Jerry Weller SR 11124, Oral History by Libbey Austin Gay and Lesbian Archives of the Pacific Northwest (GLAPN)

2007 May 10

WELLER: Jerry Weller LA: Libbey Austin Transcribed by: Libby Austin, 2007 Audit/edit by: Christa Orth, ca. 2007

This oral history interview was conducted as part of the Portland State University LGBT History Capstone course, Spring Term 2007, with Instructor Christa Orth.

Introduction

On the evening of May 10th, 2007 Libbey Austin, a senior at Portland State University, met with Jerry Weller at his home in Southeast Portland, Oregon to discuss his life’s work as a gay and civil right’s political activist. Over the past several decades Jerry has been fundamental in initiating several organizations and has served on numerous boards and committees on both the local and national level. The interview lasted just over one hour, and a range of topics were discussed, including Jerry’s personal struggles with being gay in the 1960’s, the AIDS epidemic, and a timeline of keystone political action surrounding the gay movement in Washington DC as well as a description of the gay community in Portland, Oregon.

This Oral History Interview may be used according to the following license: Creative Commons - Attribution, Non-Commercial, ShareAlike (BY-NC-SA) http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ Weller SR 11124

Interview 2007 May 22

LA: Alright, so my name is Libbey Austin and I’m here with Jerry Weller. Jerry would you like to state your name for our recording?

WELLER: My name is Jerry Weller. J-E-R-R-Y. Initial K. Weller. W-E-L-L-E-R. And I was born October 31st, 1948 which makes me fifty-eight years old.

LA: Thank you very much. So, Jerry, would you mind, um, telling me a little about your upbringing? Your childhood?

WELLER: I grew up in Pennsylvania in a suburb outside of Pittsburgh called Pen Hills. And, uh, knew I was gay from a very young age. But we didn’t even have the word gay to use at the time. And we had no role models. Um, and I, uh, dated girls all through high school and into college, and then in- while I was in college I started dealing with being gay. And this was the height of the anti-war movement; this was the sixties. Um, I was very involved in the anti-war movement and the alternative culture movement. And, Sex, drugs, and rock and roll- and the whole bit. I went to Penn State. And um, when I finally was comfortable with being gay, I dropped out of college and sent my draft board a letter- basically teasing them- uh, daring them to, uh draft me. And they immediately sent me in for a physical. And I had a letter from a psychiatrist saying I was gay- or homosexual as they said. And um, it was uh very uncomfortable. I knew no other gay people at the time. I had never had sex with any other male or knew no other gay people. Um, it was a very uncomfortable situation- the entire draft physical. When they found out that I was gay, I was pointed out and picked on and treated horribly. And then at the very end of the- it lasted all day long- and then at the very end of the day you go through a room and the commander shakes your hand and says ‘welcome to the army’

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and ‘welcome to the army’ and he didn’t shake my hand- or say anything. And I said ‘what about me’? And he said ‘we don’t want you’. And I said ‘well I don’t want you either! ’ [laughter]

Uh, and I- then I dropped out and went to California; hung out in Berkley for a long time. And then went back to Penn State. And when I went back to Penn State it was uh, January of ‘70. April of ‘70 was uh, when the Kent State riots where the four students were shot. And I was very involved in the anti-war movement; the student movement. Was a member of SDS- Students for a Democratic Society- which was the most radical of all the organizations. And uh, a group of us were painting red fists on the back of t-shirts. And this friend of mine, Judy, introduced me to Bruce Howard. And Bruce and I became lovers. And he and I stayed together for twenty-one years, until he died from AIDS in 1991. But um, he and I pretty much stuck together. I had never been in a gay bar yet. I still knew no other gay people. Uh, we graduated from Penn State. We had two dogs, and we had a big old mail truck, and we drove it to Maine, and lived way out in the country in Maine. And I ended up teaching school that year. And Bruce just did odd jobs-anything he could to make money. And it was a wonderful year for the two of us to be together. But, we were very isolated. And Bruce had been around the gay movement, or around gay bars and gay life, and was telling me all these things that I just couldn’t believe. And so, I had a very close friend whose name was Beverly Stein. And Beverly-

LA: Beverly Stein?

WELLER: Stein. S-T-E-I-N. And Beverly was in a hippy commune in California. And so we went out to California with our dogs. And uh, joined that commune in a little town called Oakhurst. And lived there for a number of months and then the commune fell apart. And Beverly and Bruce and I, and a bunch of other people from that commune moved together into Berkeley and lived in a group house there.

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And that’s where I first really got involved with the gay movement. I went to my first gay bars and just was blown away. I loved every minute of it. Uh, we, um we were part of the sexual revolution that was going on then, especially in San Francisco. Um, people were not monogamous. Uh, the idea was to smash monogamy. And that was both heterosexual and homosexual. All our heterosexual friends were smashing monogamy, too. You weren’t supposed to be possessive with the one you loved- you were supposed to be open to free love. And, uh, so we played and had a wonderful time. And I joined my first gay organization. And that was called Gays of Oakland for Bobby Seal for Mayor. Bobby Seal had been a Black Panther and was very radical. Um, he was one of the first black leaders to ever speak out in favor of lesbian and gay civil rights. And so we supported him for mayor, and that was my first organizational beginning with the gay movement.

