Anchorage public works crews use a ‘friendly snowplow’ that prevents the pushing of snow into residents’ driveways during snow-clearing operations.

Right. Coleman and the Livability people obviously never tried walking on non-downtown Anchorage sidewalks in the wintertime. “Friendly snowplows” in Anchorage — whether belonging to the Municipality of Anchorage or the State of Alaska Department of Transportation — plow all the snow after a big snowfall onto the sidewalks, in huge berms often made worse by icy chunks that make things even more unwalkable for people who walk, ride the bus, etc. — especially for people who have any kind of physical disability. Sometimes sidewalks get cleared, but frequently only weeks after major dumps of snow — if ever. Until then, good luck.

Try walking a few blocks in my winter boots, & see just how “friendly” the snowplows of Anchorage are. Here’s a typical scenario facing any Anchorage pedestrian who walks in places other than downtown or from their doorway to their car:

That’s a photo from Monday, December 5 next to the Sockeye Inn on the north side of Fireweed between C & D streets, looking west. Anchorage residents may remember that we were on the second or third day of some unseasonably warm weather & partial thawing. The sidewalk was barely walkable here, so long as you weren’t old or disabled — full of lumpy chunks of ice thrown up from the road by snowplows on whatever day that most recent snowfall before December 5 had been.  And see that hump of snow beyond the light pole? That’s where snow was pushed to clear the Sockeye Inn’s driveway.  There’s no pathway for pedestrians at all there, short of climbing the berm.

Why so bad? Because the State of Alaska and Municipality of Anchorage have placed low low priority on making the streets safe for pedestrians, including those who, like me, ride the bus. The Anchorage Daily News reported, also today, on problems with road conditions after recent major dumps of snow — snowfall which occurred after I took the photo above. ADN reports:

The problem appeared to be worse on roads the state maintains — most of the bigger roads in Anchorage, such as Dimond and Northern Lights boulevards, C and A Street and Minnesota Drive. The state also plows the Seward and Glenn highways….

The city plows a few major roads, including Lake Otis Parkway, 36th Avenue and Bragaw Street, and also cleans all the neighborhood streets. Each agency [Municipality of Anchorage and State of Alaska] clears bus stops and sidewalks, too.

Sure. Once in a blue moon. The photo above from December 5 was taken long after the most recent snowfalls.  So were these, taken that same evening:

That’s on the west side of C Street just north of Northern Lights, next to the Wells Fargo Bank.  This, again, is after the unseaonable warmth & partial thaw earlier in that week — but sidewalks were still a mess because as usual, whoever was responsible had never bothered to plow them. (Along C Street I believe the Alaska Department of Transportation is the (ir)responsible party.) It’s next to impossible to walk on, and definitely impossible if you are old or have a physical disability.

(Julia O’Malley of the Anchorage Daily News wrote an excellent column last January about how lousy the sidewalks are for people in wheelchairs.)

This next one is a few yards further north, by the Wells Fargo parking lot.  Already a dangerous area because the drivers of vehicles coming out of that lot tend to crane their necks to the left to look for oncoming cars, seldom checking to the right for oncoming pedestrians.

And a little further to north, approaching Leroy’s Diner.  The sidewalk is only marginally better here, but still uneven & poorly maintained.  Alaska DOT seems to have decided that it needn’t bother plowing sidewalks if there are parking lots next to them, since parking lots inevitably get plowed by the businesses who own them.  Unseen in this photo is that next to this sidewalk is a large vacant lot full of berms that are even more impassible (if that’s possible) than the typical Anchorage wintertime sidewalk.

Here’s one from a few days later, December 8. This is on the north side of Fireweed Lane west of Arctic Boulevard.  The sidewalk was so bad that I walked on the street, only using the sidewalk when there was oncoming traffic.

