My first Pride in Anchorage, just short of a year after I first arrived in Alaska, was in June 1983. This was my second Pride march overall — my first had been in Boston in 1981, the summer after I graduated from college. Boston newspapers reported that about 12,000 people marched that year.

Anchorage was a little different. There were just 19 of us trying to fill up the street. And yes, just as several marchers in 1978 had worn paper bags over their heads for fear of losing their jobs because of discrimination, so did one of my friend’s in 1983.

Here’s the photo I sent to Gay Community News (GCN), the nationally circulated Boston gay newspaper I used to read in those days. This is on 6th Avenue under the Penney’s skywalk. The banner had been carried by Alaska participants in the First National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights on October 14, 1979.

I can’t find a copy of my letter as published, but at some point I transcribed my handwritten draft of it. Relevant excerpts:

Dear GCN:

Enclosed is a photograph of this year’s Lesbian/Gay Pride March in Anchorage, Alaska. There were nineteen of us in this city of about 200,000, so a rough estimate is that for every one of us on the street, there were 1,000 at home in Anchorage (1,000 more in the rest of the state). Despite the small numbers in our march, I am told that this is the march’s 5th consecutive year. I am told that the maximum participation was two years ago, with about 50 people….

[S]omehow a very disparate group of people came to be walking down 6th Avenue behind the Alaska banner that is a veteran of the National March on Washington…..

The last march (and my first march) was in Boston in 1991 when there were 12,000 marchers. This was more frightening — it is like one of the marchers in our parade said in comparing marching in San Francisco with marching here. He said in San Francisco the march is very much a celebration, but coming here reminded him that there are still many places where the issue for us is not yet celebration — but simple survival….

But let me backtrack a little: it so happens that 1982/1983 was a pretty important period for the organization that’s now behind Anchorage’s Alaska Pride celebrations every year — Identity, Inc. Back in August 1982, when I arrived in the state, it wasn’t called Identity: it was called the Alaska Gay and Lesbian Community Center (AGLRC), and this was its building:

You’ll notice the sign at the left has the initials AGCC, for the Center’s original name: Alaska Gay Community Center. The building was located on 837 I Street — not on I Street directly, but just east of it behind a bakery called the Bread Factory. Landlord problems led us to move the AGLRC in December 1982. In fact, I took these photos on our move-out day. I remember taking a lot of photos: the landlord had gotten quite creepy and homophobic, and we wanted to document how spiffily we were cleaning the place up, so he didn’t try to charge us for leaving it a mess.

I say our move-out day because at that time I was secretary on AGLRC’s board of directors. Here’s some of the other board members on move-out day:

From left to right, that’s Jay Brause, who at that time was board president — one of the first people I ever knew in Anchorage’s gay & lesbian community. Lounging on the floor is his partner Gene Dugan. The three of us lived roommates back then, living in the house of a terrific straight ally named Sami & her three kids. I don’t think Gene was on the board, but he certainly pitched in to help us move out and clean up. Gene, a theatre professional, was founder of the company we now know as Out North Contemporary Art House, where Jay also worked for many years after a long period as first board president and later executive director of Identity. Longtime community members will also remember Jay and Gene as the gay couple who sued Alaska for the right to marry in 1994, kicking off the so-far unsuccessful fight for marriage equality here. Jay & Gene are married (though their marriage is not recognized by the State of Alaska) & now live in London, England.

Okay, next in line: Fred Hillman, who still lives here in Anchorage and is still active in the fight for LGBT equality; and next to him is Les Baird. Les was a fireman with Anchorage Fire Department. I most remember for his grief and anger over the death a few weeks after this photo was taken of a young man — an AGLRC volunteer, actually, whose name I regrettably don’t remember — who was the first person in Alaska to die of AIDS.

From that old shacky building behind the Bread Factory, we moved into this building on 5th Avenue:

The building no longer exists. It was on the block on 5th Avenue just west of the Egan Convention Center, which was nearing completion at the time this photo was taken in June 1983 on the day of that year’s gay/lesbian pride march. We were in an apartment on the second floor — the two leftmost windows apartment — which consisted of a large squarish room with a large walk-in closet, just large enough to fit a desk for volunteer staff members who staffed the Gay & Lesbian Hotline (later “Helpline”). That little blue car in front of the building belonged to Jay.

At the end of June 1983, the AGLRC closed its physical facility due to our inability to continue paying rent. Shortly thereafter, our board of directors renamed the organization Identity, Inc. — the name it’s held ever since. We take it for granted now, but at the time the name change was hugely controversial within the community. Identity did its work for nearly two decades without a physical office until it opened the Gay and Lesbian Community Center of Alaska (GLCCA) on Northern Lights in 2001 (moving to its present location on E. 5th Avenue a few years later).

But just before we moved out, the AGLRC was where we assembled for our 1983 Pride march.

That’s Michael Day there on the left — he was a good friend of mine in those days. Fred Hillman again, and Dee Cox, at the time my roommate. She used to run the coat check at the Village Lounge & Disco, the gay bar located where the Kodiak Bar & Grill is today. By the time of this photo, my first Anchorage landlady, Sami, had remarried, and I had moved in to become Dee’s roommate. She died in the early 1990s of complications of Type 1 diabetes. The bearded fellow in the blue sweatshirt is David McCartney, who created and produced the radio program “Gay and Lesbian News Review” on KSKA, Anchorage’s public radio station (both Jay & I also worked on the program for awhile). And that’s Jay with his back to us. I’m afraid I’m not sure of the other two people.

Here we are after getting out the banner. You can see the Egan Convention Center in the background, near completion of construction but still surrounded by plywood. That’s me in the middle with the blue sweatshirt & painter’s pants.

Here’s a closer look at what I looked like back then. Younger, more freckly, with longer hair and some really abysmal eyeglass frames. Ugh. And still wearing a sweatshirt from the college I’d graduated from a couple of years previously. (I missed my 30-year class reunion just last weekend: heys there, 1-9-8-1-Wellesley-rah!) This must have near the end of the march, on 9th Avenue by the Park Strip. You can see the Chugach Mountains there in the background.

And back to the photo we began with, marching along 6th Avenue under the Penney’s skywalk:

We’ll see just a few more of us along 6th Avenue come June 25, don’t you think?

I hope others will share their memories of past Prides, whether in Anchorage or anywhere else. Happy Pride!

Related posts:

1. Anchorage Pride 2003: Look how far we’ve come
2. Pride 2006: Streets of rainbows
3. Anchorage PrideFest 2010

Sweat, after some hard dancing

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 Village Lounge & Disco, a gay/lesbian bar on Anchorage’s 5th Avenue (same building as the present-day Kodiak Bar). Not the best poetry in the world, but at least catches the flavor of the time for me… I was working toward something bigger about what was going on for me in those days, which ultimately led to another poem called “Ode to Alcohol.” Gee, might as well post that next.

But first –

Bar Fragments

Catching air on 5th Ave., in front of the bar. A guy jumps out from the wall.
Wild-eyed: “You mean, I been standing in front of a goddamn QUEER bar?”

