Oral history interview with Lee Coleman

Collection

Identifier: SR 11234

Staff Only

Scope and Contents

This oral history interview with Lee Coleman was conducted by Katrina Griffiths and Joshua Fackrell on February 17, 2011. Griffiths and Fackrell conducted the interview for the Gay and Lesbian Archives of the Pacific Northwest as part of Professor Pat Young's senior capstone class on LGBTQ history at Portland State University.

In this interview, Coleman discusses his involvement with the Log Cabin Republicans in California and Oregon. He discusses the political fight against Measure 9, an Oregon ballot measure against LGBTQ rights, in 1992. He also talks about the state of the Republican Party at the time of the interview in 2011. He discusses the reasons he became a Democrat in 2004; talks about recent gay rights legislation in Oregon; and speculates about the future of gay rights. He closes the interview by encouraging his interviewers to become more politically active.

Dates

2011 February 17

Creator

Coleman, Lee, 1931- (Interviewee, Person)

Conditions Governing Access

Collection is open for research.

Conditions Governing Use

Copyright for this interview is held by the Oregon Historical Society. Use is allowed according to the following statement: Creative Commons - BY-NC-SA, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/

Biographical note

Lee Coleman was born in Los Angeles, California, in 1931. He attended the University of California at Los Angeles, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in 1953 and a law degree in 1961. In 1991, he was a founding member of the Oregon chapter of the Log Cabin Republicans. In 2004, he became a Democrat, and in 2006, he ran for the Oregon State House of Representatives, but was not elected.

Extent

77.9 Megabytes (1 audio file (MP3, 1 hr., 25 min., 9 sec.) + transcript (25 pages))

Language of Materials

English

Additional Description

Abstract

Oral history interview with Lee Coleman conducted by Katrina Griffiths and Joshua Fackrell on February 17, 2011, for the Gay and Lesbian Archives of the Pacific Northwest. Coleman was a Log Cabin Republican and later a Democratic candidate for the Oregon House of Representatives.