Here’s a couple photos from last February 28, on Northern Lights Boulevard just west of Spenard. Again, snowplows at the last snowfall had thrown a snow berm up onto the sidewalk, and the responsible agency never bothered to clear the sidewalks. Even after the berms began to melt off, pedestrians were left with only a narrow aisle barely wide enough for one person — if she walked partly sideways. Looking east:

Same place, looking west:

None of this is new.  Whether it’s the State of the Municipality at fault, Anchorage has had a dismal record of giving a crap for Anchorage pedestrians for years. Here’s the first “lousy winter sidewalks of Anchorage” photo I took on November 20, 2005, on Denali Street next to Sears Mall Carrs. I’m pretty sure this is a Municipality-”maintained” sidewalk.

When it comes to people who walk in the winter, it’s clear: Fairbanks cares more.

Related posts:

1. Against discrimination in Anchorage
2. Sermon (a poem)
3. The Daily Tweets 2011-01-08: Saturday twice over

Related posts:

1. The Daily Tweets 2010-12-13: The importance of sweating even more
2. The Daily Tweets 2011-01-04: Castlemaine & Melbourne CBD
3. The Daily Tweets 2011-01-07: Last night in rainy Bris

It felt like I experienced Saturday twice, too. Brisbane to Sydney… layover in Sydney… 15-hour flight to Los Angeles & 10-hour layover there… then Salt Lake City (when does a Delta flight in the U.S. not force you to go to SLC?)… and finally to Anchorage (though I didn’t arrive in Anchorage until the morning of the 9th).

• Next ~40 hrs: On my way home. #oztrip #fb #
• At Sydney Intl Airport standing in endless line to check in for LAX flight. No worries, I'm flying Delta not Oceanic. #oztrip #fb #
• At LAX for long layover. After a month of using colorful Aussie currency, U.S. currency looks really bland. #oztrip #fb #
• I have to say that Delta serves reasonably tasty meals on international flights. #oztrip #fb #
• A good thing abt long layover @ LAX: another great meal (& margarita) @ El Cholo. #fb #
• Ah, home… once more in the land where Palin rabblerousing encourages political violence. Prayers for victims of AZ killer. #fb #
• About to board flight to SLC. Then a 2+ hr layover. Then flight to Anch. Then: the boy, his g/f, my cat, snow… home. Soon. #oztrip #fb #
• Salt Lake City: free wifi & my first snow in > a month. Toes got shivers in the skyway. I may need to put on socks. #fb #
• I feel as if I've been in airplanes & airports all day & then some. That's because I have. I long for horizontal sleep. #fb #

Related posts:

1. LAX lunch
2. The Daily Tweets 2011-01-07: Last night in rainy Bris
3. The Daily Tweets 2010-12-04: Anchorage to LAX

A Trustworthy Friend sent this to me after “reading your blog in bed at 4 this morning.” Guess I wasn’t the only person whose sleep last night was sullied by this. Caveat: see the notes below about satire.

For background, see my last night’s post: Sullygate: If there is a contractual agreement, Mayor Sullivan, show us the contract. See also The Mudflats on Mayor Dan Sullivan for background on some of the various financial decisions — including cuts to the Anchorage Fire Department — that Dan Sullivan has made as mayor. Gotta save the Muni money… except when it comes to SullyTrust. Or embarking on witchhunt audits.

Update about satire: Just to be clear: the picture above is not of a real check or of real notes by anyone actually involved with the Sullivan “life insurance.” The picture is satire. I had already identified it as such in the tags on the post, but I think it’s better to say it here too.

(My previous post was not satire.)

Further update: a mini-essay about satire. This follows on a friend’s concern that the satire here detracts from my previous, more serious post about the Sullivan “life insurance” policy.  But I decided to keep this post up anyway; this note is to explain why.

I’ll take assistance from Wikipedia’s article on satire, which explains,

A very common, almost defining feature of satire is its strong vein of irony or sarcasm, but parody, burlesque, exaggeration, juxtaposition, comparison, analogy, and double entendre are all frequently used in satirical speech and writing. The essential point, however, is that “in satire, irony is militant.”