A bank shot — so of course I miss, in fact drop the cue ball in.
“I’m bad at banks. That’s why I joined a credit union.”

We get sick of the straight couple dry-fucking on the dance floor.
I lean over, tell the woman, “It’s more fun with a woman,” and they stop.

“C’mon, hurry, gotta unload some beer!” Finally she comes out.
No, he — you can’t get those drag queens to use the men’s room.

They leave their coats at the coatroom and walk in, eyes wide:
tourists — straight folks slumming at the queer bar, the zoo.

Smoke, sweat, the glitter ball, Donna Summers, Michael Jackson –
make your fun, but I lost 20 pounds there one summer, dancing.

The sign said drug dealers would be 86ed,
but I know the coke she ODed on she scored from a bartender.

Dead drunk, she pretends her pager’s called her back to work
to escape the woman she’s flirted herself into a corner with.

[11/13/95]

(Oh yeah… & before those Christianist anti-ordinance zealots leap on the lines about the drag queen in the women’s room, let me do some preventative connecting of the dots for you: this was a queer bar! Duh.)

Related posts:

1. Deaths
2. Saturn is Heavier in My Dreams
3. Ode to Alcohol (poem)

Mel & Rozz, 2006

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 couples.  On the same day New Hampshire’s legislature passed a similar bill, which is awaiting its governor’s action.

Good news indeed; so why was it simultaneously making me feel a bit blue? Fact is, I always feel some ambivalence anymore when I heard news about same-sex marriage, regardless of whether it’s good or bad.  Maybe I always will.

(Which isn’t to say I won’t stand up for it.)

But why?  I was feeling enough of the blues on Wednesday, that I decided to write more about it.

More than a decade ago, my friends Jay Brause & Gene Dugan were amongst the first in the nation to challenge the unquestioned custom of refusing marriage licenses to gay or lesbian couples.  Exact details elude me — it was a long time ago — but lucky for me: online sources are kind.  Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance (incidentally one of the best websites on religion out there) has a great summary of the events (& there’s some other sources below).  Basically, Jay & Gene applied for a marriage license in Alaska in 1994, were denied, & took it to court.  In February 1998, Judge Peter Michalski of Anchorage Superior Court issued a decision in their favor, ordering the State of Alaska to show a compelling reason why heterosexuals should be granted special rights to marry that were denied to gay men & lesbians.  The State of Alaska appealed to the Alaska Supreme Court, & meantime the Alaska Legislature acted to prevent same-sex marriage, placing on the November 1998 ballot a measure — Ballot Measure 2 — which would, if passed, amend the state constitution to define marriage as being “between a man and a women.”  Similar stuff was going on in Hawaii at the same time.

Jay Brause, Gene Dugan, Fred Hillman, & Les Baird at Alaska Gay & Lesbian Resource Center, 1982

Enter the personal history part of the story.

Personal #1 is that I’d known Jay & Gene since first arriving in Alaska in August 1982, in fact shared a house with them & our “landlady” Sami & her three kids, until Sami remarried & we moved to our own separate households.  They were (& are, despite distance) my  my very good friends, & they were also — especially Jay — guys I worked very closely with on the activist front of working for equal rights for lesbians/gays in Alaska. At the time of our meeting, Jay was executive director of the Alaska Gay & Lesbian Resource Center (now known as Identity, Inc.), & he coaxed me (without too much difficulty) to join its board of directors as secretary.  We later worked together, along with a whole lotta other people, on two important studies of Alaska’s lesbian/gay population, One in 10: A Profile of Alaska’s Lesbian & Gay Community (Anchorage, AK: Identity, Inc., 1986) & Green & Brause, Identity Reports: Sexual Orientation Bias in Alaska (Anchorage, AK: Identity, Inc., 1989). Meanwhile, Gene was doing the work that led to the creation of the theatre company Out North, beginning with his bringing to Alaska the play “My Blue Heaven” about two lesbian homesteaders. They worked together for years at Out North, Gene as artistic director & Jay as managing director, until their departure from Alaska in 2006.

Mel & JJ on backpacking trip to Williwaw Lakes, Chugach State Park, 1997

By the time the marriage stuff rolled around in 1994, we didn’t see quite so much of each other.  This was thanks in part to my general burnout on matters political, organizational, & activist-oriented; in part to my pursuit of an MFA degree at University of Alaska Anchorage; & in part due to Personal #2, which was the relationship I’d formed in 1993 with my partner, Rozz.

The establishment, after many long years of living alone & single, of a relationship & family life became even more a factor after December 1996, which was when Rozz’s nephew JJ (as he was then known) came to live with us: age 9, his life to that date one of abuse, neglect, & a succession of foster & group homes.  He came to us violent, striking out at us preemptively before we could hurt him, as he was sure we would do — after all, everyone else in his life had.

It was a rough time.  I’m talking rough.  This was a boy who had been at the very least witness to sexual abuse of one of his siblings, if not a victim of it himself; & had most definitely been victim of physical & emotional abuse & neglect.  And for many long months in his fear of more of the same, he took it out on us.  I had never lived with abuse before — an abuse that I reckon was not him abusing me, but was his father reaching through him — as JJ used to say, “[My father] is in my head.”  It messed me up so badly, it took months to for me a wordworker to fnd words for it:

Cycle

the man in the head of the boy
the father of memory
the father who could pitch
his sons into the wall
the man who used their sister
for his “needs”
who sold them back for
four hundred dollars
in an Oklahoma City
KFC

the man in the head of the boy
the man in the boy’s fist
in his kicking feet his butting head
his spit on my face his biting teeth
in the bruise yellow and purple and green
on my arm the blood beneath my skin

the hurt that cannot speak

[August 4–November 14, 1997; rev. 11/18/97]

But now jump ahead to 1998.  Judge Michalski has made his ruling in Jay’s & Gene’s case.  The Legislature in reaction has done its thing.  Ballot Measure 2 is on the ballot for November: a measure that will, if passed, enshrine in the very basis of our society, our state constitution, the belief of the body politic that the close intimate relationship & commitment of two women with each other, or two men with each other, isn’t worth a bloody damn thing.

I was barely aware of any of this.  Because in spite of everything — in spite of completing my MFA, in spite of us having successfully gotten through the difficult first year of JJ’s life with us, of JJ giving up his violence & learning to trust us — in spite of all that, Rozz’s & my relationship came apart.

Jesse & his dog Sweetheart, resting up during a backpacking trip up Powerline Pass, June 2004

I won’t go into all the details of that here.  I’m doing it & have done it elsewhere, much of it in private where it will stay. Suffice it to say that we came back together again a year later, we talked it all out, we came to understand that our breakup or breach came about due to the incredible pressures that came with taking on a very hurt child, we forgave each other, we continued to raise the boy, & the boy, now a young man at 21, is — oh damn, just a very very fine young man, who even as I write is well on his way to an independent life doing just what he wants to do.  (Meantime, I’m taking care of his dog Sweetheart.)

