On Dec. 27, 2023, the Josephine County House District 3 appointed new Rep. Dwayne Yunker for the Oregon State Legislature. The real estate broker and city councilor from Grants Pass was appointed in December to finish the term of former House Rep. Lily Morgan, who resigned to become the city manager of Gold Hill. In an interview with the Oregon Capital Chronicle, Yunker argues that Morgan was, “not conservative enough,” for the Southern Oregon District and plans on challenging her in the Republican Primary. According to the Oregon State Legislature website, as a house representative, Yunker claims that his goal as a legislator is to, “promote common-sense legislation grounded in limited government and free market conservative principles, proven to give our citizens the best opportunity to thrive.”
Yunker received much publicity from the public after his appointment due to his homophobic political arguments, as well as blog posts on his campaign website stating that supporting drag queens and the LGBTQ+ community was supporting child abuse.
One of the blog posts, dated Aug. 17, 2023, appearing on Yunker’s campaign website, titled “No to Gay Pride Month,” explains his aversion to LGBTQ+ related political conversations as well as his view on the supposed “pedophilic actions” of the community. When the post was published, Yunker was a member of the Grants Pass City Council. At the time, the council proclaimed June as Pride Month, and Yunker responded with the post. “Although many who live a gay lifestyle now reject the ‘T’ because it involves the grooming of children, leftists still ‘celebrate transgenderism’” the post said. “I stand on biblical truths and am opposed to the transgender movement.”
During a council meeting discussing the proclamation of Pride Month, a public comment portion began with an unsuccessful recall vote for Grants Pass Mayor Sara Bristol due to her supposed lack of conservative principles.
“It seems like it is easier to justify if it’s being presented as like an ideology or cultural movement, because, for example, Yunker and a lot of his stuff talks about ‘transgenderism’ or the ‘transgender movement,” said Deirdre Banning, a social and gender studies teacher at IBW. “It is a way of separating it and distinguishing it from the gender and sex-based discrimination. Things such as connecting that to child abuse, right? That is a way of getting around the fact that it is very much gender-based discrimination.”
The campaign post continued its critique of queer culture when Yunker included claims that family drag shows or drag queen story hours are attempts to groom children into becoming part of the LGBTQ+ community. “It is not OK to expose children to drag queens or to claim someone is not a pedophile when he is performing sexually explicit material in front of children,” Yunker said in his post. “This is headed toward acceptance of so-called ‘minor-attracted persons’ who want their letter added to LGBTQ.”
“It’s very very shocking that we think, as the LGBTQ+ community, that we’ve made a lot of progress over the past, you know, 10 years, but in reality sometimes we see other people show up and they just say ‘nope’ to the transgender community,” said Collen Wigman, a junior at IBW.
“Parents worry about the things their kids are seeing in public, in the classroom, and on TV,” said House Minority Leader Jeff Helrich, as a rebuttal to the backlash against Yunker. “Elected officials have every right to voice those concerns on behalf of the districts that they represent. Society must be able to have these discussions, and all of us must endeavor to do so respectfully and honestly.”
The Executive Director of Basic Rights Oregon, Kyndall Manson, said in a statement with the press that Yunker’s Job requires him to serve all people of the district, including the LGBTQ+ population. “The uninformed, hateful and false ideas written in Rep. Yunker’s blog posts are deeply dangerous, and will direct more hate to these constituents and all trans and queer Oregonians.”
Basic Rights Oregon is an organization created in 1966 to advocate and fight for the rights of LGBTQIA+ individuals who are challenged every day. Nonetheless, the organization is proud of the majority of lawmakers who have protected the rights of minorities as well as Oregon’s reputation as one of the strongest states supporting LGBTQ+ rights.
Oregon has and continues to be a leader in LGBTQ+ political representation, as our current Governor, Tina Kotek, is one of the first openly lesbian women to govern a state, after succeeding bisexual former Governor Kate Brown.
Yunker presented further objections to Pride Month in a subsequent post, titled “Shouldn’t Christians Avoid Politics?” The post argues that since the United States was built on Christian ideals, “Christians are called, yes even in government, to witness and stand up for our values.” Yunker explains how as time has gone on, people have and continue to lose the evangelical values on which the United States was founded.
The U.S. Constitution states in the First Amendment, “No coercion in religious matters, no expectation to support a religion against one’s will, and religious liberty encompasses all religions.” As a whole, this was created so that one person’s spiritual or religious beliefs would not influence the choices made for the whole population. “When we are talking about curtailing the rights and freedoms of Americans, when this is coming from someone who also doesn’t want government overstepping or curtailing their rights as a Christian individual, their freedom of speech or their right to religious freedom gets a little problematic,” said Banning. “But we are seeing that across the board. This Rep. being brought into Oregon is kind of representative of a broader, national trend we’re seeing.”
Although Oregon has made great progress in accessibility inclusion for minorities in its community as a state, there is still much work to be done and the fight is not over. “Even though as a queer person, I’ve had a lot of acceptance in my life, I’ve been very lucky with the people around me…but it’s still scary,” said Ian Lafrenz, a senior and student leader of IBW’s Gender and Sexuality Alliance. “I’m still scared.”