The ironies in the above picture are very militant indeed, & to my mind especially illustrate how the (current) Sullivan administration’s conduct in this matter has eroded the public trust. Particularly because it involves public funds being diverted to pay out a supposed “life insurance” claim — with the Municipality of Anchorage somehow having been turned into an insurance firm — when simultaneously budget cuts are being applied elsewhere to services that many Anchorage residents deem vital.  Anchorage Fire Department backcountry rescues, for example, or People Mover bus services in  Eagle River & Peters Creek.

My use of my anonymous (except to me) Trustworthy Friend’s satirical picture does not mean that I take every aspect of it as being literally or factually “true.”  But the satire illustrates that greater truth contained in the title I chose for this post: the George Sullivan Trust gained $193,000 of public funds, at the expense of the public trust in either the Mayor or the Assembly.  One only needs to read through the (as of this writing) 263 comments on Sean Cockerham’s Anchorage Daily News article for proof.

That’s a problem.   Not just in Anchorage, but statewide, nationwide, worldwide: there is distrust between everyday people & the social institutions that we depend upon, regardless of what kind of institutions they are — government, corporations, religious organizations, you name it.  I’d like to think that at least at the local level we could work together to restore trust & work together for the betterment of our community so that it serves all of us well.  But it ain’t happening right now.  And if nothing else, I think that the militant irony of satire helps to point that out.

Related posts:

1. Talking about Sullygate on the Shannyn Moore radio show
2. Taking a Sullygate break
3. Sullygate: MOA Dept. of Law analysis; Ethics Board rules against Mayor Sullivan

Here’s Dan Sullivan, described today at Mudflats as “Mayor/Trustee Hybrid” of Anchorage. I’m pretty ticked about what I called “insurance-gate” in my tweets… but now I’m gonna call it Sullygate. For he hath sullied our fine democracy. (Again.) I’m writing a full post about this due out late tonight.

• Congrats to @crossedgenres & @SciInMyFi: the really cool “Science in My Fiction” blog got a short writeup on io9! http://bit.ly/afIpmH #
• The latest example of how representative democracy has fallen apart: Anchorage mayors & “insurance-gate”. http://bit.ly/cBgO5g #
• Commentary on Anchorage mayor “insurance-gate” by Progressive Alaska’s Phil Munger: Sully’s another banal grifter. http://bit.ly/bj2pox #
• The Mudflats on Mayor/Trustee Hybrid Dan Sullivan & Anchorage “insurance-gate”. Great analysis, Jeanne! http://bit.ly/cKeCeS #
• A earlier article on Anchorage mayoral insurance-gate. http://bit.ly/94r9N1 #
• Yesterday in ADN: Did commission have legal authority to grant benefits to an elected official once out of office? http://bit.ly/9BWkV0 #
• Briefer article today at ADN about insurance-gate. If there’s a contractual arrangement, show us the contract! http://bit.ly/bDzAgB #
• Anchorage Press article on Anchorage’s insurance-gate. http://bit.ly/amViHs #

Related posts:

1. Taking a Sullygate break
2. Talking about Sullygate on the Shannyn Moore radio show
3. Sullygate: MOA Dept. of Law analysis; Ethics Board rules against Mayor Sullivan

Support Equality Works!

On Tuesday, May 12, 2009, an ordinance was introduced in the Anchorage Municipal Assembly which would prohibit discrimination in employment, housing, financial practices, public accommodations, and education on the basis of sexual orientation and veteran status — adding these two classes to those already included in Title 5, Anchorage’s equal rights code: race, color, sex, religion, national origin, marital status, age, and physical or mental disability.

One week away from ordinance testimony & possibly an Assembly vote. Time to write those letters to the Anchorage Assembly, if you haven’t already done so.

Meanwhile, here’s a list — as comprehensive as I’ve been able to make it so far — of blog posts & opinon pieces favoring equality.  I’ve compiled a list of pieces that are anti-equality too, but see them on my Equality page — I don’t want to give them another link here.  And please do tell me if I’m missing anything.

Anchorage equal rights ordinance

Proposed ordinance

• AO 2009-64, “An ordinance of the Anchorage Municipal Assembly amending Anchorage Code Chapters 5.10 Equal Rights Commission and 5.20 Unlawful Discriminatory Practices.” Draft prepared for reading May 12, 2009. Anchorage Municipal Assembly, Anchorage, AK.