At the time I didn’t know things would turn out that way.  At the time I only knew I felt a deep sense of betrayal because it all came so unexpectedly.  One day we met a new friend — I’ll just call her D — & a month later, Rozz was gone, & JJ with her, & I was just a 160-pounds-or-so mass of confusion, grief, anger, & dumbfoundedness.  (A month or so later: I was a 140-pounds-or-so mass of the same, having lost my appetite on what I dubbed at the time the Official Grief & Dumbfoundedness Weight Loss Program. I’ve got better ways of taking off the excess nowadays, thanks.)

And so my life through most of 1998 from the late spring on was one of trying to make sense of it all, & put my life back together after it had been tossed into the air & scattered like a game of 52-card-pickup.  I felt that all the meanings of my life, of my life together with Rozz, had been summarily & unilaterally flushed down the toilet.  I was scraped down to bedrock, & didn’t have the emotional reserves to give much attention to the Ballot Measure 2 & the battle for marriage equality.

And yet it did come up.  Because, you see, the pain I was feeling was pretty damn illustrative of the whole point. Do you feel that kind of anguish for the loss of a relationship when it means (as our enemies would like to have it) absolutely nothing?  Of course not.

And you know what? The people in my life — not just the lesbians & gay men, not just my family members & friends, but my coworkers too — they knew it. They treated me accordingly.  Just after I voted against Ballot Measure 2 that November, I wrote to some friends:

I’ve gotta say, though, that what indicates to me changes toward the good for lesbians & gays…which will be present regardless of the votes outcome…are present every day in my life, and have especially been present for me this last nasty year, as all my coworkers, family, friends have treated me with the same love & respect & concern in my hard times as they would have treated any nongay person going through the same nasty shit. Just as a matter of course.

Just as a matter of course. No aren’t we so very special for being so knee-jerk-liberal compassionate to this poor sad second-class citizen.  Just simple care & compassion because they knew that I was worth something, & that my relationship was every bit as valuable to me, as their own relationships were to them.

Tell me, Jesus: who has followed your way more closely: my coworkers, who treated me with compassion during a devastating period of my life, or the Alaska Family Coalition, financed mainly by out-of-state interests that worked so hard to make discrimination against people like me part of Alaska’s foundational document — & telling lies in the process?

From an Alaskans for Civil Rights/No on 2  press release dated October 31, 1998:

False and misleading information fills the Alaska Family Coalition display ad published in today’s Anchorage Daily News. The ad claims that the decision of an Alaskan judge found Alaska’s marriage law unconstitutional and would “replace…Alaska’s existing marriage law” and that the NO on 2 campaign’s claims to the contrary are “completely false.”

In fact, it is currently illegal for same-sex couples to be married in Alaska and this will not be changed by the defeat of Ballot Measure 2….

… “Yes on 2″ fliers also claim if the measure is defeated, young children will be introduced to homosexual doctrine at an early age and schools will be required to teach that homosexual relationships are “normal” and equal to traditional marriage….

Another lie. Apparently to the Alaska Family Coalition, family values & let’s tell another lie are tantamount to synonyms.

And was it really the Alaska Family Coalition, or was it rather the Coalition of a Few Conservative Alaska Figureheads Funded Mainly by Interests from Out-of-State who Might Have a Sister Living in North Pole or a Nephew Who Served in the Air Force in Alaska for a Couple of Years but Probably Not Even That? The press release goes on to say:

Alaskan Public Offices Commission (APOC) reports filed by both campaigns on October 27 reveal that the Alaska Family Coalition has raised more than $637,000 while the Alaskans for Civil Rights/NO on 2! campaign has received just under $190,000 in donations.

Dan Carter, treasurer of Alaskans for Civil Rights/No on 2, explains further in a letter to Alaska newspapers dated October 30, 1998:

But the amount raised is only part of the story. Who and where it comes from is the real news in this report. While Alaskans for Civil Rights has received $35 from Outside gay/lesbian organizations ($25 from the Philadelphia Task Force and $10 from Pride, Inc. from Macon, GA), the proponents of this unnecessary measure were receiving almost $560,000 from Outside groups trying to rewrite Alaska’s constitution. When you look at how much money each side has raised from INDIVIDUAL ALASKANS, the financial reports are even more revealing. For every dollar raised by the NO on 2 campaign, 89 cents has come from individual Alaskans. On the other hand, for each dollar raised by the so-called Alaska Family Coalition, less than 9 cents has come from individuals living in Alaska. That’s the real issue in this campaign. Why should Outsiders determine if Alaska’s constitution should be amended? What is their agenda?

But that’s just some of the info that arrived in my email inbox.  More personally, as the debate leading up raged on in the media, some of it inevitably showed up on the radio that I listened to at work every day. Probably KSKA, then, Anchorage public radio. There was a call-in program about Ballot Measure 2, & some self-defined Christian brought up an argument about “family orientation.” I couldn’t hold back. As I later described to friends in an email:

I called up and talked about how this boy, JJ (I didn’t name him), had been the product of one of these much-vaunted heterosexual unions, had been severely sexually, emotionally, physically abused and neglected by his heterosexual father and his heterosexual mother…and the only reason he had a chance now was because we, two lesbians, had brought him into our family.

And you know, even with all that has happened since, it’s still true.

So to damnation to all you self-righteous “family values” advocates whose dictionary definition of family is so far from reality.

Jesse's graduation, West High, May 2006

And you know, even with all that has happened in the ten & a half years since, up until this very day, it’s still true: though I have no legal relationship, & never have had a legal relationship, with the boy once know as JJ who is now the young man Jesse — I am more a mother to him than his heterosexual biological mother is or has ever been, excepting only that she gave birth to him & he carries her (as well as his abusive father’s) genes.  (Though I credit her with caring more for him than his father, & staying in touch with him in ways he’s okay with, whereas his father he outright hates.) And furthermore, it was Rozz & me, two lesbians, whose bond of love & commitment despite its lack of sanction by our fellow citizens made it possible for Jesse to have a life of possibility & love, rather than life that would likely be no more than a repetition of the same cycle of abuse that had brought him to us in the first place.

So much for the superiority of opposite-sex marriage.

Which isn’t to say that opposite-sex marriage is inferior either. I am the child of heterosexual parents, whose love for & commitment to each other & to their family has been just as powerful a foundation for my life, as mine & Rozz’s has been for Jesse’s.  Marriage equality — get it?  Some relationships suck, some are marvelous.  Sexual orientation does not on its own make for one or the other.  It takes the individuals involved, their love, their committment, their elbow grease.

Be that as it may, on November 3, 1998, Ballot Measure passed by a 2 to 1 vote. With the vote half-counted, the Anchorage Daily News reported the following day:

The campaigns working for and against passage of the amendment steered around the thorny question of whether homosexuality is right or wrong.

But some voters saw the question as a referendum on homosexuality itself.

