to the Oregon State Bar in 2012, becoming possibly the first undocumented attorney in the United States. He got his green card in 2017. Always openly gay, Michael was appointed in 2017 to the Oregon Board of Parole, where he now serves as chairperson. Read more … |
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The Equi Institute, a Transgender and Queer health clinic in North Portland, was on the brink of closing for good when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Katie Cox, one of two remaining employees, was able to reorganize, create new community relations, and actually expand the work of the clinic, and she' Executive Director now. Read more … |
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