LGBT Activists in the rural west are fighting for our lives-in places you'd least expect.

At a picnic table in the rare Oregon sun, Marcy Westerling is trying to make light of the danger. "Sometimes I pull into my driveway and let out a big breath of relief," she tells me. "I say, 'Okay, the house is still there, okay, the dog is still there.'" The 44-year-old northwest native laughs, but it's a short, self-conscious laugh. Then she looks off into the hilly distance beyond the small, mid-state town where we've met to talk.

Executive director of Oregon's Rural Organizing Project (ROP), Westerling is hard to bully. But during some of her most heated crusades against right-wing groups, she's been thankful she wasn't targeted for violence. Westerling confides that the 'No on 9' campaign was especially scary. During this battle in 2000, the ROP and other organizations on the left fought-and narrowly defeated-Measure 9, a.k.a. "No Promo Homo", an anti-gay initiative to ban public schools from "encouraging" homosexuality. "I have watched a lot of sad moments along the way where people have gotten hurt; the worst being Michelle and Roxanne, two of our leaders from Southern Oregon."

Again the veteran organizer pauses, this time in remembrance of Michelle Abdill and Roxanne Ellis, two lesbian activists who were murdered in Medford, Oregon in 1995. Their killing, many believed, was linked to their high profile as campaigners against the latest anti-gay initiative sponsored by the ROP's nemesis, Lon Mabon of the Oregon Citizens Alliance. Westerling had been in the trenches, metaphorically, with Adbill and Ellis until they were abducted and later found shot dead, execution style.

Even though she can dredge up a docket of threats, Westerling says she and the other two women who make up the paid staff at ROP try to keep a good sense of humor. Based in her hometown of Scappoose, Oregon, a small lumber town twenty-five miles outside of Portland, ROP was built by Westerling on a foundation of grassroots activism. The group focuses its effort on what she calls "protecting democracy," and a good chunk of its work goes into advocacy for gays and lesbians in Oregon's socially parched communities. Talking to Westerling (who identifies as queer), you're convinced: these bucolic, roll-up-your-sleeves dogfights aren't as sexy as the splashy gay issues that make headlines every morning. But, without question, they are equally as important.

A thousand miles away, on the northern front of the war for rural America, you can still hear the Midwest in Christine Kaufmann's voice when she says she doesn't fault the gay movement for not focusing more on rural issues. "Every movement neglects rural issues, "says the fifty-one-year-old activist. "[That's because] political power comes with numbers."

But Kaufmann doesn't mind being the underdog in the numbers game. She is co-director of the Montana Human Rights Network, a Helena-based grassroots organization that brings solidarity to social justice groups around the state. Along with facilitating the network, MHRN publishes "news flashes" monitoring radical right groups. Currently the MHRN has its eye on up to fifteen groups that pose serious threats to democracy in general and the LGBT community in particular, including Aryan Nations, World Church of the Creator, the Militia of Montana. Since she came of age in the Midwest, the long-term politico has also been openly gay.

Kaufmann grew up on a farm in Illinois and knows first-hand the issues-unemployment, religious conservatism, and racism-that face most non-urban Americans. As a result, she believes the most effective way to reclaim rural Montana is a multi-issue, progressive movement. "We tend [in progressive circles] to be single issue.we really need a movement that has wrapped all those progressive ideas up together so when we take power-and we will-we'll have a better world for everybody, not just a few gays and lesbians."

Others agree that Kaufmann and Westerling's work in rural communities is critical in the fight for social justice and democracy. Last year the Ford Foundation awarded both women with $100,000 "Leadership for a Changing World" grants to aid in their work; as two of only seventeen individuals honored with the prestigious grants, Kaufmann and Westerling will use the funds to ensure the longevity of their organizations. It will also give the two rural activists extra girth as they continue tackling deep-seated social problems that plague non-urban LGBT communities, including discrimination, violence against queers, and anti-gay legislation.

Advancing Democracy

You can feel Westerling's energy build as she talks about the rural movement that ROP is apart of. "Just because you're happy in a little zip code in southeast Portland doesn't mean that at some point you don't want to go home again," she says. "And that's what democracy is about-being able to be queer wherever the fuck you want."

Like the MHRN, Westerling's ROP works to keep homophobia out of the countryside by networking smaller human rights groups around the state. Through its alliance of forty-five member groups, most of which are volunteer-based, the ROP works on a dizzying array of battlefronts, from anti-gay initiatives to minimum wage.

ROP's tagline, "Advancing democracy in rural Oregon," is open-ended for a reason. Westerling and her colleagues believe that in order to make real progression in the fight to keep rural America free, you can't be a single-issue organization. So, while they focus much of their energy fighting and advocating on LGBT issues, just like MHRN, "We're very multi-issue as an organization." And while they've worked hard at creating queer solidarity, they're "just as passionate about other issues like immigrant rights, war in the Middle East and tax fairness."

The social justice seed was planted at a young age for Westerling. She grew up in what she describes as an old-world Dutch family. (She still quilts and tends to her "duck community" in her spare time.) Her response to her father's tales about his experience as a boy in Nazi-occupied Holland-how his family hid Jews in their home, how her grandfather was arrested for being a part of the Dutch-resistance movement-was to ask, "Why didn't you start the resistance earlier?" At a young age, she vowed to "never hesitate in fighting back." Some forty years later, her words still describe the strategy she uses to make this world a better place.