And in an email to friends, I commented:

And the majority rules, so therefore homosexuality is wrong? Of course not. Because us lesbians & gay men, dykes & faggots, queers, lezzies, homos — whatever else we may not know about ourselves, we do know this: Who We Are, from the inside, in regards to our sexuality. The meanings of our lives, from the center of our lives. Not defined, not prescribed or proscribed or whatever by the homophobic jerks or the plain dumb ignoramuses.

But it wasn’t just me or other lesbians & gay men who remained integrally human, regardless of the votes of ignorance or hatred. It was also many, so many, of our nongay families, friends, & coworkers:

Today I still go into work and find Bob, Jan, Nancy, Cassie, Sharon, Krista, Larry, Lisa — people, all of them heterosexual, who know me and who are not influenced in their feelings about me by this so-called “referendum on homosexuality.” They are still the people who watched my love for Rozz blossom & grow, saw the bite marks on my arm when JJ was terrorizing us, saw the results of her betrayal of me, all my pain. I have not changed as a result of this vote, nor have they.

So much for definitions applied externally. So much for the right winger denotation of “homosexuality.”

But you see now, I think, the reason for my ambivalence about same-sex marriage made clear. So much of my response to the events of 1998 arose out of the dilemmas of my own personal situation.  Not matter how much I might philosophize about the difference between enacted law & real reality, a part of me was deeply upset & angry that Ballot Measure 2 passed.  But another part of me was cynical about it all.  How could I help but be cynical, when D, the new girlfriend of Rozz who just scant weeks before had to my knowledge been my lifelong partner, somehow set herself up as some sort of spokesperson for marriage equality, & even finagled Rozz into appearing with her on Herb Shainlin’s radio show to tell Anchorage all about it?  I was self-preserving enough to avoid their radio appearance (I stuck with my normal radio station KSKA instead) — but yeah, of course it disturbed me.  Of course it affected my feelings.

But see, that’s the thing, all over again.  The demand for marriage equality isn’t a demand for people to believe that our (lesbian/gay) relationships are perfect, to require they be free of mistakes, breakups, divorces.  Marriage equality, get it?  The demand is simply to recognize in law the reality that already is fact in the substance of our beings: our relationships count to us, as much as yours do to you.  Yet in our relationships we will struggle just as much as our nongay neighbors with communication, commitment, love, all the stuff that makes up marriage.  When our rights are honored, no doubt we’ll be a good match for heterosexuals in our divorce rates, too. (Though I’d like to hope for better.)

But the law as it stands in Alaska &, at this writing, 43 other states, puts extra obstacles in our way at the outset: discouraging our commitments, treating our care for one another with contempt, destabilizing our families & our ability to take care of our children, making life harder.

How amazing, then, that so many of our relationships last out the years — as indeed with Jay & Gene, who met in 1978 at the Alaska Gay Community Center (as it was then called)  & are still together 31 years later.

The happy family, 2006: Mel, Rozz, Jesse (playing w/ Photobooth)

Fast forward again, then, to 2009, the present day. A lot of water under the bridge, both in the continuing fight for marriage & other forms of social equality, & in my personal life.  As already stated, Rozz & I returned to one another (only a year after our separation), talked a lot, worked it out, reestablished our relationship, & saw Jesse through the rest of his childhood, into his early adulthood.  What’s that, you say?  Family values?  Yes.

But as I’ve alluded to elsewhere, our relationship is changing once again, & we can no longer be called partners.  The stresses & pressures now are quite a bit different.  That’s for another post, or many, who knows: the upshot is that my partner Rozz, who I always understood to be a woman & a lesbian, decided last year to finally honor an understanding long in the making: not a she, but a he: an FTM, female-to-male transsexual, a transman.  Which has just a tiny bearing on me, since I’m still… well… a lesbian.  And more on that in later posts, perhaps.  But even more a difficulty for me: that Rozz — or rather, Ptery (pronounced like Terry) — has chosen, at least for now, to live his life off the grid, from the land, out of a backpack & tent, & not in Alaska.

So now Maine, now New Hampshire.  Before that, Vermont, Iowa.  A few months ago, California won, & lost again with Prop. 8. Before that, Massachusetts.  And I look at it all, & I’m of two minds: the one, rejoicing for those like me whose relationships are finally being honored in law as they are in our hearts.  And the other, in sorrow for my own loss.

Mel at Anchorage protest of California's Prop 8, 15 Nov 2008

But marriage equality, get it?  My loss is special, special to me; but no more special — nor any less — than is the loss experienced by anyone who suffers a breakup or divorce.  It is a private sorrow (though I speak of it publicly), that proceeds out of private lives, private choices.  It is not directly the fault of public institutions like marriage, even if those institutions exclude me. (Though that exclusion might well have been a factor contributing to our difficulties.)

And so despite the ambivalence born of my private sorrow, I will celebrate every advance that leads to the public recognition & honoring of any relationship between two (or even more!) consenting adults.

Go Maine!  Go New Hampshire!

* * *

Marriage is a public institution that grants certain rights & privileges, & also responsibilities, to people who have chosen to bond with one another in private relationships. Jay’s & Gene’s case in Brause v. Bureau of Vital Statistics was based in part on Alaska’s constitutional right to privacy.   And so in his judgment in February 1998, Judge Michalski wrote:

The relevant question is not whether same-sex marriage is so rooted in our traditions that it is a fundamental right, but whether the freedom to choose one’s own life partner is so rooted in our traditions.

Judge Michalski ruled that the Alaska Constitution, as it then stood, upheld our private freedom to choose our own life partners, whether we chose partners of the same or of opposite sex.

Ballot Measure 2 maintained that right for some people, but stripped it away for others.

We claim it still.  Nor are we alone.  From the Anchorage Daily News story on Ballot Measure 2′s passage published November 4, 1998:

Julie Stephens, a married mother of two, said she mulled the question over a lot and discussed it with her husband. In the end, she decided to vote against the amendment.

“People should be allowed to marry who they want to marry,” she said. “Times change.”

And sometimes they don’t.

That little flourish from ADN, more than anything, really riled me up.  And sometimes they don’t?!!!  I commented in email to friends:

And yet, in spite of the vote, they have. The ballot box does not measure the hearts of the people I work with, or my family, or my friends, or the families & friends & acquaintances of innumerable lesbians & gay men, who as the result of us coming out, as the result of their willingness to grapple in their own souls with the meaning of Difference, found themselves capable of still caring about us, of loving us *for* our Difference, even, not just in spite of it.

The changes that have happened have still happened. Regardless of the vote. The meanings are deep underneath, in our lives.

And that’s why ultimately we will achieve our goal of marriage equality, as well as other equal rights under the law.  Not just because of our own efforts, but because of the good hearts of our nongay friends and families, who recognize just as Julie Stephens did that it is indeed our right, everyone’s right, to choose their own life partners.  Who recognize that even with our differences, we are fundamentally the same in our humanity, no matter the propaganda that seeks to dehumanize us as degenerates or (in Wayne Anthony Ross’ 2009 update of his 1993 terminology) lima beans.

