Category Archives: LGBTQ history

Bar Fragments (poem)

By Mel | Published: Thursday, 25 June 2009
This is the series of couplets that includes the lines about Michael Jackson included in my last post. Though written in 1995, the experiences date from 1983-84, when I was in my 20s & often went out dancing (& drinking & smoking) as many as three or four nights of the week to the [...]
Also posted in Poems | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Same-sex marriage: A personal history

By Mel | Published: Saturday, 9 May 2009
Good news from Maine Wednesday: its legislature passed, & its governor signed, a law making it legal for same-sex couples to marry.  This makes Maine the 5th state in the U.S., after Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont, & Iowa, to grant the same civil rights & responsibilities of marriage granted to heterosexual couples, to lesbian & gay [...]
Also posted in Alaska politics, Itse, Marriage equality | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

WAR’s antigay letter to the Alaska Bar Association, 1993

By Mel | Published: Wednesday, 15 April 2009
You’ve heard about it, now here it is: the famous letter written by Wayne Anthony Ross to the Alaska Bar Association and published in the Alaska Bar Rag in the early 1990s (turns out it was 1993) which referred to LGBTQ Alaskans as “degenerates.”  My friend Steve passed it to me earlier today after an [...]
Also posted in Alaska politics | Tagged , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Pride

By Mel | Published: Sunday, 25 June 2006
Street of rainbows Today’s Start Walking blog: Saturday, 24 June 2006: Pride Today was Anchorage Pridefest. We were running late, so we took the bus downtown & got the the staging ground for the lesbian/gay pride parade at 8th & D in time to join in the parade, which took us up E Street to 6th [...]
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Publicity, publicity, publicity

By Mel | Published: Tuesday, 8 July 2003
Which Anchorage churches did the Phelpists picket during PrideFest 2003, & which not, & why?
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Those Phelpists aren’t too clever, are they?

By Mel | Published: Tuesday, 8 July 2003
Why did Westboro Baptist Church, famous for their website "godhatesfags.com," picket Anchorage Baptist Temple — famous in Anchorage as the very center of antigay attitudes in Alaska?
Also posted in The incredibly true adventures of Rev. Jerry Prevo | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Anchorage Pride 2003: Look how far we’ve come

By Mel | Published: Friday, 27 June 2003
A brief history of the annual Pride parade in Anchorage from 1983, in which there were 19 marchers, to 2001, in which there were two to three thousand. Can the followers of Fred Phelps wreck that? Don't think so.
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Fred Phelps coming to Anchorage

By Mel | Published: Friday, 20 June 2003
The "godhatesfags.com" followers of Westboro Baptist Church pastor Fred Phelps announce plans to picket in Anchorage during PrideFest 2003.
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