And uh, Beverly went to law school, and left. And that sort of broke the household up. And Bruce and I went on a long four-month trip through Mexico into Central America. Um. Ended up after four months in Panama. And then flew back to Florida, and then went to Key West and spent that winter in Key West. I worked as a waiter. And then that fall- the fall of 1974- Bruce and I went back to Penn State where he went to graduate school. And while he was in graduate school I worked at a backpacking equipment store. And even though I wasn’t a student I was vice president of the student gay rights group. And got more involved in the national movement- started to meet national players. Uh, a man by the name of Chubby Sylvester- he was at Penn, Penn state. But was very active and went to my first national conference in Washington D.C. in 1975. And started to really meet people and become a part of this whole gay movement.

Beverly meanwhile, was finishing grad school. And so she never did finish law school. Bruce finished grad school, and the three of us packed things together and moved out here- to Portland. And we had literally just picked Portland up out of the map.

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We decided we didn’t want to be in San Francisco anymore- it was too crazy. And Portland would be- we thought Portland would be a scaled down San Francisco. Portland was much quieter than we realized.

But we’re really happy we made the move. Beverly went on to become a state representative and then she was chair of the Multnomah County Commission. And she ran in the democratic primary for governor four years ago. Um. We came out- the three of us got a house together.

Um, I had worked for two years to put Bruce through grad school, so he allowed me two years to just sort of play while he worked. And there was this organization called Portland Town Council- which was the gay rights group in Portland. And they were looking for their first executive director. And they hired me. And that was- would be the fall of 1976.

Oregon was very unique in that Oregon started working on a state-wide gay civil rights bill as early as 1973- making it one of the first states in the nation. And by 1976, ’77, it was between Oregon, Minnesota and Massachusetts- we thought- as the three states that were going to pass the first gay rights bill. So the 1977 session came up and there was a huge push, and hundreds of people-just like today- but hundreds of people went down to Salem to lobby and to testify. And we, uh, and it was an amazing organization. The Portland Town Council was small- there were probably only 600 on the mailing list. But they’re 600 active, organized people. And I met Ann and Bill Shepherd and Suzie Shepherd, their daughter. And worked very closely with them and formed a lifetime relationship with them. And we all were thinking the ‘77 session we were going to pass the gay rights bill. And it was bitterly disappointing when that didn’t happen. Uh, we had worked so hard. But, one of the things it did do was build us more visibility. And the organization started to grow. When I was originally hired, I was hired as part-time and I

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was paid 300 dollars a week- which really wasn’t very much money. And um, we, um, we built it up.

Then came 1978 and, um, that was the year of Anita Bryan- Bryant. And Anita Bryant did her whole thing in Florida. And then we had the Eugene referendum here in, um, Oregon. Eugene had passed a gay rights ordinance, and in 1978 we had the Eugene referendum. We had the referendum in St. Paul, Minnesota and a referendum in Wichita, Kansas. And we lost every one of them. Miami, Gate County, St Paul, Wichita and Eugene.

However, that got me more involved with the national movement. And, um, immediately after that in June of 1978, um, I went to another national gay conference. And this was put on the reverend Troy Perry, um, founder of Metropolitan Community Churches. And Troy, in 1968, founded Metropolitan Community Church in a living room with twelve other people. And they- it grew very quickly so that there were churches all over the country and all these various cities. And Troy and I became- we met in Denver- and we just became extraordinarily close. And I was never a member of his church, but we were just very, very close friends. And we hit it off immediately. And he’s still one of my closest friends today. Through that I also met a man named Steve Endean-that’s spelled E-N-D-E-A-N. And Steve was the main gay organizer in Minnesota, and I was the main gay organizer here in Oregon. And Steve was involved with National Gay and Lesbian Task Force- only then it was only called National Gay Task Force. And a second organization was coming together called Gay Rights National Lobby, that would have the job of being in Washington D.C. and doing nothing but lobbying for national legislation. And there was no organization in D.C. - although a bill had been introduced on the federal level- there was no real lobbying effort going on. Steve left Minnesota and took this fledgling organization, asked me to be on the board, um... About ‘78, ‘79 and uh, Steve grabbed- um- got some office space in a horrible place in Washington D.C. and he actually lived in the office. And to make it look like the organization was more than one

Weller SR 11124 person, he put a second person’s name on all the, um, press releases. So that it looked like someone else was sending them out so he wasn’t sending out press releases about himself. But it was really just a one, one person operation. And he formed a board around it. And that board included me and Troy Perry, Gino Leary, Bruce Feller. Bruce Feller and Gino Leary had been the original executive directors of National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. Um, Karen De Crow who was very, very big in forming National Organization for Women. She wasn’t a lesbian- she was a, a straight woman. Terry Bean from Eugene was asked to be on the board. Terry is still very involved today. And we held our first board meeting in Washington D.C. and I was elected co-chair of the board of National, uh, Gay Rights’ National Lobby. And at the same time I was working here in Oregon. And so it got to the point where I was flying back to D.C. for meetings about every six weeks. And, um, it was a very exciting time in my life because I was meeting a lot of United States senators, representatives, um, lobbying in D.C., working alongside of Steve Endean- who I was becoming very close with personally. Um, Troy Perry got on the executive committee so there was Troy and myself and Gino Leary and several other people who made up the executive committee and we met every couple of months in D.C. with Steve. And built this organization that became very strong.