Remember that in the next weeks & months & years.  Yeah, we’ve still got a long way to go.  But how far we’ve come. Have heart.

* * *

I know you didn’t ask for it, but thanks all the same to Jay Brause & Gene Dugan for your efforts to establish marriage equality under the law not only for yourselves, but for all gay men & lesbians in Alaska &, ultimately, the U.S.  And also to all those in Alaska & elsewhere who have fought for those rights, & have voted for them.

I know you didn’t ask for it, but thanks all the same to my colleagues & coworkers, past & present, at the Justice Center at University of Alaska Anchorage, who did me & continue to do me the great service of treating me, simply, as a human being, as a friend, as a colleague.  Hey, folks: that’s what it’s all about.  May anyone who reads this blog take a lesson from you.

Mel & Ptery, Spokane, Apr 2009 (my brother Dave in the background)

And Rozz who is now Ptery, you’ll read this at some point, I’m sure.  Sorrow blah blah — we’ve come through so many times together, good & bad, easy & hard, & we are family & love & deep deep friendship to one another regardless of cis/trans, or whether we live in the same place, or however our relationship is shaped.  Thanks for coming to Spokane to see my dad with me, & thanks for being an ever-presence in my life.  I love you.

* * *

Further reading on Brause & Dugan v. Alaska Bureau of Vital Statistics and Ballot Measure 2:

Brause v. Bureau of Vital Statistics, No. 3AN-95-6562 CI, 1998 WL 88743 (Alaska Superior Court, Feb. 27, 1998).

The original ruling by Anchorage Superior Court Judge Peter Michalski; ruled that Alaska’s marriage laws violated the state constitutional right to privacy and the fundamental right to marry, and constituted sex discrimination. Also available through the Freedom to Marry website, which also provides a list as of 1998 (I think) of Alaska statutes pertaining to married people in Alaska — i.e., the specific ways in which same-sex couples, not permitted to marry, are discriminated against by the Alaska Constitution as amended by passage of Ballot Measure 2.

Ruskin, Liz. (4 Nov 1998). “Gay marriage ban approved.” Anchorage Daily News.

ADN’s day-after report on passage of the Ballot Measure 2. Rachel D’Oro and Lisa Demer also contributed to the story.  I will attempt to forgive the rhetorical flourishes that pissed me off at the time.

Alaska Constitution, Article I, Section 25 (1998) — “Marriage.”

Ballot Measure 2 passed by a vote of 152,965 in favor, 71,631 against in the election of November 3, 1998. States that: “To be valid or recognized in this State, a marriage may exist only between one man and one woman.”

Clarkson, Kevin G.; Coolidge, David Orgon; & Duncan, William C. (Dec 1999). “The Alaska Marriage Amendment: The People’s Choice on the Last Frontier.” 16 Alaska Law Review 213.

Law review article examining the history & constitutionality of the marriage amendment.  Authors were all supporters of the amendment.

Molsberry, Ken. (26 Apr 2009). “1997-1998: Brause & Dugan v. Alaska.” The Freedom to Marry: Rites & Rights. Retrieved 7 May 2009. [Note 9 May 2011: individual article no longer available online.]

Puts Brause v. Bureau of Vital Statistics in the context of the overall history of the fight for marriage equality.

Molsberry, Ken. (26 Apr 2009). “1998-1999: Constitutional amendments.” The Freedom to Marry: Rites & Rights. Retrieved 7 May 2009. [Note 9 May 2011: individual article no longer available online.]

Covers the passage of constitutional amendments in both Alaska & Hawaii, the first states to enshrine discrimination against gay & lesbian couples into their state constitutions.

Robinson, B.A. (10 Sep 2007). “Same-sex marriage in Alaska.” Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance. Retrieved 7 May 2009.

A basic summary of the events leading to the passage of Ballot Measure 2 and its immediate (legal) aftermath.

Related posts:

1. Q & A: What happens when you click "Volunteer" at the Alaskans for Parental Rights website?
2. Divorce, financially interdependent partner style
3. Prop 8 again

This is the full PDF that was provided to Steve, which included Mr. Ross’ response to the creation of an ad hoc group called Lawyers Against Discrimination chaired by John Suddock. The group was formed to attempt to prevent repeal of an ordinance, which had recently passed in the Anchorage Assembly, that prohibited the Municipality of Anchorage and municipal contractors from employment discrimination on the basis of “sexual preference.”  It was a big messy battle in Anchorage in late 1992/early 1993 in Anchorage. The ordinance was ultimately repealed. Discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation (or preference) remains legal in Anchorage, as in the rest of the state.

The attached Acrobat .pdf document is page 7 of the May-June 1993 of the Alaska Bar Rag, a publication of the Alaska Bar Association.  The content under the general heading of Anchorage debates gay rights ordinance includes:

• John Suddock’s announcement of the formation of Lawyers Against Discrimination;
• Wayne Anthony Ross’ responding letter (which starts with Mr. Ross sneering at the group’s acronym LAD), written on March 19, 1993; and
• a response to Mr. Ross’ letter by Jeffrey M. Feldman, a member of the group.

A portion of the page including only Mr. Ross’ letter was posted earlier today at Progressive Alaska; a commenter there asked someone for a PDF of the entire page including Mr. Feldman’s response — that’s what I’m responding to with this post.  (I saw a copy earlier at the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, I think, but I can’t find it right now, so I’m just doing it  myself).

Please note that the page is wider than letter-size, so if you want to print it out, you’ll need to adjust your printer somehow.

Alaska Bar Rag, May-June 1993, page 7

Bent Alaska has posted a transcription of Mr. Ross’ letter (though not John Suddock’s or Jeffrey Feldman’s stuff, so read it in the PDF). Here’s what Mr. Ross had to say:

Dear LAD: (LAD??? Intentional, on your part? Or merely a Freudian slip?)

I received your letter of 23 February 1993 regarding the Anchorage homosexual rights ordinance. While I am not surprised to see some of the names on your letterhead, I am most disappointed in other names thereon. I had more respect for some of you than I do now.

I am in favor of repeal of the measure. I see nothing involving civil rights in this matter. We all, heterosexual or homosexual, have certain rights. This bill seems to give extra rights to a group whose lifestyle was a crime only a few years ago, and whose beliefs are certainly immoral in the eyes of anyone with some semblance of intelligence and moral character.

It is a shame that you folks don’t have some causes you could become involved in that are of benefit to society in general. Instead, you support degenerates. No wonder the legal profession is treated with less respect than we wish.

If, as you apparently believe, morality is not based on long-standing God-given and God-instilled principles, but is something that changes from time to time based on public perception of right and wrong, then that is even more reason for you to allow this referendum to go to a vote of the people. After all, isn’t it your position that public morality is based upon whatever the public decides?

None of you has done anything publicly (to my knowledge) to attempt to protect the millions of lives of innocent children killed each year through abortion, yet you collectively contribute $5,000 to the cause of sexual perversion. It is quite disheartening to me to see my fellow members of our honorable profession display such a lack of proper priorities.