Facts about the ordinance (as opposed to lies)

• Equal Rights Ordinance: Focus on the Facts (Equality Works)
• 5/29/09. Equal Rights Q&A (Patrick Flynn’s Blog — Patrick Flynn, Anchorage Assemblyman)
• SOSAnchorage.net. Fact checks the Prevo/Anchorage Baptist Temple fundraising-through-a-pack-o’-lies website of a similar name.

Blogs & opinion pieces

Henkimaa.com

• Follow the tag Anchorage equal rights ordinance for all my ordinance-related posts.
• See also the category Equality, which includes posts about equal rights (including marriage equality) in general.

Bent Alaska. Your best single blog source for news & events in the Alaska LGBT community.

• Follow the tag Ordinance for all ordinance-related posts.

Other blogs.  Various other Alaska blogs have also posted news/commentary related to the ordinance, including  Celtic Diva’s Blue Oasis, Progressive Alaska, Shannyn Moore: Just a Girl from Homer, Elise Sereni Patkotak, The Immoral Minority, What Do I Know?, Christ Our Savior Lutheran Grace Notes, The Alaska Commons, The Mudflats, and Mamadance.

• 5/10/09. …and justice for all (Patrick Flynn’s Blog — Patrick Flynn, Anchorage Assemblyman)
• 5/13/09. The noise begins — repost of my blog post posted at Henkimaa here. (Progressive Alaska)
• 5/14/09. Anchorage Assembly Gay Rights Ordinance — my 1990′s flashback (Celtic Diva’s Blue Oasis)
• 5/16/09. Equality Works has a Fun-Raising party…more on Mike Method’s show — KBYR at 7:00 PM! (Celtic Diva’s Blue Oasis)
• 5/17/09. Sermon (a poem) — repost of my poem posted at Henkimaa here. (Progressive Alaska)
• 5/21/09. Gays deserve all the protections of the law, Jerry Prevo notwithstanding (Elise Sereni Patkotak; published as column entitles “If anyone has a gay agenda, it’s Prevo” in Anchorage Daily News, 5/19/09)
• 5/23/09. HOW AFRAID ARE THE “Not So Jesus Christians?” (Shannyn Moore: Just a Girl from Homer)
• 5/24/09. Jerry Prevo shows the whole world his ignorance and intolerance. Thanks for saving us the trouble buddy! (The Immoral Minority)
• 5/24/09. “What they are not telling you about the homsexual ordinance!” by GottaLaff (Political Carnival)
• 5/25/09. Dr. Prevo’s Friday Anchorage Daily News Letter to the Editor (Progressive Alaska)
• 5/26/09. Perfect love casts out fear (Christ Our Savior Lutheran Grace Notes)
• 5/28/09. If it’s good enough for J.Edgar Hoover…. (Elise Sereni Patkotak; published as column entitled “Unlike gays, church has its ‘special’ rights” in Anchorage Daily News, 5/26/09)
• 5/28/09. Men Jerry Prevo Would Ban from Anchorage Schools (What Do I Know?)
• 5/28/09. Equal Rights; Our Problem Just Got Holier Than Thou (The Alaska Commons)
• 5/29/09. Fundamentalists raise bar of intolerance by Alan Boraas (Anchorage Daily News)
• 5/29/09. Civil rights activist now focuses on gays by Steve Haycox (Anchorage Daily News)
• 5/29/09. Equal Rights Q&A (Patrick Flynn’s Blog — Patrick Flynn, Anchorage Assemblyman)
• 5/29/09. Out, out, demon hatred (Christ Our Savior Lutheran Grace Notes)
• 5/29/09. Please Help Bring Equal Rights to Anchorage! (The Alaska Commons)
• 5/30/09. What renews my belief in humanity (Elise Sereni Patkotak)
• 5/30/09. HATE; The Real Antichrist (Shannyn Moore: Just a Girl from Homer; reposted at the Alaska Report)
• 5/30/09. Fear and Loathing in Alaska (The Immoral Minority)
• 5/30/09. Isn’t There an Ice Floe Somewhere That Needs a Homophobic Preacher? (The Mudflats)
• 5/30/09. Saturday Alaska Progressive Blog Roundup – May 31, 2009 – Part One — The Quality of Writing at Our Blogs (Progressive Alaska)
• 5/31/09. All You Need is Love (Mamadance)
• 6/1/09. Check this out (Elise Sereni Patkotak)
• 6/1/09. Homophobes and their motives (Celtic Diva’s Blue Oasis)
• 6/1/09. Beware of beards in women’s bathrooms by Andrew Halcro (Alaska Dispatch)
• 6/1/09. It’s time for city to stand for equality by Cynthia Toohey and Arliss Sturgulewski (Anchorage Daily News)
• 6/2/09. Paint This Town EQUAL! (Alaska Commons)

