Love Makes A Family
Staff
Bonnie Tinker is the founder and Executive Director of Love Makes A Family, inc., an organization of families headed by lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual people, and their friends. Groundwork for the secular organization was laid during her production of a video tape, Love Makes A Family, about lesbian and gay Quaker families (1992). From May, 1993 until January 1998 Bonnie served as moderator for Love Makes A Family: A Public Dialog About Lesbians, Gays and Family Values broadcast weekly on a local talk radio station. This program was the first gay oriented talk show on commercial radio, and aired on "drive time". Since debating leaders of the anti-gay movement during Oregon's infamous ballot measures 9 and 13 in 1992 and 1994, Bonnie has traveled extensively throughout the Pacific Northwest and nationally to present the Opening Hearts and Minds speaker to turn conflicts over sexual orientation into opportunities for dialogue.
In 1995 Bonnie traveled to China to attend the International Women's Conference as a Love Makes A Family, Inc. representative to the Non-governmental Forum on Women, and as an observer to the UN Fourth World Conference on Women for the International Lesbian and Gay Association. While in China she organized a press conference for lesbian mothers which received international coverage. She was also selected as one of three representatives to speak at a press conference held by the Lesbian Caucus at the close of the Fourth World Conference on Women.
Bonnie lives in Portland, Oregon with her spouse of 24 years, Sara Graham. They have three children and two granddaughters. The family appeared on a 20/20 program about children with gay parents in March of 2001. Bonnie has been actively working in the public schools around sexual orientation concerns since her youngest son entered kindergarten in 1988. She is the vice-chair of the Sexual Minority Parents Advisory Group, founded in 1997.
Bonnie is a member of Multnomah Monthly Meeting in Portland, Oregon. She joined the Society of Friends as a teenager in Des Moines, Iowa where her father worked for the American Friends Service Committee. Her younger siblings were the plaintiffs in Tinker Vs The Des Moines Public School Board. Carrying on her family's tradition of activism, Bonnie has been involved in a number of issues and organizations. In 1973, Bonnie founded Bradley-Angle House, one of the first shelters for battered women in the United States; while directing this program, she was the founding Chair of the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence. She completed her undergraduate studies at Grinnell College and graduate studies at Marylhurst University. She also studied with Ivan Illich and Paulo Freire at CIDOC in Cuernavaca, Mexico.