Wayne Anthony Ross

Nowadays, instead of being immoral, degenerates, and alleged practitioners of sexual perversion, we’re just… well… lima beans. Which Wayne Anthony Ross hates.

Related posts:

1. Against discrimination in Anchorage
2. Alaska newspaper editorials against WAR
3. Pro-WAR = anti-LAW

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 Avenue, then westward on 6th (counter to the usual direction of traffic) past the Transit Center & a couple blocks beyond, before turning south to the Park Strip, where the Pridefest picnic was held.

The first Pride parade in Anchorage I was in was in 1983. There were only 19 marchers. This was quite a difference — there was even an announcer with a PA system outside the Performing Arts Center announcing the different groups as they passed by. The Imperial Court of All Alaska did its usual splendid job of putting together a beautiful float. There were two Gay Straight Alliance groups from Anchorage School District schools, Metropolitan Community Church & Immanuel Presbyterian, various lesbian/gay/bi/transgender groups, Standing Together Against Rape, & Parents & Friends of Lesbians & Gays (PFLAG), which we marched with as we have several friends there.

Rozz dropped something along the way, so we later walked back to the staging area to find it (which we did) & did a little mozy around downtown, including a stop at Side Street Espresso for a coffee apiece, before returning to Pridefest, where Jesse joined us. Did a lot of walking there too, enjoying the music & seeing friends. Mostly sunny & warm; at one point it looked like some rainclouds might be headed our way but they dissappated before they got very close to us. Afterwards we walked home, & later Rozz & I drove to Mad Myrna’s for a bit of dancing. A beautiful, celebratory day.

Day total: 14,264 steps.

Related posts:

1. Anchorage Pride 2003: Look how far we’ve come
2. Happy wedding! (for John & Heather)
3. Apartment news

Publicity, publicity, publicity

The Anchorage Daily News, by the way, seems to be wrong about how many churches the Phelpists actually picketed in Anchorage on June 29. I daresay they mainly depended on the Phelpists’ published itinerary, instead of checking it out with the churches themselves. The exceptions — the churches the ADN reporter talked with — were Metropolitan Community Church, which was not picketed despite its lesbian/gay outreach, and Anchorage Baptist Temple, which was picketed, despite its prominence in Anchorage as a bastion of anti-homosexuality.

My own sources indicate that the only church besides ABT that the Phelpists made it to that fateful Sunday was Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton Catholic Church. The Phelpists apparently considered ABT and Elmendorf AFB more important than the smaller churches they’d originally targeted, because of course they had more people, & would more likely lead to the slaking of the Phelpist thirst for publicity.

They didn’t get much, all the same. A story in the June 30 Anchorage Daily News, which said far more about the June 26 U.S. Supreme Court decision than it did about the little contingent of “religious protesters.” Maybe a story or two on local TV news. Three letters to the editor published so far, & a Compass op-ed piece a couple days before Pride day.

There has been a bit of argument behind-the-scenes about whether it was good or bad to have been so very quiet about the Phelpists. “All the Phelpists want is publicity,” says once side, “& we shouldn’t give any at all to them.” “So what?” says the other side, “if more people knew the kind of stuff the Phelpists were spewing, it would gain sympathy for us.”

The Phelpists themselves bolster the “all they want is publicity” argument by having a page on their website about how “fags can make $millions” by taking pledges for each minute of a Phelpist picket. “[G]et people to send money for each minute that WBC pickets, brag to the local newspaper about it, and get our message that ‘God hates fags’ to everyone who reads the paper,” the Phelpists jeer. Consequently, “don’t give ‘em even the least bit of publicity” proponents urge targets of pickets not to do fundraisers.

But y’know, now that I’ve weighed the arguments, I don’t really think it makes a difference. The Phelpists will continue to picket with or without publicity. Very few people will have their minds changed one way or another. Those who agree with Fred Phelps & his family already feel free to say & do the same homophobic things they say & do irrespective of whether an occasional newspaper story says word one about them. Those who are unsure — well, most people I’ve met, even of the Jerry Prevo variety, think Phelpist tactics are disgusting. Such blatant idiocy, who knows, might actually drive some people into the arms of toleration & acceptance.

And if one can raise money for a deserving organization for each minute a Phelpist stands on a corner with a stupid sign, fine.

So lets ignore them even better by not even considering what they want, & should they come to your attention — well, have a chuckle. Or just blow your nose & continue on your way. It just ain’t worth agonizing over.

But I don’t mind that it went the way it did in Anchorage. The Phelpists publicity hounds just didn’t get much return for all the airfare they must’ve paid to get here, & let’s not forget hotel & per diem.

Thank you, Phelpists, for your generous contributions to the Anchorage economy.

Update/correction: 16 July 2003

I am informed by a correspondent that All Saints Episcopal Church was also picketed by the Phelpists on June 29. My correspondent points out that — unlike the other main Episcopal church in town, St. Mary’s — All Saints does not subscribe to “the acceptance and toleration of the homosexual lifestyle” but does accept “all persons have spiritual needs.” Obviously, my correspondent goes on to say, the Phelpists picked All Saints “out of the phone book” without bothering to learn about its beliefs. My correspondent also remarks that All Saints practices the teaching of love — contrary to the Phelps’ hate tactics.

Based on what I’ve learned about Phelps & Westboro Baptist Church, I agree 100 percent that the Phelpists don’t bother to learn the truth about what the targets of their pickets believe, or live. On the other hand, to teach love rather than hate in itself seems to be sufficient offense in Phelpist eyes to warrant their hatred.

Related:

• 6/20/2003. Fred Phelps coming to Anchorage. The “godhatesfags.com” followers of Westboro Baptist Church pastor Fred Phelps announce plans to picket in Anchorage during PrideFest 2003.
• 6/27/2003. Anchorage Pride 2003: Look how far we’ve come. A brief history 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.
• 7/8/2003. Those Phelpists aren’t too clever, are they? 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?
• 7/8/2003. Publicity, publicity, publicity.  Which Anchorage churches during PrideFest 2003 did the Phelpists picket, & which not, & why?
• 6/12/2009. Billboards. While in 2003 Jerry Prevo decried Westboro Baptist Church tactics, in 2009 he & his allies didn’t hesitate to use children — even some younger then 10 —  in a very like way, as billboards for their parents’ prejudices.

Related posts:

1. Those Phelpists aren't too clever, are they?
2. Anchorage Pride 2003: Look how far we’ve come
3. Fred Phelps coming to Anchorage

Those Phelpists aren’t too clever, are they?

Surely that comes as a surprise.

Not.

Yes, I admit, I was curious about how the poor befuddled Phelpists were getting on, when I was out & about doing what I was doing Pride weekend instead of being in Anchorage taking part in events.

So when I got back I checked out the Anchorage Daily News coverage of Pride weekend. According to ADN, several hundred people took part in the Pride festivities — which makes me very happy, given how sparse participation used to be back in my early ’80s activist days; and then the next day, Sunday, about 20 Phelpists total picketed at the gate of Elmendorf Air Force Base, where a big airshow with estimated public attendance of 70,000 was taking place, and various churches, including Anchorage Baptist Temple.