Related posts:

1. The noise begins
2. Equality Works optimistic on gaining equal protection (press release)
3. Assembly report 1

Support Equality Works!

Early in his ministry, Jesus, walking along the shoreline of the Sea of Galilee, saw the brothers Simon Peter and Andrew at their work as fishermen and said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men” (Matt. 4:19, KJV).

There’s no doubt that Jerry Prevo has followed the in the footsteps of these earliest of Jesus’ disciples, coming to Anchorage in 1971 as pastor of the Baptist Bible Church (average attendance 300), and building it into what is now one of Alaska’s largest churches, the Anchorage Baptist Temple (average attendance 2200). On top of that, he’s the CEO of two Christian radio stations and a Christian TV station, has a daily radio program, and his Sunday services are broadcast and rebroadcast daily as well. [See references 1 & 2 for sources.] A fisher of men indeed.

But evidence suggests that Rev. Prevo also excels as a fisher of red herrings.

Now, I like fish. I eat it a lot. Salmon, sardines, kippers — nice, fishy, oily coldwater fish, healthily high in your essential omega-3 fatty acids. And tasty, too, at least if you like nice, fishy, oily coldwater fish, as I do. My friend Marcia doesn’t, so if i cook fish when she comes over we have tilapia, a mild white-fleshed fish that doesn’t, she says, taste or smell “fishy.”

Kipper

But I mentioned kippers: some people don’t know what those are. As described by Michael Quinion of World Wide Words, kippers are “herrings that have been split, salted, dried and smoked” — a method of preparation that helped preserve fish for market in the days before refrigeration and rapid transportation.[3] Nowadays, one can also buy kippers in a can, like sardines.

Canned kippers

Quinion goes on to explain a method of preserving herring for even longer than kippers will keep:

Red herrings are a type of kipper that have been much more heavily smoked, for up to 10 days, until they have been part-cooked and have gone a reddish-brown colour. They also have a strong smell. They would keep for months (they were transported in barrels to provide protein on long sea voyages) but in this state they were inedible and had to be soaked to soften them and remove the salt before they could be heated and served. [Ref. 3]

It’s this kind of herring from which comes the term for the kind of red herring for which Rev. Prevo has recently been fishing so fervently and with such monumental success. Known in rhetoric by the Latin name ignoratio elenchi (“ignorance of refutation”) or by the alternative English name the irrelevant thesis, the red herring is the most general and common of the fallacies of irrelevance: an argument in which the premise bears no logical relationship to the conclusion. [Ref. 4] Quinion relates that most etymologies he consulted state that red herring became the metaphor for this kind of logical fallacy because it was believed that the very smelly fish was sometimes dragged across the ground — for example, by escaped convicts — to confuse the scent being followed by tracking hounds. Quinion gives strong evidence for a different etymology. But regardless of etymology, its meaning in English usage — an argument which distracts people from the real issues involved — remains. [Ref. 3]

And a smellier, more inedible batch of red herrings it would be hard to find that could compare with those found in Rev. Prevo’s recent arguments against the equal rights ordinance proposed last week in the Anchorage Assembly.

