HATE CRIMES
First: What is a hate crime? Per Bing: A crime, typically one involving violence, that is motivated by prejudice on the basis of ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, or similar grounds: "legislation to stiffen penalties for persons convicted of hate crimes" · "why has hate crime increased?"
Per Wikipedia: The word Hate Crime began usage in the 1980s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_crime
Below are two of the earliest documented discrimination and hate crimes found in the gay press from 1971-1979. This DOES NOT mean there were no hate crimes before however, because of how the law was written and how many things were left unreported it is unknown precisely how many hate crimes had taken place. Below Left is from The Fountain Newspaper [date to be cited] and Below Right is from the Oregon Gay Rights Report, November 1979. [notice date of murder 1979]
Here is an article about the murder reported by the Portland Mercury newspaper: https://www.portlandmercury.com/portland/murder-house/Content?oid=10879324
The Matthews/Wing Home
SE 23rd: They Were Homosexual
Portland today is overrun with Homosexuals, openly displaying their proclivities on street corners, barrooms, and coffeehouses—to glance at the dance floor of Holocene on a Saturday is to acquaint oneself with the bold haircuts and flamboyant tattoos of a proud and unabashed people.
But it wasn't always this way. Prior to the 1970s, the Homosexual lived in constant peril, doomed to serve as a convenient bugaboo for fear-mongering politicians whenever threats of loose women and Communists proved insufficient to stir the passions of an ignorant populace. Homosexuals were subject to jailing, even sterilization, under the laws of the day. They couldn't live openly. They couldn't teach school. They couldn't even marry! Dark days, indeed.
In the 1970s, the prevailing winds began to blow in a more enlightened direction for Oregon's long-suffering Homosexual population. From its beginnings in Stonewall, the Homosexual Liberation reached Portland. Oregon's laws were amended to remove reference to "moral degenerates and sexual perverts," those dangerous euphemisms so often used against the Homosexual. And sodomy laws were removed from the books entirely, allowing both Homosexuals and Heterosexuals recourse to a more acrobatic range of sexual expression. Pro-gay organizations sprang up around the state, from the Portland Counseling Center for Sexual Minorities, to a print periodical, Northwest Gay Review, to the Portland Town Council, a federation of all-gay businesses. Why, a women's sport team—the fearsomely titled Lavender Menace—even allowed the Homosexual cabal a healthy dose of outdoor recreation.
By 1978, it seemed, truly, as though the tide was shifting for Portland's Homosexuals...
Or was it?
Robert "Buzz" Matthews and Charles "Clay" Wing were an openly Homosexual couple living in Southeast Portland. According to an Oregonian article, Matthews ran an art shop called New Heritage Gallery, which catered to practitioners of the gay lifestyle, while Wing worked with a group called Men Against Sexism, which worked to improve prison conditions and combat prison rape.
On June 26, 1978, the bodies of Wing and Matthews were found in the SE 23rd home they shared. Matthews, 39, was shot once in the chest and once in the head, while Wing, 52, was killed by two shots to the shoulder. A friend, entering the house to gather supplies for a Fourth of July camping trip, thought they were sleeping upon finding their home so quiet—but it was 5 pm in the evening, and Wing and Matthews weren't sleeping.
Time has forgotten the case of Wing and Matthews. Few newspaper articles allude to the crime; and those that do pose more questions than answers. Was their killer driven to homicidal rage by their Homosexual lifestyle? Was it drug related? Was it, perhaps, one of the ex-convicts Wing often sheltered as part of his activist work? Why had Wing, in the weeks before his death, suspected the police were after him?
We may never know. The crime—two openly gay activists, murdered in the heyday of Portland's gay liberation movement—was never solved. ALISON HALLETT
Below Left is from Cascade Voice newspaper, March 2, 1984. Below Right from COP [City Open Press] newspaper June 20 - July 18, 1986.
Below Left is an article from Just Out newspaper, June 1988 as well as advertisement.
Below Left is an article from the Oregonian newspaper, May 1989. And a follow up in 1999.
Here’s a link to a rememberce of Todd/Lindsay: https://tdor.translivesmatter.info/reports/1989/05/31/lindsey-todd-alexander-asay_portland-oregon-usa_b042fe09 also: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/125812789/todd-alexander-asay
Above is an article from the Just Out magazine, June 2012.
2016: https://www.corvallisadvocate.com/2016/lgbtq-oregon-current-status-and-history-of-struggle/
2019: Per a report in 2019 https://www.koin.com/news/study-oregon-ranks-no-8-for-most-anti-lgbt-hate-crimes/PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — A new study from Security.org has Oregon ranked at No. 8 for the most anti-LGBT hate crimes in the nation, showing that these hate crimes increased by more than a third since 1996.
The study used the most recent data from the FBI, utilizing information from 2013-2019.
The study said there were 0.68 anti-LGBT incidents per 100,000 people in Oregon, with 19.2% of all bias-motivated incidents targeted towards the LGBT community.
Oregon is ranked just after California which had 0.7 anti-LGBT incidents per 100,000 people. Washington D.C. was ranked No. 1 with a rate of 10.06.
This study shows that the LGBT community is now the most targeted group, followed by Jewish people.
2023: https://www.opb.org/article/2023/07/06/oregon-hate-crime-rates-bias-incidents/