Say what? [Double, triple take.] Did you say Anchorage Baptist Temple?

Indeed. Shirley Phelps-Roper told the ADN that they picketed Anchorage Baptist Temple — which is viewed by Anchorage’s lesbian/gay community as a sort of Homophobia Central — because it was the largest church in town, & its pastor, Jerry Prevo, didn’t condemn homosexuality “loudly” enough.

I suppose maybe because no matter how loud Prevo has gotten about it (& as a longtime Anchorageite, I can tell you he’s been very loud), Prevo has never called for homosexuals to be executed just because they’re homosexual?

Prevo himself seemed a bit bemused by Phelpist attentions, though he made clear to the ADN that his church is in no way affiliated with the Phelpists’ Westboro Baptist Church, and disagrees with Phelpist tactics and philosophy.

Good for you, Jerry.

[Double, triple take number two.] Did I say that?

By gods, I did. Good for you. Truth is, I don’t much like Prevo, or his tactics and philosophy (the ABT website doesn’t mention the slimy things he’s occasionally done in the past), but hey, on this one thing I can say I respect him. He does not so misread Christian scripture as to call for murder, or proclaim a gospel entirely based on hatred. And religious/spiritual differences aside, his church does seem to do real good for a lot of people (if harm, in my opinion, to a significant number of others).

[Update: But see Billboards, posted 12 June 2009, for a later analysis on the real differences — or not — between Phelpist & Prevoist tactics.]

That still leaves the question: how did the Phelpists come to target Prevo’s fine, huge, some would say ostentatious church on Baxter & Northern Lights?

Explanation #1: A few days after getting back to town, a friend told me that an Anchorage gay man in a trubba-making mood had called up the Phelpists and told them that Anchorage Baptist Temple ministered to gays. (In fact, they do: ABT sponsors one of those questionable little “stop being gay through Christ” ministries, or at least they used to.) But the caller didn’t tell them that, he just let them form their own conclusions about what kind of ministry it might be.

Explanation #2 (which probably is the source of Explanation #1): An Anchorage gay man wrote an email to the Phelpists in late May (I’ve seen a copy) posing as a homophobe who welcomed their visit, & directing them to the Anchorage Baptist Temple as the largest church in the state that, he claimed in his email, did “nothing” to discourage the “blight” of homosexuality. (No mention in the email of any supposed ABT ministry to gays, however.)

Explanation #3 (which goes hand in hand with either of the first two explanations): These Phelpists just aren’t very good with their research.

Not a surprise. After all, they don’t even know how to research their own holy book.

Related:

• 6/20/2003. Fred Phelps coming to Anchorage. The “godhatesfags.com” followers of Westboro Baptist Church pastor Fred Phelps announce plans to picket in Anchorage during PrideFest 2003.
• 6/27/2003. Anchorage Pride 2003: Look how far we’ve come. A brief history 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.
• 7/8/2003. Those Phelpists aren’t too clever, are they? 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?
• 7/8/2003. Publicity, publicity, publicity.  Which Anchorage churches during PrideFest 2003 did the Phelpists picket, & which not, & why?
• 6/12/2009. Billboards. While in 2003 Jerry Prevo decried Westboro Baptist Church tactics, in 2009 he & his allies didn’t hesitate to use children — even some younger then 10 —  in a very like way, as billboards for their parents’ prejudices.

Related posts:

1. Publicity, publicity, publicity
2. Anchorage Pride 2003: Look how far we’ve come
3. Fred Phelps coming to Anchorage

Anchorage Pride marchers on 6th Ave., 1983: 19 marchers

[Originally posted at henkimaa.blogga.nu Friday 27-Jun-2003 4:35 PM]

Anchorage Pride 2003: Look how far we’ve come
Or, when it comes to Phelpists, silence doesn’t equal death

Word from our local Metropolitan Community Church (MCC) is that some great organizing work has been done around the Phelpists coming to town. Not to fundraise, not to confront — but to ignore. Since, as numerous other cities’ experiences with the Phelpists have shown, the main thing they want is publicity. “So,” our local folks say, “lets not give ‘em any.”

Good idea. And y’know, if this blog was read by more than the very few people who’ve read it thus far, I wouldn’t even write about them here.

Even if the Phelpists don’t show up in news accounts, their decision to come here will probably end up being good for the community, just because of the good organizing that’s been done around it. Just as other homophobic action proved good in the end a couple years ago, when our creepy outgoing mayor kicked a diversity exhibit sponsored by MCC & the local chapter of Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) out of the Z.J. Loussac Library, our main municipal public library. The exhibit went up on a Monday evening, & was taken down before the library even opened the next morning at 10:00 AM — not even because of any complaints, but simply because Mayor George Wuerch objected to it.

Big controversy ensued. And the Pride parade that year was the biggest ever in this town: two to three thousand according to the June 24, 2001 Anchorage Daily News story about it. I was there — it was great. Lesbians, gays, transgendered, & lots & lots of allies, including about 30 library employees with a banner that read “Librarians for Free Speech.”

And I remembered when the Pride parade in Anchorage was just 19 of us trying to take up the whole street.

That was in twenty years ago, in 1983. I later sent a photo of that lesbian/gay pride march to Gay Community News (Boston) along with a letter on June 28, 1983, which GCN published.

I couldn’t find the copy as published, but I have a handwritten draft of it. Relevant excerpts:

Dear GCN:

Enclosed is a photograph of this year’s Lesbian/Gay Pride March in Anchorage, Alaska. There were nineteen of us in this city of about 200,000, so a rough estimate is that for every one of us on the street, there were 1,000 at home in Anchorage (1,000 more in the rest of the state). Despite the small numbers in our march, I am told that this is the march’s 5th consecutive year. I am told that the maximum participation was two years ago, with about 50 people….

[S]omehow a very disparate group of people came to be walking down 6th Avenue behind the Alaska banner that is a veteran of the National March on Washington…..

The last march (and my first march) was in Boston in 1991 when there were 12,000 marchers. This was more frightening — it is like one of the marchers in our parade said in comparing marching in San Francisco with marching here. He said in San Francisco the march is very much a celebration, but coming here reminded him that there are still many places where the issue for us is not yet celebration — but simple survival….

We’re not home free yet… but what a long way we’ve come in the last 20 years. And while I won’t, due to a scheduling conflict, be here for tomorrow’s parade, I’ll be there in spirit.

Two four six eight
Gay is just as good as straight
Three five seven nine
Lesbians are mighty fine

Yep.