The ROP's longtime foe continues to be the Oregon Citizens Alliance. Since the OCA's original anti-gay measure in 1998, they've landed three additional initiatives on the Oregon ballot. Westerling's ROP and other progressive groups managed to defeat the last three. In coalition with the OCA, other religious and conservative activists have made dozens of local-level, divisive attempts to repress queers that haven't made it to the ballot; the persistence of these measures makes organizations like ROP crucial in the fight for LGBT freedom in Oregon.

"We've lost much more than we've won," says Westerling modestly, "depending on how you tally things. But I've chosen to risk repeat failure."

Since Westerling launched ROP, she's earned the highest respect from peers. Roey Thorpe, executive director of Basic Rights Oregon (BRO), a large nonprofit and ROP ally based in Portland, says that without advocates like Westerling, right wing groups would get a stronger hold on communities outside Oregon's biggest city. "I really do believe that that kind of local organizing has been vital in changing a climate where it's not easy for Lon Mabon [or any right wing activist] to get a foothold anymore," says Thorpe.

Multi-issue Montana

"I do think [gays and lesbians] need to guard against defining our issue so narrowly as to win one political battle, yet lose the war for the soul of the country," says Kaufmann, who spoke to me by phone from the MHRN's offices in Montana's capital city, population 30,000. (When she's not in the office, she's kayaking in the Rockies, one of the outdoorsy woman's favorite distractions from defending the Big Sky State's human rights.)

Accordingly, Kaufmann strongly believes that in the fight against the right, the LGBT movement must be a multi-issue one. She sites the opposition's style of organizing: "If you look at one of our opponents on the right wing-let's say the Christian Coalition-they're a multi-issue group. They don't just bash gays-they're against public education, against choice .They have a broad range of issues that unites them under a world view."

It's that unifying world view, she argues, that the LGBT movement lacks; additionally, we could play better with others. On issues such as gay marriage: "the gay and lesbian community will make political advances," says Kaufmann, "but at the same time, women will lose the freedom of choice, fewer people will be able to afford health care, and there will be more homeless people."

Founded in 1990, MHRN has drawn in over 1,400 members and works with ten local groups in coalition. MHRN fights to mobilize local support in small communities and to "challenge hate groups and other extremists who use violence and intimidation as tools for political activism."

Social activism is in Kaufmann's blood. She was raised in the Mennonite church, whose doctrine promotes (among other things) the dignity and worth of all people. "I've left a lot of those trappings behind," says Kaufmann, but acknowledges that her religious upbringing helped form her commitment to justice and service.

Public service, specifically: in conjunction with her work for MHRN, Kaufmann currently holds a seat in Montana's State Legislature, as does MHRN co-director Ken Toole (who is also celebrated in the Ford award). Both stood on overtly liberal platforms when they won their seats. In Kaufmann's campaigns (she's thrown her hat in and prevailed twice), she ran as an openly gay woman.

Through her work as a state legislator, Kaufmann works diligently along with her cohort Toole at establishing civil rights for Montana citizens, including the gay and lesbian ones. Like Westerling, she weighs her setbacks more heavily than her successes. "We have never won the vote that we wanted," she says of her attempts to pass legislation to add sexual orientation to hate crimes and discrimination laws. "Rarely do these bills make it out of committee. In that way, it's a loss. In another way, we call the press's attention to these issues and we almost always get favorable articles about the lives of gay and lesbian people in Montana. You have no idea of the untold numbers of people who read those stories and are able to take that next step in their own coming out or the next step in the fight for justice. So, in a way, we win."

Gay folks in Montana have to work harder and travel more to form the kind of community you might find in an urban center. A telling paradigm-there are more sushi bars than gay bars in Montana (many claim it's a ratio of six to two).

"I personally have never had any threats made against me even though I'm very public and very out." In fact, her sexuality hasn't been an issue in her political campaigns. "[Gay baiting] doesn't work very well if you're open and out there," notes Kaufmann. "The thing that gives this issue power in a campaign," she says, "is if you [try] to hide something . it needs the cover of darkness to continue to be effective."

Nevertheless, Kaufmann cautions, "I don't want to minimize or exaggerate the question of safety. For gay kids going to high school in rural Montana, this is not a good place. They learn, as many kids do that they have to be closeted and quiet and not tell people or they'll get beat up. " MHRN has worked on a number of gay youth projects, including the film The End of Silence: Montana Gay Youth Speak . "It's quite powerful," she says. "And it's getting a lot of play all over the state."

Queers in Montana (which shares a border with Matthew Sheppard's home state, Wyoming) also have to worry about hate crimes. In 2002 for example, Carla Grayson and Adrianne Neff, a lesbian couple living in Missoula, filed a suit against the university system for not extending health benefits to same-sex partners. Four days after the filing, police reports say, someone broke into the couple's home in the early morning hours. After pouring flammable liquid around the house, the arsonist lit a match. The couple barely escaped out the bedroom window with their two-year-old son.

"In this sort of climate," says Kaufmann, "I think there is a reason to be cautious about issues of safety." Kaufmann adds that Montana has a strong presence of Christian supremacists who feel that God really endorses their narrow political agenda.

On the flip side, Kaufmann says, "There is sort of this western attitude of live and let live." And, remembering a gay pride parade in the early nineties where spectators threw eggs and tomatoes, she comments, "Since then, we've never had that experience at any other pride event. So, I do think things are changing."

By Gina Daggett © 2004

Published in Girlfriends, February 2004