The first progressive era

This isn’t the first time we had a moralist crackdown during a so-called “progressive era.” 

The first “progressive era,” which lasted roughly from the 1890s to the 1920s, was a reaction to the growing pains of industrialization and urbanization. With politicians in the pockets of big industry, unregulated labor standards spread, especially in cities and factory towns. 

Washington was one of the first states to pass legislation allowing for regular people to introduce and repeal legislation, commonly known as “people’s initiatives.” The first initiative passed in 1914, prohibiting the distribution and manufacturing of alcohol, six years before the 18th Amendment brought Prohibition nationwide. 

But Washington state’s moralist crackdown started long before Prohibition. In March 1893, the state legislature passed what scholars consider our first anti-Queer state law. The sodomy ban called it “the infamous and detestable crime against nature.” 

The anti-sodomy law was used to raid and extort countless Gay establishments until it was repealed in 1975. It is no coincidence that a new law passed in 1975 targeting “lewd conduct,” which allowed the Liquor Board to raid Queer bars until 2024, when it was partially repealed, thanks to the advocacy of sex workers of Strippers Are Workers. 

When the anti-sodomy law quietly passed, Seattle’s economy and population were also about to explode, due to the transcontinental railroad arriving in town that same month. The ballooning economy brought sailors, traders, loggers, and those eventually seeking gold, meaning a lot more patrons for the burgeoning brothel- and saloon-strewn streets of Pioneer Square, known as the mudflats. 

A few years decades earlier, in 1861, the city’s first brothel opened on the mudflat; it was later joined by countless others, including the infamous Madame Lou’s. It also brought entertainment, like the People’s Theater, where vaudeville and other early Queer artistic expressions, dancing, drinking, and sex occurred. 

Much of this history was either destroyed or pushed underground. Nearly 30 blocks of Seattle were destroyed in the Great Fire of 1889, including many of the wooden buildings on the mudflat that housed Seattle’s first Queer refugees. 

Seattle’s hilly geography underwent a dramatic regrade from 1897 to 1930, pushing underground once street-level floors where Queers congregated. Police criminalized and blackmailed Queers through the 1960s. According to historian David Atkins, the military blacklisted more Queer establishments in Seattle during this period than either San Francisco and Los Angeles. 

As a longtime student and teacher, I never learned any of this history. That’s one reason we keep making the same mistakes: We grow and diversify our economy, bringing new refugees. They crack down on us and price us out. We fight back with compromised reform, and eventually the wealthy work the new system to their advantage.
It’s a cycle we can’t afford to keep spinning. 

That’s one reason I left the classroom. I couldn’t keep spinning a narrative I knew wasn’t true. I was tired of being told I couldn’t teach the truth, present multiple perspectives, or challenge the textbook. 

Teaching was becoming “too politicized,” not by teachers but by the increasingly polarized moment we live in. Public, private, you name it — we’re not radicalizing your students. Teachers are too afraid or simply don’t have the resources. If we don’t know our history, how can we read the stars? 

Making a new era of history

As a teacher, I traveled to California to research and develop an LGBTQ curriculum, because Washington lawmakers are not ready to make the same investment, despite a 2024 bill requiring the integration of LGBTQ history in our public schools (that I called weak when it passed). We might get Stonewall incorporated into our history lessons, but what’s the Stonewall of our history here in Washington state? What should we remember of the mudflats? Shelly’s Leg? The Dorian Society? And the countless Seattle LGBTQ leaders and advocates whose names I could mention, but no one would recognize? 

Washington State’s 2024 LGBTQ curriculum bill funds less than 1 FTE per year for the entire state from 2024 to 2029 to ensure that teachers are prepared to incorporate LGBTQ history. That’s clearly not enough if the right keeps thinking these homophobic and transphobic tricks will work to convince citizens to vote against their interests. If we want to move out of this cycle, let’s start by telling a different story, so we can find a new North Star for the LGBTQIA+ movement. 

I’d rather die on the hill of fighting to change our textbooks and curriculum than on whether or not drag queens should read to students. In fact, I’d compromise and ban drag queens at schools if we banned cops too; after all, only one of those groups has terrorized our communities in the name of the law for over a century. 

While the “North Star” of the Queer movement has turned into a constellation of micro-causes and political tokens, historic victories are being fought and won today. If Washington succeeds at defending against these harmful initiatives, the right will have to go back to the drawing board for who their next victim will be. 

We might not have a North Star after the 2026 election results, but we will likely be able to recognize the sticks in the mud: Brian Heywood and his cronies, like Bellevue royalty Kemper Freeman. 

Regardless of the outcome of the election, Queer history is still being made in Seattle. The year was much better than 2025, when cops brutalized Queer counterprotesters at a right-wing rally held in Seattle’s historically Queer Cal Anderson Park. 

• In 2026, we witnessed history as frequenters of Seattle’s most historic Queer nude beach, Denny Blaine park, fought and won not only to keep it open but to add it to the Washington Heritage Register, thanks to Queer organizers from Friends of Denny Blaine. 
• In June, LGBTQ history also was made when Deaunte Damper was the first Black man born in Seattle to serve as grand marshal of the Seattle Pride Parade. 
• In August, City Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck helped pass two resolutions recognizing Seattle’s ballroom community and our very own Julian Everett of the House of Balenciaga. 
• Seattle also made a historic investment in the LGBTQ community, acknowledging the increasing number of Trans people seeking refuge from more hostile states. 
• In November, history will also be made with the likely election of Jaelynn Scott as state representative for South Seattle. 

Local LGBTQIA+ history will continue to be made in December, January, and every single other month, not just June. We don’t need recognition in June — we need good governance year round. We’re already under attack, so why not be bold? 

Our lawmakers have had the chance to invest in curriculum reform but have avoided controversial topics like ethnic studies, killed intersectional approaches to teaching about genocide, and made little progress in creating curriculum for teachers, like California has.

Lawmakers, too afraid to be accused of indoctrination, are getting a taste of what it’s like to be a teacher. Queer history isn’t indoctrination — it’s just history. Sure, teachers shouldn’t be biased. But they also shouldn’t have to pay for their own classroom supplies. 

We teach critical thinking at school, because it allows us to acknowledge the political. At school, we can learn real life skills like math, how to talk to your racist uncle at Thanksgiving, how to drive, how to do your taxes, and how deescalate your DL homophobic colleague when he’s drunk. 

After all, we wouldn’t be debating people’s existence on the ballot if we had a curriculum that taught about humanity. 

The first progressive era ended, the Great Depression hit, and a more militant labor movement emerged to rebuild in its ashes. This retired teacher hopes we can learn from our mistakes before we have to rebuild from the ashes, as our home is on fire. 

Oliver Treanor Miska, born in Seattle, is the founder of Solidarity Policy and Public Affairs. They work as a freelance political consultant. Their grandmother, Peg Treanor, passed away peacefully on October 26th, 2026. Peg's grandfather, William Baldwin Taft, owned a stationary store downtown that burned down during the Great Fire of 1889. This article is a form of personal expression and does not reflect the opinions, directives, or policies of their previous or current clients.

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