If passed, the ordinance would prohibit discrimination in employment, housing, financial practices, public accommodations, and education on the basis of “sexual orientation: and “veteran status”, thereby adding these two classes to those already included under Title 5, Anchorage’s equal rights code: race, color, sex, religion, national origin, marital status, age, and physical or mental disability. [Ref. 5]

There are a number of red herrings that Rev. Prevo has brought up already in opposition to this proposed ordinance, but to cover them all would make for a very long post indeed from someone who already writes pretty long posts.  So let me focus here on the red herring at the heart of Rev. Prevo’s current set of arguments:

The legal term sexual orientation

Rev. Prevo has a long history of opposing equal protection under the law for lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals. He was a prominent opponent of two antidiscrimination measures in Anchorage in 1975 and 1992-1993; the main difference this time around is the current proposal’s inclusion of  actual or perceived “gender expression” and “gender identity” within the proposed ordinance’s definition of sexual orientation, which also includes actual or perceived heterosexuality, homosexuality, or bisexuality.

On Friday, May 15, 2009, Rev. Prevo faxed a letter, addressed to community leaders, to an unknown number of people.  [Ref. 6] Chief among the red herrings thrown up in the letter are Rev. Prevo’s statements regarding, as he phrases it, the “legal term ‘sexual orientation’.” For example, from page 5 of his 7-page letter (not including the fax cover page):

“Sexual orientation” is a wildly expansive term that can encompass virtually any sexual temptation known to man. (See the definition in the proposed Anchorage Ordinance). If “sexual orientation” is added to the Anchorage’s nondiscrimination code, it will provide instant legal special rights to any kind of sexual behavior, no matter how perverse. [Ref. 6]

(The “special rights” argument is another of the false arguments frequently brought up by Rev. Prevo and other opponents of equal rights for LGBT people.)

Rev. Prevo goes on in a lengthy appendix to summarize a number of sexual practices described in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th edition — also known as DSM-IV, the diagnostic “bible” of the American Psychiatric Association — thus implying that somehow the ordinance, if passed, would provide “legal special rights” to all the practices described in DSM-IV — including pedophilia (sex with children), necrophilia (sex with corpses), and zoophilia (sex with animals, also known as bestiality). [Ref. 6]

Never mind that DMS-IV is a diagnostic manual, not a manual of legal terminology.

Never mind that many of the practices — and certainly pedophilia (sexual abuse of minors) and necrophilia — are prohibited by Alaska statute and federal law, which no municipal ordinance is going to trump.  (Sexual abuse of minors is a crime at four different degrees under Alaska Statutes ranging from felony to Class A misdemeanor level. [Refs. 7–10] Necrophilia is a Class A misdemeanor under AS 11.61.130, “Misconduct involving a corpse.”  [Ref. 11] Zoophilia, not explicitly forbidden in Alaska law, does not appear to be covered by existing animal cruelty statutes. House Bill 6, under consideration in the Alaska Legislature, would explicitly make sexual conduct with animals a Class A misdemeanor. It’s already passed the Alaska House. [Refs. 12–14])

There is also simple fact that Rev. Prevo’s red herring obscures common legal definitions of the term sexual orientation, and (in spite of his instruction to read it) specifically ignores the definition contained in the ordinance being considered by the Anchorage Assembly.

Here, in fact, is the definition of sexual orientation found in the proposed ordinance (which can be read in full here, in PDF format):

Sexual orientation means actual or perceived heterosexuality, homosexuality, bisexuality or gender expression or identity. As used in this definition, “gender expression or identity” means having or being perceived as having a self-image, appearance, or behavior different from that traditionally associated with the sex assigned to that person at birth. [Ref. 5]

Keep this in mind as you read through his letter. If Rev. Prevo is not telling the truth about the legal meaning of sexual orientation — what else is he not telling the truth about?

Read the proposed ordinance here
or at the Assembly’s website.

Read Jerry Prevo’s May 15 letter here
(includes an introduction about his
“definition of sexual orientation” red herring).