And meanwhile, then here we are back in Oregon, um, working every year trying to pass a bill. We, we didn’t do it in ’77. ’79 didn’t look good for us; no one had much energy, but we went ahead and introduced the bill and had hearings. And we, we did it differently in ’79. We split the bill into six bills: one for housing, one for employment, and one for public accommodations, and then introduced them in both chambers at the same time. So we had six bills going .The one for hou- for employment, passed through a senate committee and got on the senate floor in 1979. But almost no one remembers this. And the senator who carried it was Ted Kulongoski. And Ted of course is now governor. And he called me this summer because- talking about his campaign, and we talked about ’79 because he carried the bill on the floor and he and I decided he and I are the only ones who can remember this happened. But it did- the bill passed the

Weller SR 11124 senate, which no one seems to know, but it did. And it was a shock that it passed the senate, but it did. But senate president Jason Boe, and that’s spelled B-O-E, um, was furious that the bill passed. And used parliamentary maneuvering to put it back in committee, and held it- blocked it up for the rest of the session, and so it never got any further. But it was very exciting; we had gotten a bill through the senate floor, which was a very exciting time.

Uh, the organization Portland Town Council continued to grow and we formed, um, an organization called Town Council Foundation, which was to be the IRS tax exempt organization. Now back in those days, no gay organization could become tax exempt. The federal government said that- the IRS- said that any organization that was gay was automatically political, and there were no tax exempt gay organizations in the nation- except for one in San Francisco that had been found very early in the 70’s, and it was the only one that slipped through. There were no other tax exempt organizations. So we prepared to sue and Charlie Hinkel who’s an attorney here in Oregon and, um very involved in constitutional law, and through his, uh law firm Stole- Reaves, we, uh, prepared a lawsuit for the IRS. When suddenly, the IRS on one day granted eight organizations in the country tax exempt status, and we were one of those eight. And, um, suddenly had a foundation that could accept tax exempt money and we really weren’t prepared for it. And then um, you know, that made the news. And then this wonderful elderly doctor came along by the name of Dr. John Abele. A-B-E-L-E. And, um Jack gave us 30,000 a year for about four years. That was, 30,000 dollars was like well over 100 thousand in today’s money. And it was very shocking to us and so, uh, I had been chair of the board of Town Council Foundation, executive director of Portland Town Council, and at the same time I was also chair of the board of the P-T-C, P-A-C. PTC PAC, which accepted money to give to candidates .We were the second gay and lesbian PAC in the nation. The first was Metropolitan Elections Commission of Los Angeles. And, um, we were the second.

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So we had three organizations, PTC PAC, Portland Town Council and Town Council Foundation. I moved over and became executive director of Town Council Foundation and we hired someone new to be a head of Portland Town Council. And the PAC was just a small organization that didn’t have any staff at the time. And- but the Town Council Foundation and Portland Town Council shared office space and we- Where we were at in the late 70’s.. Getting ’79 to ’80, uh, we were doing pretty well. We were pretty pleased. Um, we had to raise a lot of money very quickly, because the IRS did not like seeing an organization get exempt status and suddenly just get one person’s money. It looked as though we were slipping one person’s money into tax exempt state- status. And so we had to raise in like a- a less than two month period, we had to raise matching dollars. And that was an amazing thing. But we got an amazing board of 18 people and, um my very good friend Dave Frederickson was on the board and, uh, it was- the board was not allowed to be an overlay of Portland Town Council, so there were some Portland Town Council people like John Baker and David Frederickson, and a few others and then there were just, other more- other community people. And we raised enough money that we were able to offset that first 30,000 dollars. And um, began our work. What we were set up to do was to be the public education arm of the lobbying organization. And we were set up the same way that the ACLU and the ACLU Foundation are set up.

Um, it was really marvelous, and it was a very exciting time, because we had a staff of about five or six people with the foundation. We had a fulltime person who did the speakers bureau and outreach and, we had fundraising and we had me as executive director and it was just very exciting. We were called out doing speaking engagements all the time. Because, most of the people were like me- we, we were in our 20’s. We had been raised in the 60’s, we‘d never seen a gay person before and I believed al the gay stereotypes that everyone else believed, you know that-1 couldn’t figure out how I was supposed to be a homosexual because homosexuals were supposed to wear dresses and I didn’t want to wear a dress. And homosexuals were supposed to be effeminate and

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I didn’t feel effeminate. And it just-1 couldn’t... for years I couldn’t juggle in my mind how I could be gay because we just didn’t have any positive stereotypes to look at- or role models actually-is what we needed. And so we were the first role models. And we were learning as we were doing it. There was no one before us who had done anything like this. We were just simply learning. And I was learning a lot by being involved so heavily on the national level. Um, the national board of course was made up of local gay activists from all over the country. The Gay Rights National Lobby board had 30 people on it and we had a staff of about eight. And um, that gave me contacts in cities all over the country, and we learned from one another how to, how to do public education; how to say the right things. We um- originally we used the term sexual preference. And we used to always say, um, you can’t discriminate on the basis of sexual preference. Well preference implies choice. And choice, we knew it wasn’t a choice. So therefore we learned to say sexual orientation instead of sexual preference. But, Bob Straub who had a task force, Bob Straub was the governor of Oregon in the mid 70’s and he formed the second task force in the nation on lesbian and gay rights, and it was called the Governors’ Task Force on Sexual Preference because we didn’t- hadn’t learned at that point to use the word orientation.

But um, the organizations continued to grow. At that point, the newspapers, nationally, would not use the word gay in the newspaper. I was always ‘Jerry Weller the avowed homosexual’. Um, Portland Town Council was ‘the homosexual rights organization’. Um, they would not accept our term gay, and that didn’t happen till the early 80’s when they finally changed and the Associated Press- which determines style for all newspapers- finally incorporated the word gay, and we were finally called gay. And that was a big deal for a while- urn, the second newspaper in Oregon, the Oregon journal which no longer exists- um, for a while they were using the word gay but they would put it in quotation marks, and that looked ridiculous. And we talked to them about that- we got them to stop doing that, but that was just the level of acceptance to finally get them

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to use our words, our language. And um, those, those seemed like such baby steps but they made such a big difference at the time.

