GAY RIGHTS 1930
1930
Portland police begin giving psychological tests developed by noted psychologist Lewis Terman to arrested homosexuals. The tests, given without explanation as to their purpose, are designed to determine each arrestee’s degree of masculinity or femininity.
1935
Oregon Governor Charles Martin announces that no prisoner convicted of a sex crime will be pardoned unless sexually sterilized first. He also asks the state legislature for a broader sterilization law patterned on that of Nazi Germany. In a special session that year, Martin gets a new law that requires a list of names of all known “sexual perverts” to be turned over to the state’s Board of Eugenics for possible sterilization, whether or not these “perverts” commit a crime.