Related:

• 6/20/2003. Fred Phelps coming to Anchorage. The “godhatesfags.com” followers of Westboro Baptist Church pastor Fred Phelps announce plans to picket in Anchorage during PrideFest 2003.
• 6/27/2003. Anchorage Pride 2003: Look how far we’ve come. A brief history 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.
• 7/8/2003. Those Phelpists aren’t too clever, are they? 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?
• 7/8/2003. Publicity, publicity, publicity.  Which Anchorage churches during PrideFest 2003 did the Phelpists picket, & which not, & why?
• 6/12/2009. Billboards. While in 2003 Jerry Prevo decried Westboro Baptist Church tactics, in 2009 he & his allies didn’t hesitate to use children — even some younger then 10 —  in a very like way, as billboards for their parents’ prejudices.

Related posts:

1. Those Phelpists aren't too clever, are they?
2. Publicity, publicity, publicity
3. Fred Phelps coming to Anchorage

Fred Phelps coming to Anchorage

This today from an Alaska LGBTA events announcement list:

The Pride parade and PrideFest Celebration is on Saturday, June 28th, downtown on the Park Strip. The parade begins at 11, the picnic at noon. It is believed Fred Phelps will be visiting Anchorage to make a number of protests, including the parade and next Sunday’s MCC service. Here’s his planned schedule, as copied from his website

http://www.godhatesfags.com/fliers/Picket_Information.html

June 28, 2003	10:30 am – end of parade	Anchorage, AK	2003 PrideFest Parade, 6th Ave. & E St.
June 28, 2003	5:00 pm – 5:30 pm	Anchorage, AK	Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton Catholic Church, 2901 East Huffman Road
June 29, 2003	9:00 am – 9:30 am	Anchorage, AK	All Saint’s Episcopal Church, 545 West 8th Ave.
June 29, 2003	9:30 am – 10:00 am	Anchorage, AK	Lutheran Church of Hope, 1847 West Northern Lights
June 29, 2003	10:15 am – 10:45 am	Anchorage, AK	Unitarian Universal Fellowship, 32nd St. & Turinigan Blvd
June 29, 2003	10:30 am – 11:00 am	Anchorage, AK	Unity Church of Anchorage, 10821 Totem Road
June 29, 2003	1:30 pm – 2:00 pm	Anchorage, AK	Metropolitan Community Church, 2311 Pembroke St.
June 29, 2003	6:00 pm – 6:30 pm	Anchorage, AK	St. John’s United Methodist Church 1801 O’Malley Road
June 30, 2003	7:45 am – 8:45 am	Anchorage, AK	City Hall (Municipal Hill Building), 632 W. 6th Ave.

Fred Phelps, for those who don’t know him, is a disbarred lawyer and the pastor of Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas, whose manifesto is contrary, to put it lightly, to what Jesus preached as documented in the Gospels.

Westboro Baptist Church manifesto:

To every lover of Arminian lies — believing and preaching that God loves every individual of mankind — we say, You are going to Hell! Period! End of discussion!

Jesus:

Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. (Matt. 5:43-45, KJV)

Guess Jesus is going to hell, according to the Phelpists.

Fred Phelps came to national prominence in the wake of the death of Matthew Shepard, the gay University of Wyoming student who in October 1998 was deceived by two homophobic men into leaving a gay bar with them. They drove him to a remote area, tied him to a split-rail fence, and pistol-whipped, beat, and robbed him, then left him there to die. He was found the following day by two bikers, and died in the hospital four days later, never having awakened from a coma. (His murderers are each serving two consecutive life sentences without possibility of parole.)

Fred Phelps came to Matthew Shepard’s funeral — not to mourn, but to picket with signs saying things like “No Tears for Queers” and “God Hates Fags” (also the name of Phelps’ website). This wasn’t new, however. Phelps and his congregation (which reportedly is made up primarily of family members) had already made a career of picketing businesses, churches, and events perceived to promote homesexuality, harassing Topeka city officials with faxes full of namecalling & vitriol, & adding to the sorrow of families grieving the deaths of family members lost to AIDs or hate crimes.

Reactions range from outrage to education to humor to fundraising to…hmmm, what would one call it…anarchic creativity? This last for the Des Moines cell of the Biotic Baking Brigade, which on May 31 launched a pie attack on Phelpists protesting a local high school commencement ceremony because of a college scholarship awarded to a graduating (gay) senior in honor of Matthew Shepard.

Meantime, a local Iowa gay organization raised $80 for each minute that the Phelpists ran their picket (just over a half hour)– a fundraising technique that has become an increasingly popular way for LGBTA organizations to make the best of Phelpist hate tactics. Even the Topeka Symphony Orchestra has made money off the Phelpists.

The best piece written on a humorous note that I’ve seen on Phelps thus far is a February 2000 story in the international (English) edition of the Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat, which reported on Phelps’ plans to come to Finland because he objected to the human rights record of then newly-elected Finnish President Tarja Halonen. Actually, they accused the (heterosexual) Halonen of being a lesbian, and even wrote a letter to the Finnish ambassador to the U.S. to say so. Phelps also asked the Finnish ambassador to provide 25 applications for visas — not required for visitors from the U.S. — and, per the Helsingin Sanomat story, “In a display of grit and determination, the Westboro Baptist Church claims that if Finland denies the-visas-that-are-not-required, the Church will take the matter to the EU and the United Nations.”

Factually speaking, two good sources are the Topeka Capital-Journal‘s online archive of their coverage of Phelps and BaptistWatch.org’s page on Phelps, which includes the full text of Addicted to Hate by Jon Michael Bell with Joe Taschler and Steve Fry, a book about Phelps that came into the public domain as a result of a lawsuit by Bell against the Topeka Capital-Journal.

Westboro Baptist Church announced their visit to Anchorage in a press release cleverly entitled

WBC to picket Anchorage PrideFest 2003 fag/dyke Parade and Festival, the fag-infested Univ. of Alaska, Anchorage, and the sodomite whorehouses masquerading as churches in Anchorage* –June 27-29 — in religious protest & warning: ‘God is not mocked!’ God Hates Fags! & Fag-Enablers! Ergo, God hates Anchorage: “Woe to the bloody city, to the pot whose scum is therin.” Ezek. 24.6.”

Except for the specific event & location names, this is essentially identical to the announcements the Phelpists make for every other picket they decide to hold.

Needless to say, we are quaking in our shoes.

But that’s okay, we’re used to earthquakes hereabouts.

Related

• 6/20/2003. Fred Phelps coming to Anchorage. The “godhatesfags.com” followers of Westboro Baptist Church pastor Fred Phelps announce plans to picket in Anchorage during PrideFest 2003.
• 6/27/2003. Anchorage Pride 2003: Look how far we’ve come. A brief history 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.
• 7/8/2003. Those Phelpists aren’t too clever, are they? 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?
• 7/8/2003. Publicity, publicity, publicity.  Which Anchorage churches during PrideFest 2003 did the Phelpists picket, & which not, & why?
• 6/12/2009. Billboards. While in 2003 Jerry Prevo decried Westboro Baptist Church tactics, in 2009 he & his allies didn’t hesitate to use children — even some younger then 10 —  in a very like way, as billboards for their parents’ prejudices.

Related posts:

1. Those Phelpists aren't too clever, are they?
2. Anchorage Pride 2003: Look how far we’ve come
3. Publicity, publicity, publicity