Um, then around 1980,1 guess it was ’81, uh, I had a falling out with the PTC PAC. Terry Bean and I were very aware of how other organizations around the country were having black tie dinners and raising thousands of dollars in one night. And we wanted to do that, and so I quit the PAC, and quit my association with it and Terry Bean and myself, John Baker, Houston Lourey and Dana Weinstein from Eugene formed an organization we called Right to Privacy. And a lot of people didn’t understand where that word came from- right to privacy. And a lot of people thought it meant that we wanted to hide who we were, we wanted the right to be gay and hide in our closets. But Right To Privacy talked about the presumed constitutional right to privacy which was what we philosophically base civil rights on. We say it’s the same way that, um, the women’s movement used a woman’s right to privacy to overturn the anti-abortion statutes and to get Roe vs. Wade, to win that. And winning that was based on the right to privacy. And winning civil rights for gays is based on that same philosophy of the presumed right to privacy in our constitution. And so we called the organization Right to Privacy and we started organizing our first dinner. We went to the Benson hotel, which was the best hotel in town at the time, and um, were met with a really stand-offish woman, and we explained what we wanted to do. And we had months- this was like six months at least beforehand- and we started organizing for that dinner. And we really needed community support and everyone, we just got everybody involved-everyone we could think of- we called them a ‘table captain’ and they had to sell ten tickets to their table. And we charged 50 dollars a ticket, which 50 dollars in 1981 was a great deal of money- uh that made us clearly what we were saying- that was a black tie dinner. And as time came up we went into the Benson, uh, gave them our deposit- we had been able to raise that, they said ‘fine’; didn’t do much with it. And then about three weeks before the final date, we went in with all the rest of the money and the woman looked at us and she said: ‘you mean this is really happening’? And they were not prepared at all. We had 363 people at

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that dinner, which was tremendous and it was an incredible celebration because everyone had a stake in it- because everyone helped put it on. It wasn’t something that we just put on and you and went in and bought your ticket. It was something where friends convinced friends to write a 50 dollar check, rent a tuxedo, and come to a big dinner. And it was really momentous.

Um, the politicians, everyone was there. Every liberal politician, all the democrats, you know, everyone was there it was just wonderful. It was a very exciting night and it represented a new plateau for us in the gay and lesbian community. We suddenly had reached these heights where we raised- we raised ten thousand dollars that night, and, um- that made us the biggest fundraiser of the political season for any liberal or democratic politician or organization. We raised more than anyone else in one night. And so that was -it was juts a phenomenal thing.

Um, we took that. That dinner was in October of-1 messed up my years. It was October of ‘82. And then we went into the ‘83 session and, uh we had, uh- is this is working out for you?

LA: Oh yes this is great! Yes-

[laughter]

WELLER: Oh ok.

LA: This is fabulous, thank you.

WELLER: So, we had a lot of support, went into the ‘83 session again with the idea we were going to win. And I got our bill in the senate, and we needed 16 votes in the senate. And we had a very nervous 16. And we went down to the senate that morning

Weller SR 11124 and state senator Rodman Roe called a democratic caucus and took away a couple of our votes. He got cold feet-didn’t want to vote for us. The vote went on anyway and we got 14 votes, and people like John Kitzhaber who came from a rural southern Oregon timber district, he knew that it was going to go down; he didn’t have to put himself out there, but he stood up and voted for us. And, um, Barbara Roberts was in office at that point. She had- her husband Frank was a state senator- and she was his aid. And she was on the floor of the senate begging, um, Rodman Roe to vote for us and Rod wouldn’t do it. Uh, it was it was really sad. We were, we were really upset by it.

Meanwhile, on the national level Steve Endean had formed an organization called the Human Rights campaign and he had asked me to be on the board of that, and so that started in 1980 . The Human Rights Campaign was the political action committee, or PAC, for uh, Gay Rights National Lobby. And the Human Rights Campaign decided its way of raising money was going to be through major dinners also. And we hired, um, Jim Foster who was a long time, well- known San Francisco gay activist to be the, um, dinner organizer all- for the entire nation. And started setting up- he started setting up dinners all over the country: San Francisco, New York, and Miami, and just all over the place, and um...

We um, of that board I guess there were really just about eight of us who were really active the first couple of years on the board. But that put me on two national boards at that point. And um, Oregon was looking small to me. And I was uh, wanting to move on, and the Human Rights Campaign was up and coming and they decided to hire an executive director. So I applied to be the executive director for the Human Rights Campaign-which would’ve worked out really well because Steve Endean was executive director of Gay Rights National Lobby and we were very close friends and we could’ve worked very closely together. It came down to me and one other person: Dick Basil. And Dick Basil got it, and I did not. And I was really let down but, um, Gay Rights National Lobby was moving on and so Steve hired me to be the deputy director of Gay Rights

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National Lobby and I left Oregon, and moved to Washington D.C. and became the deputy of Gay Rights National Lobby.

Steve was under tremendous, um, political pressure from within the gay community. From people who were jealous of what we had done. And, um the man who owned the Advocate at the time- his name is David Goodstein, was a self-made millionaire, he was worth millions and millions of dollars, and he hired someone who to do nothing but dig up dirt and trash on Steve. And basically, he destroyed Steve. So I was in D.C. for about a month and Steve quit. And suddenly I was the executive director of Gay Rights National Lobby, which was not what I had come to do-1 didn’t feel ready to be the executive director of Gay Rights National Lobby. Um, I came there really to leam more from Steve than to, to head the whole thing myself, but I agreed with the executive committee I would stay a year. And, um...

