Happy Birthday to the First Out Bisexual Governor Elected In the USA, Kate Brown

Katherine "Kate" Brown was born today June 21, in 1960. She is an American politician who is the 38th and current Governor of Oregon. Brown, a Democrat and an attorney, previously served as Oregon Secretary of State and as majority leader of the Oregon State Senate, where she represented portions of Milwaukie and of Northeast and Southeast Portland.

Brown became governor on February 18, 2015, succeeding John Kitzhaber upon his resignation. She is the state's second female governor, after Barbara Roberts (1991–1995), as well as the first openly bisexual governor in US history. Her win in the 2016 special election for governor made her the first openly bisexual person elected as a United States governor (and the first out LGBT person elected as such). Brown is running for a full term as governor in 2018.

Brown was born in Torrejón de Ardoz, Community of Madrid, Spain, where her father was serving in the United States Air Force, but was raised in Minnesota. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in Environmental Conservation with a certificate in Women's Studies from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1981 and a J.D. degree and certificate in Environmental Law from the Northwestern School of Law at Lewis and Clark College in 1985.

Brown lives in Portland with her husband, Dan Little. She has two stepchildren, Dylan and Jessie.

NBC News reports:

As a young member of the Oregon House of Representatives in 1993, Brown said, she casually mentioned she was bisexual in a conversation with a reporter without thinking much of it. A couple of years later, she was outed in a newspaper story about the legislature's LGBTQ caucus. "I had to talk to my parents about it," she said.

But being forced out of the closet brought some surprising lessons. Brown quickly learned that even her more conservative Republican colleagues, representing Oregon's rural communities, just didn't care about her sexual orientation. Ever since, Brown has worn her LGBTQ identity with pride — frequently participating in Portland's pride parade, as well as national and local LGBTQ equality efforts.

All along the way, Brown has dug her heels into Oregon state politics while gaining national attention as one of the highest-profile bisexuals in elected office. She went from Oregon's House of Representatives to the Oregon State Senate, and she became the state's first woman Senate Majority Leader in 2004. She was then elected Oregon Secretary of State in 2008.

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