Along with his 10 siblings, Patrick shoveled manure and did other farm chores. He sang country classics like “Your Cheatin’ Heart” at family gatherings.

In other ways, Patrick stood out. He won a statewide cooking contest as the only boy contestant among hundreds of girls. He auditioned, successfully, for head high school cheerleader, in drag. His father — a snaggletoothed farmer wearing a beat-up fedora — attended the tryout. Patrick saw him there and avoided him until it was time for the two to return to the family farm.

“Were you proud of yourself with that glitter up all over your face and your lipstick smile from ear to ear?” Mr. Haggerty recalled his father asking. He felt nervous and did not reply.

His father, he said in the Lavender Country documentary, continued: “If you sneak, it means you think you’re doing the wrong thing, and if you spend your whole life sneaking, you’ll spend your whole life thinking you’re doing the wrong thing — and if you do that, you will ruin your immortal soul.”

The father said that if Patrick was proud of himself, then he would be proud of Patrick. The elder Mr. Haggerty died soon thereafter, when Patrick was 17. After he earned a bachelor’s degree in sociology from Western Washington University in 1966, he joined the Peace Corps; he was kicked out the same year for being gay. The Haggerty family doctor sent him to a mental hospital, but he checked himself out when he realized that he was not going to be cured of homosexuality.

Mr. Haggerty came to embrace radical politics, running unsuccessfully in 1991 for the Washington State Senate as a socialist on what he called “a Black-Gay unity slate,” joined by members of the Nation of Islam.

He had been inspired to come out of the closet after learning about the 1969 Stonewall uprising in New York, credited with igniting the gay-rights movement. He soon joined a local Seattle chapter of the Gay Liberation Front, which helped form a gay community center and held demonstrations.

In 1972, he launched himself on what would become his most enduring form of activism: creating a band called Lavender Country, essentially a solo project in which he got help from a few friends in Seattle. He wrote most of the songs, played acoustic guitar and sang lead on the group’s debut album, also called “Lavender Country,” which was sponsored by a local gay social services group. In 1973 Haggerty released an album of country songs about same-sex romance that sold only 1,000 copies and seemed destined for eternal obscurity until, four decades later, its rediscovery brought him renown as the first openly gay country singer.

Mr. Haggerty sang with a twang, and the ensemble of piano, fiddle and acoustic guitar played comfortingly repetitive melodies. The music sometimes made for a contrast with the lyrics, which could be campy — “Back in the Closet Again” imagined a revolution in which “a battalion of gay men brought up the rear/Packing two grenades in each brassiere” — but there were also songs of protest and lament.

Haggerty’s husband did not learn of Lavender Country’s existence until they had been dating for three years, and even then it was thanks to a stroke of luck. Around 1990, Mr. Broughton was leafing through a friend’s record collection when the name “Lavender Country” caught his attention. He asked his friend what it was.

“‘That’s Patrick’s album,’” Mr. Broughton recalled the friend telling him. “I said, ‘Patrick’s what?’”

Mr. Broughton asked Mr. Haggerty about Lavender Country. “That’s part of the past,” Mr. Haggerty replied. “It’s a dead subject.”

But his view began to change in 1999, when The Journal of Country Music published an article that called Mr. Haggerty “the lost pioneer of out gay country music.” It prompted him to try to relaunch Lavender Country, but he wound up settling on a more modest musical comeback: playing country standards at nursing homes around Bremerton, a small city on the Puget Sound.

The bigger comeback began in 2013, when Brendan Greaves, whose indie label Paradise of Bachelors specializes in reissues, found Mr. Haggerty’s phone number and called him. Mr. Greaves said he considered Lavender Country’s music important and worthy of reintroduction to the public, but Mr. Haggerty questioned Mr. Greaves, a straight man, about his intentions. For a moment the conversation grew tense.

But when the call ended, Mr. Haggerty was so moved that he burst into tears. And he happily struck a deal with Mr. Greaves.

The reissued album went on sale in 2014, accompanied by a chapbook that included an autobiographical interview with Mr. Haggerty, photos of him and transcriptions of his lyrics. It earned a “best new reissue” designation from the online music publication Pitchfork.

The popular singer and drag queen Trixie Mattel went on to cover Mr. Haggerty’s ballad of gay cruising, “I Can’t Shake the Stranger Out of You.” Mr. Haggerty became the subject of a documentary that won a prize at the 2016 South by Southwest film festival in Austin, Texas. And in February, backed by a new supporting band, he released “Blackberry Rose.” Lavender Country’s first new album in 49 years.

Haggerty died on October 31, 2022 at his home in Bremerton, Wash. He was 78. He is survived by his husband, Julius Broughton. He said Mr. Haggerty had suffered a stroke on a flight to Seattle on September 30 after a show in Oakland, California. He has one biological child, Robin Boland (née Thetford-Haggerty), with a lesbian friend, born in 1973. He has one adopted son, Amilcar Navarro. Patrick Haggerty has one grandson, Maxwell Boland II.