But then, I left Oregon, moved to Washington D.C. was deputy director, told the executive committee of Gay Rights National Lobby, um, I would stay a year as executive director but I didn’t want to stay any longer than that. And so, uh it was just- we struggled for a year because the organization was in shambles. Uh, we had gotten all this bad publicity uh, it had just, it had just- the epitome of the community fighting with itself and, uh, it was, it was a terrible thing to see happen .And so I tried to stabilize it for a year and, um, that was an exciting year.

Uh, I met Senator Gary Hart and got him to become a co-sponsor of our bill. And meanwhile Packwood had become a co-sponsor for our bill. Packwood was the only republican. And, um, Bob Packwood was of course the, uh, senator from Oregon, and he was the only republican co¬sponsor of the bill at the time.

And it was an exciting year. I did a lot of speaking engagements, traveled all around the country. Uh, spoke in university of Kentucky, University of Virginia, University

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of Wisconsin, University of Illinois-just all these- OhioUniversity. All over the place. It was really- those were exciting and fun things to do and I had a really good time with it. I was happy when the year was over, and I moved to Chicago, where I had made some friends and I became the executive director of Chicago’s Howard Brown Memorial Clinic. And the Howard Brown Memorial Clinic is the largest gay mens’ health clinic in the nation. I had a staff of 34, which was really huge at the time, I’m sure they have a lot more now, and uh... Worked there as, um, executive director Howard Brown, not knowing many people in Chicago. I started going to school at night just for something to do. And I was taking journalism courses, and the next thing I knew I was well on my way to getting a masters in journalism. And so, um, after a year or so at Howard Brown I quit and just went to grad school full time. And meanwhile Bruce was back here. Bruce had been with me all these years, but he didn’t come to D.C. and he was back here in our house. And he called me in December of ‘85 and told me he had AIDS. And um, I very quickly took all the courses I needed to graduate and moved back out here in May of ‘86 to be with Bruce. And I came back and needed a job and I was very political and had of course, um, throughout various periods of time left Portland Town Council and managed political campaigns and then went back to Portland Town Council and managed it- then would go out and would manage another political campaign. So it was a campaign season, it was 1986. There was an anti-choice battle measure on the November ballot and I worked for NARAL- National Force Rights Action League. And became the uh, state field coordinator to fight the ballot measure and we were successful and won, and that was all really great. And then I just didn’t know what to do, and I, um, wrote articles and um, papers and make a little bit of money here or there. Then in ‘87 I got a job with the state, and- working for Oregon OSHA [Occupational Safety and Health Administration] which is where I still am today. 20 years later- 21 years later.

Um, but meanwhile I guess throughout that period of time, some of the things I remember most are uh, the dinners at Ann and Bill Shepherd’s home. I had become very close to the Shepherd family and was there usually on Christmas and Thanksgiving and

Weller SR 11124 everybody was at the Shepherd home. I mean, um, just for regular evenings and would have us over for dinner, or we would hang out there. Ann and Bill were just momma and dad to the whole gay community; they were wonderful. And um, Susie Shepherd for a while worked for Portland Town Council as an assistant to me. She just marvelous and wonderful to work for- or work with- and I don’t know. Um, they were very good times. Um, now my involvement is simply to write checks to Basic Rights Oregon or to whatever campaign is going on and things like that. I’m not involved in organizing any of the gay groups.

LA: Well do you from time to time get that itch to get really involved?

WELLER: I do miss it sometimes but, um, I have AIDS also and um, realized I had it in ‘85 when the test came out. I realized I was positive. By 1990,1 was on anti viral drugs, January one, 1990. I took my first AZT-which was the only medication available at the time for AIDS and uh, I was taking care of Bruce and my dear friend David Frederickson who was very sick with AIDS. And there’d be nights um, by ‘89, ‘90, ‘91, where I’d be talking to David on the phone just consoling him and keeping him company, and Bruce would be lying with his head in my lap, uh, sleeping ‘cause he was so worn out. And then by the end of April of 1991, David died, and two weeks later, Bruce went into the hospice into our house. And Bruce hung on until uh, end of July of 1991. That’s- those are very hard times. Uh, I lost all my close friends. Steve Endean died in 1993, um. All my really close friends died from AIDS. And for some reason I just didn’t get sick. And um, I had had my ups and downs but I basically remain very healthy And, uh, I had been able to figure out that I contracted AIDS of June of 1981 and you can tell that because about seven to ten days after you’ve been exposed to the HIV virus uh, you come down with what you think is the world’s worst flu. You just feel like you’ve got the worst flu in the world, but it doesn’t quite happen. And I remember that so well and within 24 hours it’s gone. And I remember that from June of 1981 and so I’m positive that’s when I got the virus and uh, here it is 2007 and I’m still going strong.

