Oregon Voters Defeat Measure 9, Anti-LGBTQ Constitutional Amendment Backed by Christian Right

Oregon voters defeat Ballot Measure 9 by a margin of 56.5 percent to 43.5 percent, rejecting what has been described as “one of the most comprehensive and harshest anti-gay measures put to voters in American history.” The initiative, sponsored by the Oregon Citizens Alliance (OCA) and its executive director Lon Mabon, sought to amend the Oregon Constitution to declare homosexuality “abnormal, wrong, unnatural, and perverse” alongside pedophilia, sadism, and masochism. The measure would have required all state and local governments to actively discourage homosexuality and prohibited anti-discrimination laws protecting LGBTQ individuals. The OCA, a conservative Christian political action committee affiliated with the Christian Coalition, framed the campaign around “no special rights” while deploying harsh rhetoric that drew international attention and actually increased voter turnout beyond the presidential election.

Despite the statewide defeat with 828,290 votes against and 638,527 in favor, the campaign reveals the sophisticated infrastructure of Christian Right political organizing in the early 1990s. The OCA had emerged in 1986 as a vehicle to challenge Senator Bob Packwood in Republican primaries and evolved into a powerful force in Oregon’s culture wars. Republican Senator Mark Hatfield and Oregon’s major newspapers opposed Measure 9, and opponents outspent the OCA six-to-one, yet the measure still captured 43.5 percent of votes. The close margin demonstrates how effectively Christian Right organizations could mobilize large voting blocs around social issues, using ballot initiatives as mechanisms to bypass legislative deliberation and force direct democratic votes on minority rights.

Following the defeat, the OCA demonstrated the resilience of its institutional capture strategy by successfully placing similar measures on local ballots in 28 communities where Measure 9 had received majority support. The organization succeeded in passing local anti-LGBTQ ordinances in Josephine, Douglas, Linn, and Klamath counties, as well as in Canby and Junction City. These victories required the Oregon Legislature to intervene in 1993 with HB 3500, which prohibited local laws singling out citizens based on sexual orientation. The state Supreme Court upheld this preemption in 1995. The pattern illustrates a key capture mechanism: when defeated at the state level, well-organized ideological movements can still achieve policy victories by targeting smaller jurisdictions with fewer resources to mount opposition campaigns. The fight against Measure 9 galvanized Oregon’s LGBTQ rights movement and led to the formation of organizations like Basic Rights Oregon, but the campaign also normalized ballot-box voting on minority civil rights and established infrastructure that Christian Right organizations would deploy in subsequent decades across multiple states.