In 1912, Portland City Hall was constructed here at 389 Congress St. That was the third time it had been built at this location as fires had destroyed the building twice before. Such fierce persistence is a feature of the city and its residents. In 1977, two Portland state representatives, Larry Connolly and Gerald Talbot, introduced, for the first time in Maine, legislation to add sexual orientation to basic civil rights protections in the state. The legislation was defeated.

The next year, it was reintroduced. And again the following year. And again. And again. And again. Finally becoming law almost thirty years later in 2006.

Meanwhile, the city of Portland forged ahead. In 1988, Portland voters elected the first openly queer person in Maine to public office when an out-lesbian, Barb Wood, joined City Council. Over the next few years, voters added several more queers to council including Peter O’Donnell and Karen Geraghty.

Still, the city remained a dangerous place for LGBTQ people. Hate crimes were on the rise in Portland. In 1992 alone, there were at least 8 known queer bashings including one in which a gay man was violently assaulted by 7 men. Despite police apprehending the assailants, the victim refused to press charges because he was afraid he would lose his job if his employer discovered he was gay. The need for anti-discrimination protections was clearly urgent. In the absence of state-wide action, Portland’s mayor Peter O’Donnell presented Council with an amendment to the city’s human rights ordinance to add sexual orientation to its protections. After discussion in the council chambers upstairs in City Hall, the amendment passed overwhelmingly.

The law had its limitations: for example, religious institutions were exempt and penalties for violating the law were modest. Furthermore, the municipal law offered no protection for anyone whose life extended beyond city limits. It remained perfectly legal outside of Portland to refuse to serve someone in a restaurant, evict them from their apartment, or fire them from a job, simply for being queer. But, as Mike Blanchard remembers, “even if the Portland ordinance didn’t have a lot of teeth, symbolically it meant something to us that the city council had actually passed something.”

The day after the council passed the local ordinance, a group of Right-wing religious activists, organized as “Concerned Portland Citizens,” filed a people’s veto referendum to stop implementation of the law. As Blanchard recalls, “They made these horrible, vitriolic statements about the gay community, so we had to fight. We made phone calls, we marched.” One Saturday in late October of 1992, “Equal Protection Portland” held a major rally on the steps of City Hall with the crowd chanting “Give discrimination a final blow. Let’s get together and vote no.” Confusingly, the referendum on the civil rights law required voters to vote “No” if they wanted to preserve the law, and “Yes” to repeal those rights. Fifty-seven percent of Portland voters refused to take protections away from queer residents.

Portland City Hall would continue to serve as the stage for other political protests over the years. In 1993, at the height of the AIDS epidemic, the activist group ACT UP Portland held a die-in here on the steps of City Hall to draw attention to state and federal government inaction in the face of the AIDS crisis.

At the local level, Portland City Council continued to move forward with policies intended to enhance protection and create greater equality. In 1999, in the aftermath of the federal “Defense of Marriage Act,” which limited marriage to heterosexuals in the US, Portland created a Domestic Partner Registry and extended benefits to same-sex partners of city employees. In 2012, after Maine became the first state to legalize same-sex marriage by popular vote, Portland City Hall was the site of the first of those marriages at the stroke of midnight on December 29th.

A few years later, in 2015, Portland resident Mary Bonauto, an attorney with GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders (or GLAD), argued before the U.S. Supreme Court a case that would legalize same-sex marriage throughout the country. As Bonauto notes, “There’s a way in which the road to marriage nationally flows in part through Maine.”

Sources

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Blanchard, Zack. (2023). State’s first legally married gay couple reflects on being part of history. News Center Maine. June 22. https://www.newscentermaine.com/article/news/local/lgbtq/maine-pride-states-first-legally-married-gay-couple-reflects-on-being-part-of-history-lgbtq/97-e7e735d6-c4da-4c7a-99ce-b7c6e3e7c80e

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Clendenning, A (2). (1992). Portland Chamber Voice Gay-Rights Support. [photocopied newspress]. Larry Bliss Collection (LGMS22, box 6, folder 42). Special Collections, University of Southern Maine, Portland, ME.

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