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Uh, so having lost many friends and um, going through periods of being sick, I really needed the stability of the state job. I wanted a state job for the benefits for the stability, um. I never thought it’d turn out to be a career. Um, and I’m actually very bored with it, but it’s given me what I need. It’s given me the stability and the money to live on and the benefits. And certainly the gay movement, working for it, you’re not going to get the benefits, the pension and all those wonderful things which you start worrying about when you get older in life, and really need it. So uh, uh, sometimes I miss it, sometimes I don’t because uh, I know there’s still a lot of in-fighting that goes on. And sometimes we spend more time fighting with one another than we do fighting the right wing. And I could fight right wing forever, but the internal battles just drove me crazy. Because they were such a waste. And uh, the organizations got tom down and people got tom down and it was really, um- doesn’t seem to happen as much as it used to. Certainly Human Rights Campaign is strong and viable and is-1 just don’t see anything ever happening to it. It think it really had fulfilled the vision we had for it and it’s, it’s great to remember that I was a part of it- of founding that organization. It’s really just eight or so of us in a room, um with Steve Endean totally in the leadership of it. Uh, Steve having a great vision of what he wanted in the rest of us supporting him in that. And I wish Steve were around today so he could see what it’s grown into. Steve ended up working for the Human Rights Campaign, uh, the last few years of his life, which was real nice. Uh, so he uh, bounced back from what he called the bump in the road of his career. And uh, was able to work again for the gay movement and uh, not in a major leadership position but in a, uh, in a good position at the Human Rights Campaign, and I was really pleased for him, um, that he got that.

And um, you know, now, you know I went down for the uh, floor debate of our two bills in the legislature this year. Uh, listened to the house floor debate on, uh, the anti- discrimination bill and the domestic partnership bill. And uh, it was exciting. Uh, it wasn’t as exciting as the ‘89 session. We passed sexual orientation for the first time in the

Weller SR 11124 legislature, when we had sexual orientation added to the state’s hate crimes bill. And uh, that time we did something we had never done before. We um, uh we had cur- we had had a bill in to add sexual orientation to the hate crimes’ statue and it wasn’t going anywhere, and so the last day of the session, uh there was just a small group of us; myself, Fred Neil, couple other people. And we decided with our legislative supporters to, to do what’s called a ‘gut and stuff, and that is , you take a related bill that’s not going anywhere, and you gut it - take everything out of it and then you stuff your own language in with what you want in your bill. And so we did a gut and stuff, which we had never tried before, and it passed the senate that day and then we waited all day long for it to come up on the house floor and Vera Katz was Speaker of the House and Beverly Stein was carrying the bill on the floor. And the chamber was electrified because I, I was the vote counter and I could only count to 26 and you need 31. And we had no idea what was going to happen. And the chamber was electrified, the right wing was angrier than hell that we had pulled a gut and stuff. And the right wing legislators were really, really angry. And in caucus some of them yelled and screamed at Beverly and it was a real-just an incredible time, the gallery was just filled. Everyone watched the vote and it was a role call vote. It wasn’t by machine the way they do it now, and so each one voted and voted and voted and it finally got up to- we had uh, 29 votes and then we had 30 votes, and then it was left to two legislators both democrats, both very conservative. One representative from Hillsboro voted “nay” and Representative Larry Sowa from, uh, Clackamas voted “yea”. We had 31 votes. And it passed, and the chamber broke into spontaneous applause, and Vera let it go on and on and that was- it was really very, very exciting. And Uh, and it was interesting when the bills were voted on this year, which were much more, um, much more major bills than just adding sexual orientation to the hate crimes statute, but to pass a full civil rights bill and a domestic partnership bill, I was amazed but the entire gallery stayed quiet. You know you’re not allowed to uh, applaud or do anything like that. But we got away with it in ‘89. But certainly in 2007 that wasn’t going to happen it was very quiet. It wasn’t quite as electrifying to me but it was um, it was great to see it finally happen. And to have them finally have it signed in into law

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yesterday by Ted Kulongoski. Um, and what a great person to do it because Ted has been there for us since 1975. So it was really kind of wonderful.

LA: Do you remain in close contact with him and with...?

WELLER: Ted is one of those politicians who I remain in good contact with, as well as Barbara Roberts and um... I was never really very close with Vera. Um. Not as much as- The main person who took our bills through the house was State Representative Gretchen Kafoury, and then Gretchen went on to become County Commissioner and then Portland City Commissioner, and she’s retired now. Um, but Gretchen was the main state for us in the house for, throughout the ‘70’s and into the ‘80’s. Uh, and Steven, her husband, was the first original co-sponsor along with Vera Katz of our bill in 1973. Her husband of the time.

I don’t know. Any questions you want to ask?

LA: I have lots, but you answered them mostly, on your own. It’s been a very exciting past couple of decades. What have you seen, back and forth from Portland, how have things changed? You were talking about those in-group fights...

WELLER: Well, I can’t tell if the community has changed or a lot has changed because of my age. Ah, now one of the things that definitely has changed is that we got our funding in the early days- and actually this is really important-1 had forgotten this. Um, in the 70’s our basis of support- financial support- came out of the gay bars. And a lot of our money came from the drag queens. The female impersonators putting on shows in the back room of a bar called Dahl and Penne’s and, uh, collecting their tip money that they would get as they danced and sang and giving it to Portland Town Council, or giving it to the Eugene referendum. But that’s how we got our money. And, uh direct mail was- we were just beginning it, we didn’t have a big enough mailing list. We did memberships

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for money. As then of course, as I said then in ‘83 we did the big dinners and started getting much bigger money. But, um it was very different. I, I went out every Saturday night to the gay bars. And I went out relatively early, like by nine-thirty or ten o’clock because I hit every major gay bar in the city, because that was -it was- those people in those bars, the owners who gave us the space to put on fundraisers and the patrons of the bars were my basic support. And uh, everybody knew me at the time.

