Three weeks from today, Oregon voters will decide on six voter-initiated ballot measures in a century-old democratic exercise. Oregonians have used the initiative since 1902, when the state became one of the first to approve the initiative system.
This pioneering experiment in direct democracy allowed voters to enact laws that legislators couldn’t or wouldn’t pass in the corrupt political atmosphere of the time. Other states quickly adopted the initiative, which became known as the “Oregon system,” and the progressive movement swept the country.
One cannot look at the initiative without discussing the context of the progressive movement. Led by statesmen like Teddy Roosevelt and writers such as Upton Sinclair and Jacob Riis, the movement led to such positive things as child labor laws, food and drug inspection, anti-monopoly reforms, safe housing standards and land conservation. Many of Oregon’s early initiatives also aimed at progressive ends, including four attempts within a decade to grant women’s suffrage (it finally passed in 1912), a measure to protect workers in hazardous environments and a measure that would have capped a worker’s day at eight hours.
How sad it is, then, to see the initiative become a tool of reactionaries. In recent years, the initiative has been used more successfully to stem progress than to advance it. Things have improved somewhat since conservative activist Bill Sizemore lost a racketeering case brought by the same labor unions he attacked relentlessly, but voters face four initiatives this year that could fairly be called conservative in philosophy. The most egregiously reactionary of these are Measures 36 and 37.
Measure 36 would ban gay marriage in Oregon, defining marriage as between a man and a woman. Every civil rights movement has its resisters, and the gay rights movement certainly has its fair share. How unfortunate for the rest of us that they have chosen to attempt to insert their personal views on morality into the Oregon Constitution. But fear not, because the opponents of civil rights have always been on the wrong side in history, and so they will be with gay marriage. Just as laws banning interracial marriage fell by the wayside, so will gay marriage be legal nationwide within the lifetimes of today’s college students.
The arguments of gay marriage opponents never fail to delight and entertain. My favorite is the slippery slope argument. As one crackpot wrote in a letter to The Register-Guard, “Granting marriage to two men would lead to polygamy, group marriage and people marrying their favorite pets. It would destroy marriage and the family — the building block of society — and eventually destroy our nation.” Unlike M. Dennis Moore, who submitted to the Voters’ Pamphlet satirical arguments in favor of Measure 36, this writer presumably expects to be taken seriously. However, anyone who gives gays the credit to succeed where the combined Axis powers of World War II failed deserves to be met with a healthy dose of skepticism.
While Measure 36 has grabbed most of the headlines, Measure 37 threatens to revolutionize land-use planning in Oregon. The measure would require that when government regulations negatively affect property values, the government must either compensate landowners for the loss of value or not enforce the law. Given the tight budgets of local governments, one can expect them to forego enforcing the law rather than pay out millions of dollars in settlements. This lack of enforcement would lead to unplanned, haphazard building. As The Register-Guard has detailed, the measure is bankrolled by Lane County timber interests and developers, which should give you an idea of who would benefit from it.
Voters who profess a concern for the environment might want to take a long, hard look at what Measure 37 would mean for Oregon’s landscape.
While you’re hammered over the head with the presidential race, don’t forget that initiatives matter. For instance, in 1990 Oregon voters passed Measure 5, which capped property taxes statewide. Schools have still not recovered from the financial devastation wrought by the measure.
One hopes that Oregon voters still have a little bit of the progressivism that led to the initiative system itself, and use it to prevent the misuse of the initiative for reactionary ends.

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