Female couples are helping to keep Portland queer

Women who love women are keeping Portland queer.

Multnomah County, Ore., which includes Portland, is home to the largest proportion of female couples of any county with at least 65,000 residents, according to 2020 U.S. Census data cited by The Oregonian.

About 4,700 female couples, both married and unmarried, live in Multnomah County, which has a population of 816,000. That’s roughly the same number of female couples as in Manhattan, which has a population of 1.6 million.

The prevalence of female couples in Multnomah County “doesn’t surprise me,” resident Toni Jaffe told The Oregonian. Portland, where she grew up, has many advantages that attract lesbians and bisexual women, such as access to outdoor activities, pet-friendliness, and a generally welcoming atmosphere, she said.

The area become more welcoming in the 1990s, with the defeat of anti-LGBTQ+ statewide ballot measures in 1992 and 1994. The fight against those proposals forced Oregonians, “even in progressive Multnomah County, to have the conversation about same-sex couples, and that created more openness in the community,” Jaffe said. “We had to be open to fight for our rights.”

Oregon-based companies, including Nike and Columbia Sportswear, have courted LGBTQ+ employees and consumers, The Oregonian notes. Portland also is home to Sports Bra, which is said to be the world’s first lesbian-owned Sports Bar.

Portland has not attracted gay and bi men to the same extent as queer women. New York City, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C., have the highest concentration of male couples. But queer women and nonbinary people take pride in Portland and Multnomah County.

“Portland lets us live in a bubble,” Nori La Rue told The Oregonian. “There are so many things here that I can take for granted, like walking down the street and holding my wife’s hand. I don’t know I would do that in a lot of other cities across America.”

La Rue, who is nonbinary, sings in the Portland Lesbian Choir, which is open to all LGBTQ+ people as well as straight allies. “I find the wide array comforting,” La Rue said. “Some of the songs we sing really touch deep for a lot of us and bring out emotions that we don’t really talk about as a rule in our society, like who do you talk to when you have a problem in a relationship or run up against discrimination?”

“People from out of state have been coming to the choir looking for community, and that’s something we provide,” La Rue added.

Multnomah County briefly legalized same-sex marriage in 2004, and couples rushed to get married, but a court eventually shut the marriages down. Later, voters OK’d an amendment to the Oregon constitution to ban same-sex marriage. That was struck down by a federal judge in 2014.

Oregon has been at the forefront in electing queer state and local officials. Kate Brown became Oregon governor in 2015, making her the nation’s first out bi governor. Tina Kotek, elected governor in 2022, is one of the two first lesbian governors in the U.S., the other being Maura Healey of Massachusetts, elected the same year. Sam Adams, a gay man who became Portland’s mayor in 2009, was one of the first out gay mayors of any large U.S. city.

Evan and Nora Smiley left Oklahoma in 2016 to marry in Portland, and now the two women are proud residents of the city. “Portland culturally felt like a place we could be ourselves and live our lives without issue, and it has been,” Evan Smiley told The Oregonian. She added, “We can do the things we like. We can have the health care we need. Our rights aren’t constantly up for discussion, with great credit to activists and organizations.”

Same-sex couples are a nonissue in the city, which has the slogan “Keep Portland Weird,” she noted. “Between Darth Vader on a unicycle, adult soapbox derbies, and naked bike riders, a couple of gay women in athleisure at the farmers market isn’t going to make anyone look up,” she said.