I think one of the most exciting times we had was in 1979, it was the first national gay march on Washington. And uh, I had no money to go. I didn’t know anyone who had money to go, so I organized a march, there’s a poster back there on the wall. Uh, ‘If you can’t go there, come here’, and uh we had a march on Portland- a candlelight march. Saturday night before the, uh, Sunday march in D.C. And it was wonderful. We organized at nine o’clock at the park blocks, and there were thousands of gay men and lesbians with candles. And the minister of Metropolitan Community Church, um, led it with me, and we marched down Broadway and all the traffic was stopped and all the theater patrons were out and it was- it was really a wonderful, wonderful march. We ended up in a, a small park and, uh, had some short speeches and then I arranged for every gay bar in town- had a kegger- a free keg of beer so that we could disperse the crowd. Because what do you do with people at ten thirty at night, downtown? You’ve got thousands of people out. And so we encouraged people to go to the gay bars. And the bars were just wild that night with excitement because everyone had marched- a lot of drag queens had marched in drag; a lot of Leather people had marched in leather. It wais different because it was a candlelight march, it was much different from the gay pride march that we had every June. But it was really very, very exciting. And, um, one of- one of the top experiences I think I had. And when I consider Gay Pride Day- which I had forgotten about- Gay Pride Day in 1976 in Portland was about ten people in a pop tent in Waterfront Park. And that’s how things- how it was.

[laughter]

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But by, ah, by ‘77 the next year, it’d gotten bigger, by ‘78 it was huge, because ‘78 was the year of Anita Bryant. And Anita Bryant did wonders for the gay movement. We needed her badly. She proved to gay people that we were oppressed; people were going to go out and say terrible things about us and uh, Anita Bryant gave us something to organize around. And the right wing became very powerful here in Oregon and uh... You need opposition sometimes to organize, and by ’78, you know, I’m sure there were over ten thousand people at the gay pride march, and it just continues to grow every year since then. But it was very, very small in the beginning. I remember we just sat around a little pop tent and uh, we had some literature- some newsletters that we printed up. And hoped people would come by, but not many people came by- and that was Gay Pride Day.

[laughter]

LA: What were some of your favorite bars around town-

WELLER: Pardon me?

LA: What were some of your favorite bars, if you had a favorite?

WELLER: We had a favorite wonderful bar called the Family Zoo. The Family Zoo was on Oak Street. And, um, the Family Zoo was um... I had very long hair then, and uh, it was a long haired hippy bar, alternative culture bar; a bar for everyone though. And all the gay men, all the gay men went to the Family Zoo. And it was an institution. People knew about it all over the West Coast. It was- it was just a wonderful place to go. And uh, if anyone was in town from out of town they would hit the Family Zoo. It was really a great bar. And then uh, the bar that’s now called, uh Silverado was at one time called The Bushes. And it was a gay men’s dance bar- what we called butch dance bar. And, uh, and

Weller SR 11124 it was part leather, part dance bar, uh. It was also a real favorite of mine. And Dahl and Penne’s- and that was D-A-H-L, P-E-N-N-E-’S. Dahl ‘n Penne’s was a mixture of a lot of things, plus they had this huge backroom with a stage where the drag queens put on shows. And that was an institution of itself, with those the nights at Dahl and Penne’s. I have wonderful memories of that. Um, there was this tremendous drag queen called The Vanessa. Vanessa has since died, of course from AIDS. But um, that was the time when Helen Reddy’s song ‘I am Woman’ came out, and we, we would sometimes do fundraisers down there and Gretchen Kafoury would come down and we’d get a few drinks in Gretchen Kafoury and she’d run up on stage and lip sync ‘I am Woman’ with Vanessa. And it just- it was wonderful, it was just absolutely a wonderful night. Uh, we had a lot of fun. And um, I think things now are much more sophisticated. And uh, certainly we have a lot more money than we had.

Uh, I’m not sure-1 don’t know if people have as much fun as we had, um. Because we created something so new, and the times were also very free, the ‘70’s and early ‘80’s. Um, sex drugs and rock ‘n roll was where it was at, I mean it was a very free lifestyle. Uh, AIDS wasn’t an issue. Around 1980 we began to realize that gay men in New York were getting sick with something but we didn’t know what it was. It wasn’t ‘till ‘81 the CDC [Center for Disease Control] identified it and uh, in ‘81 or ’82,1 worked with Dr. John Santa at Good Samaritan Hospital and he and I put on the first AIDS forum in Portland. And the morning four hours were spent training professionals. Uh, health professionals from all over the state came to leam about AIDS. And we brought up speakers from San Francisco. Good Samaritan paid for everything. And um, and all the latest information was given on AIDS- all the technical information for doctors and nurses and V.E. clinic workers and then the afternoon was for gay men, and we had four hours for gay men, and the auditorium was absolutely packed, with people sitting on the stairs because everyone knew this mysterious disease was around and of course, this was- This was the time we were fighting the CDC. The CDC wanted to call the disease GRID- Gay Related Immune Di- um... Gay Related Immune Disease-1 guess it was, or

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Dysfunction. We had- we really fought that and we came up with AIDS finally. Uh, but, uh it was all so new, and learning to do public education around AIDS. And, uh of course I was very involved with that, AIDS. ..I- um... ‘85 when I was at Howard Brown Memorial clinic, AIDS was the major-major thing. It was the- dying right and left by the mid ‘80’s. It was really a devastating time, and uh, when I came back here, the Family Zoo had closed and, um, all the gay men that I used to see were all gone. And um, and so a friend of mine one night at the- used to be the Thanksgiving Eve night- Eve night was a big thing in the gay bars. People who came back to Portland to visit families, and just a big time to go out and celebrate and have a wonderful time. And I was out on Thanksgiving eve and there was hardly a soul out. And I said to this friend, ‘where’- you know, ‘where is everyone, all those people’ and he said ‘Jerry they died. They’ve all died’. And, uh and it’s true. Uh. People who I just, uh, casually knew; nodded to in the bars, or knew as a supporter or something- they’re just not here anymore. Um, that was a real devastating time for us. And so having AIDS has taken a lot of energy- physical energy away from me. Made it very difficult.

