What follows is one of the many articles in the Mercury‘s 2026 Queer Issue. Find a print copy here, subscribe to get a copy mailed to you here, and if you’re feeling generous and want to keep these types of articles coming, support us here.—eds.
I don’t have the data to back it up, but based on anecdotal evidence gathered from existing 20 years in Portland, it feels safe to say our city is one of the queerest places in the United States—maybe even the world.
As such, Portland’s history and culture are chock full of queer luminaries—homegrown or transplanted—who have made Stumptown that much gayer and cooler. As you can probably guess, it was a nightmare keeping this list to just four people—it meant cutting names like Kathleen Hanna, Chanticleer Trü, Gus Van Sant, Bobby Fouther, Beth Ditto, and dozens of others equally worthy of celebration. But let’s start our short list of honorees with…
Marie Equi
What She Did: Physician, Labor Rights Activist
Why She Matters: Doc Marie Equi was everything you want in a doctor: gay, angry, compassionate, anti-war, and a staunch advocate for reproductive and workers’ rights. She was just as devoted to throwing gay parties with Olympia Brewing heiress Harriet Speckart as she was for flagrantly ignoring anti-abortion laws. Equi was once called “the most dangerous radical on the West Coast” by the US Attorney for Oregon, and “the brainiest woman” in the state by the Oregon State Editorial Association. In other words: Equi was a certified dreamboat.
Stories about her are numerous; some seem made up. For example, when she allegedly horse-whipped her girlfriend’s boss for stiffing a paycheck, or when she threatened to stab a cop with a poison-tipped hat pin. She and Speckart adopted a child together at a time when being openly gay was still a criminal act. Oh, and she was so openly against World War I that the government sent spies to her anti-war speeches in union halls, and to befriend her to gain information on her day-to-day activities. Her unwavering dissent landed her in San Quentin Penitentiary after she was convicted under the newly-minted Sedition Act.
Despite her rich and storied life, Equi’s exploits and tireless activism have been swept under the fickle rug of history. To queer history nerds, the radical empathy that beats within the heart of her actions makes her worthy of more reverence. Her dedication to others is hard to overstate, down to joining pro-union protests on behalf of local cannery employees. When San Francisco was hit with an earthquake in 1906, she felt it her duty to take temporary leave from her Portland medical practice (which she started as one of the city’s first women doctors) and travel south. She knew she could help, so she did.
Today, Equi’s legacy lives on in the Marie Equi Center, the Brooklyn neighborhood institution full of tireless crusaders for LGBTQIA2+ healthcare accessibility. Simply put, Marie Equi was one tough, amazing lesbian.
Rupert Kinnard
What He Does: Writer, Cartoonist
Why He Matters: Like many Portlanders, Kinnard is a transplant who was so drawn to the city that, despite moving away in the 1980s, he couldn’t resist returning. He’s lived many lives in many cities, but his mark on Portland is inescapable. From serving as associate art director for Willamette Week and co-founding Just Out, the fertile soil of Portland allowed his recurring strip Cathartic Comics to grow and endure.
In a way, cartoonist Rupert Kinnard’s Cathartic Comics aren’t far off from the characters in Alan Moore’s tone-perfect Justice League/Avengers deconstruction, Watchmen. Kinnard, by contrast, used teen crimefighter, the Brown Bomber, and immortal lesbian, Diva Touché Flambé, to pillage superherodom for elements worth lovingly lampooning.
Many other comparisons spring to mind when reading Cathartic Comics, like Alison Bechdel or Harvey Pekar. Kinnard stands in his own lane, using Brown Bomber and Diva Touché Flambé to examine the intersection of queerness and Blackness. His razor-sharp wit is so effortless, you don’t immediately realize what a gut-punch it can be, whether you can relate to the depicted struggles or not.
Queer, Black characters like Black Bomber and the Diva are still too rare, and while Cathartic Comics refuses to shy away from its own novelty, all of Kinnard’s characters feel natural… even inevitable. They’re impossibly self-aware and hysterical, taking local politicians and Reagan-era public figures to task for their erasure of everyone besides the most straight-passing and socially palatable cis white gay men, while also caricaturizing well-meaning, but ignorant, liberals stepping on your throat on their way to “help” you.
