GAY RIGHTS 2000s
https://oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/gay_lesbian_rights_movement/#.XozFdohKiUl
The federal government adopted the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996, disallowing federal benefits to gays where they might marry and making it possible for states to refuse to recognize marriages between members of the same sex, even if they took place in states where it was legal. By 2010, forty-one states had adopted laws or constitutional amendments preventing gays from marrying; only five states and the District of Columbia allowed it.
In 2004, the Multnomah County attorney determined that the state's constitution prohibited counties from discriminating against same-sex couples in marriage license applications. The chair of the county's Board of Commissioners then ordered the issuance of licenses to gay applicants, and some 2,000 couples signed up. Later that year, however, Oregon voters passed Ballot Measure 36, which constitutionally defined marriage in Oregon as a union between a man and a woman.
In 2005, the Oregon Supreme Court declared the Multnomah County gay marriages void. Two years later, Governor Ted Kulongoski signed a domestic partner bill that provides gay couples who register as domestic partners many of the rights (though none of the federal benefits) that married couples in Oregon receive.
At the state level, hate crime laws were passed to protect gay, lesbian, as well as transgendered people in 1989, 2001, and 2007. In 2007, they received freedom from discrimination rights in state-supported schools, and they were permitted to adopt children. Over those years, more urban and liberal municipalities—including Salem, Eugene, Lincoln City, Ashland, Corvallis, and Bend—would also adopt gay rights ordinances.
The marriage issue continued to preoccupy lawmakers, the general public, and more and more LGBT people in the years after Oregon’s domestic partner law of 2007, in part because of lawsuits brought by same-sex couples within the state and because of developments in other states where defense of marriage acts were beginning to be repealed. In response to some other states allowing same-sex marriage by 2013, Oregon began recognizing such unions within its boundaries, even though same-sex marriages could still not legally be conducted within the state. Most important for expanding marriage rights in Oregon were U.S. Supreme Court rulings in 2013, U.S. v. Windsor, and in 2015, Obergefell v. Hodges. Obergefell v. Hodges determined that state bans on same-sex marriage were unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment. As a result, same-sex marriage became legal in Oregon on January 1, 2016. [portion of essay cited here, balance in other Gay Rights years].