I’ve had pneumocystis pneumonia I’ve had several other gay related, or AIDS related, uh, opportunistic infections and uh... makes working very hard. Um, it’s-1 have seen things from a different level now because having AIDS, I’ve been discriminated against in state government. And I’ve sued OSHA. Uh, and it was settled in my favor out of court, and the administrator and a bunch of other people all lost their jobs. But, um, I couldn’t believe this was happening to me. I was always the organizer and I, I- emotionally didn’t handle it well. I kind of fell apart. Uh, it was easier to fight for someone else’s rights than to fight for my own. And to um, to suddenly have to fight for myself, um, was hard. But I certainly fought hard and I used all my political contacts, being in state government. Um, and John Kitzhaber was governor and, um, I know that it was discussed in governor’s cabinet meetings- what was going on with Jerry Weller. And they were forcing the head of my department to force out the head of my division of OSHA. And, uh, I went on leave. I couldn’t take it-1 couldn’t handle working there so I went on leave.

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Ah, and it was settled, well, I-1 left and then I, went on what they call job rotations in state government. I went to the Civil Rights Division of the Bureau of Labor and Industries and was a civil rights investigator. But OSHA paid my salary. I did that for two years. And as part of my settlement I got OSHA to pay my salary for two more years. At uh, the Civil Rights Division. Plus I got a few thousand dollars and stuff like that. They cleaned it up and got everyone out. And I went back to OSHA. And there I am today. Seven more years and I retire.

LA: [laughs] Wow.

WELLER: And it is amazing, and those of us who have lived, uh, as gay men with AIDS who have somehow made it, um, it is so weird to think about retirement because in the early- the late ‘80’s, early ‘90’s it was run up your credit cards, do whatever ‘cause you’re going to die. So you might as well, you know, I mean I went to Mexico all the time I was doing all sorts of things. ‘Cause, while I’m well I’m gonna do this stuff. And, um, and here we are living and we have to actually work for retirement. And retirement was never an issue for me. I never saved for retirement because I never thought I would ever retire. And, um now I have to retire, and it- and it was just is an adjustment, to realize you were gonna die and to deal with death, and the death of your friends. And Bruce really brought me out of the closet, got me into the gay bars, and taught me a lot about gay life. He taught me how to live my dreams and live out my fantasies. He was really into that. And when he died he was a very strong individual and he, um- very stoic. And never broke down except with me, privately. But never in front of anyone else. And died very strong. And um, I told him when he was in the hospice that he had taught me how to live, and now he was teaching me how to die. And I’d learned how to die- I’m not afraid to die now. Um, but then when found out we all were going to live when the inhibitors came out and they were working, and by ‘96, ‘97 when we realized we were going to live- that was a whole new adjustment. Adjusting to- it was- they told us we were gonna die, we got

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ready to die. Now what is this, ‘I’m going to live’? And we had to get into long term living and old age and middle age and things you never thought you’d have to deal with.

LA: Will you be staying in Oregon?

WELLER: Yep. Yeah, I uh, will probably stay right here in this house, at least as long as Cosmo [Jerry’s Chocolate Labrador] lives, and uh, I can see where I’ll eventually end up getting a condo, just because the stairs get to be too much. But uh, Oregon is really home for me. I’ve been here 31 years now. And uh, Beverly and I are still very close friends. And that helps, but- it helps having one person from my past. Um, I still miss Bruce all the time because I think especially as you get older, you want to reminisce. And I don’t have Bruce to reminisce with, and he was the one who shared it all with me. And I so I really, really miss that a lot. It can be- it can be really hard. You can make new friends. Making friends is harder as you get older. And uh, not having that past shared history can be very difficult. It’s hard to build the closeness that you have with, with your old friends.

LA: If there was one thing, like for future researchers, if they wanted to know-what would you want them to know?

WELLER: Well, um, Troy Perry- Reverend Troy Perry- calls me a pioneer in the gay rights movement, nationally. And I’d like to be remembered as one of the national pioneers; one of the people who was out there first. Um, it was uh- it came second nature to me. Um, my parents, uh, accepted the fact that I was this gay politician... Readily because I’d always been political. I’d done the anti-war movement; I’d been involved in politics all through high school. And, I uh, every uh- I am still very political as far as watching all the political races, and who’s running against whom and everything else. Always watching, and try to be- you know, finding a campaign to attach myself to every now and then and things like that. Um, but I think being remembered is just being

Weller SR 11124 remembered as one of the first ones that was out there. Um, founding organizations, like the Human Rights Campaign and, uh, Right to Privacy and things like that... Really, uh, those are really important to me.

LA: I have to say I think our time is almost up-

WELLER: Great, [laughter]

LA: [laughter] I really, really appreciate you taking the time to share your story.

WELLER: Well thanks, I hope it works out.

LA: Oh, I’m honored to meet you.

WELLER: Oh thank you.

LA: It really is, so great.

WELLER: I appreciate you coming over.

LA: Well yeah, anytime!

WELLER: Cosmo was a good dog.

LA: He is a wonderful host, [laughter]

[End of Interview]

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Figure 1

“Support Your Local Gay Activities Council,” NW Fountain, February 1979: 10.