In recent years, Vivian Kleiman’s documentary No Straight Lines: The Rise of Queer Comics and Kinnard’s curated collection, Ooops… I Just Catharted: 50 Years of Cathartic Comics, have shone a much-deserved spotlight on the work of Kinnard and artists like him. It also highlighted how vital his perspective remains—a potent reminder of how things have improved, but with many struggles staying unchanged more than 40 years later. It’s a depressing truth, but the Black Bomber and Diva Touché Flambé make it easy to laugh through the frustration.
Jinkx Monsoon
What She Does: Actress, Singer, Drag Artist
Why She Matters: It’s kinda tacky to rattle off resumé bullet points, but for many queer Portlanders, Jinkx Monsoon’s ascendancy (even beyond her appearances on drag-themed television shows) is an all-consuming point of hometown pride. If there’s a proverbial Mount Rushmore for drag performers, Jinkx Monsoon’s big, beautiful head and hair have a strong chance of being chiseled into immortality.
Labeling her as just a drag queen sells Portland’s greatest nonbinary ginger export short. She’s provided voice acting for Adventure Time, Steven Universe, and Bravest Warriors; she’s released multiple albums and recorded songs for television—one of which has the evocative title “I Wanna Fuck a Ghost.” Monsoon has also been a Doctor Who villain, inhabited Judy Garland, and filled the big gay shoes of Cole Escola’s take on Mary Todd Lincoln. It’s an impressive body of work.
If you spent your teens dancing at Escape Nightclub until 2 am before eating cheese fries at the Roxy while waiting to take a MAX back to the suburbs, then you know Monsoon is a staple of Portland life. She cut her teeth doing drag at the former downtown all-ages queer club, performing for the first time at 15—an impressive queer performance tenure.
To a certain Portlander, she’s both larger-than-life and refreshingly human, honest about her identity as a nonbinary trans femme at every turn. When listening to her speak about her open queerness, one key principle rises to the top: “The more I talk openly about who I am, the more people come to me.”
In the wrong hands, drag can feel like a haven for cis gay men abusing jester’s privilege, practicing misogyny under the guise of artistic liberation. As a gender expansive drag performer, Monsoon matters so deeply, because her very existence rises above that: She approaches drag as a celebration of femininity with the kind of levity and charm that only comes from a deep, witchy connection, full of earnestness that cis performers don’t have and can’t emulate. Even for trans folks not interested in drag, Monsoon’s level of cultural domination is inspiring.
Katherine Paul
What She Does: Musician, Multi-Instrumentalist, Mother
Why She Matters: For years, Katherine Paul (KP), the Swinomish multi-instrumentalist better known as Black Belt Eagle Scout, has categorized herself for us: “Radical Indigenous Queer Feminist.” It’s an intersection of multiple forces inseparable from her music, which is just as steeped in Indigenous Puget Sound music as it is in Pacific Northwest grunge.
What elevates KP to being a “queer saint” are the ways in which she weaves queerness into the fabric of her art. She’s released music videos that trans, queer, and nonbinary Indigenous artists helped create, and though she often writes songs that are opaque enough to feel universal, the spirit of radical queerness beats within the heart of every album she’s released under the Black Belt Eagle Scout moniker.
As a songwriter writing about her relationship to queerness, KP’s secret strength is the way she treats it as an immutable truth: “I have gotten to the point of just, ‘I am who I am,’” she said in an interview with Them. Songs like the queer, yearning anthem “Soft Stud” on Mother of My Children, At the Party With My Brown Friends’ closer “You’re Me and I’m You,” and The Land, the Water, the Sky’s hushed “Sčičudᶻ (A Narrow Place)” each examine her personal relationship with queerness from different angles.
What links each song is a focus on empathy and how that aspect of herself connects to KP’s home, community, and family. It doesn’t beat you over the head, as other songwriters might—which, for anyone who has listened to Black Belt Eagle Scout, is absolutely no surprise.
At present, KP and her partner, drummer Camas Logue, are likely still basking in the exhausting glow of welcoming their new child into the world. One of the harshest truths about being queer is that things like living, thriving, and starting a family are enough to make you a beacon of hope and resilience for your community. One day, the LGBTQIA2+ artists who decide to have babies won’t feel like a minor chorus for the entire community. As newer acts find themselves inspired by Black Belt Eagle Scout’s body of work, maybe we’ll find ourselves closer to that future.