References:

1. Anchorage Baptist Temple. (n.d.) “About Our Pastor.” At Anchorage Baptist Temple website. Retrieved 21 May 2009.
2. Anchorage Baptist Temple. (n.d.) “Church History.” At Anchorage Baptist Temple website. Retrieved 21 May 2009.
3. Quinion, Michael. (25 Oct 2008). “The Lure of the Red Herring.” At World Wide Words (website). Retrieved 21 May 2009.
4. Curtis, Gary N. (n.d.) “Red Herring.” At Fallacy Files (website). Retrieved 21 May 2009.
5. AO 2009-64, “An ordinance of the Anchorage Municipal Assembly amending Anchorage Code Chapters 5.10 Equal Rights Commission and 5.20 Unlawful Discriminatory Practices.” Draft pepared for reading May 12, 2009. Anchorage Municipal Assembly, Anchorage, AK.
6. Prevo, Jerry. (15 May 2009). Faxed letter addressed to Anchorage community leaders. Includes introduction on “Jerry Prevo’s Red Herrings” by Melissa S. Green, 22 May 2009.
7. AS 11.41.434, “Sexual abuse of a minor in the first degree.” Alaska State Legislature Textual Infobases, 2008 Alaska Statutes.
8. AS 11.41.436, “Sexual abuse of a minor in the second degree.” Alaska State Legislature Textual Infobases, 2008 Alaska Statutes.
9. AS 11.41.438, “Sexual abuse of a minor in the third degree.” Alaska State Legislature Textual Infobases, 2008 Alaska Statutes.
10. AS 11.41.440, “Sexual abuse of a minor in the fourth degree.” Alaska State Legislature Textual Infobases, 2008 Alaska Statutes.
11. AS 11.61.130. “Misconduct involving a corpse.” Alaska State Legislature Textual Infobases, 2008 Alaska Statutes.
12. House Bill 6, “”An Act relating to proscribing certain sexual conduct or sexual activities as cruelty to animals.” Bill History/Action for 26th Legislature. Alaska State Legislature. Retrieved 22 May 2009.
13. Lynn, Rep. Bob. (26 Feb 2009). “House Bill 6: Cruelty To Animals” (sponsor statement). The House Majority (website). Retrieved 22 May 2009.
14. Sutton, Anne. (21 Mar 2009). “Alaska and Florida Consider Bans on Bestiality.” The Huffington Post. Retrieved 22 May 2009.

Related posts:

1. My letter to the Anchorage Assembly
2. We are all, or none
3. Against discrimination in Anchorage

My own sermon is below — a poem written in December 1992 in response to the hatred & bigotry propounded by Rev. Prevo & like-minded preachers during the 1992-1993 battle inside and outside the Anchorage Assembly chambers over the same issue facing us today: whether lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, and transfolk in Anchorage will be afforded equal protection under the law from discrimination on the basis of a fundamental part of our fabric as human beings: our sexual orientations and gender identities.

(With thanks to Stephen Mitchell, whose translation of The Book of Job helped me to find the words.)

Sermon

I

I take as my text the Book of Job —
for are we not like him, innocent,
suffering, crying out for justice?
are we not like him, each of us
surrounded by these righteous,
these pious friends who so love us,
who console us with false accusations,
who comfort us with lies?

Hear them — Eliphaz, Bildad, Zophar —
High in their pulpits they proclaim the good news:

Admit your guilt and repent your sin
the merciful Lord God will welcome you in.

What’s your complaint? you got fired from your job?
The good Lord will cast you to fires of damnation.
Your landlord has served you notice of eviction?
The Lord will evict you from heavens’s salvation.
Beat to death in the street? God signed the death warrant.
Infected with AIDS? The Almighty’s decree.
Discrimination — if it happens, which we won’t admit —
is admonishment of your culpability.
God in his compassion has served you fair warning
and if God’s indisposed, well, we’re God’s grand jury.

But admit your guilt and repent your sin
the merciful Lord God will welcome you in.

We’re a large church, but we’re a friendly church.

II

Is there anything so innocent
as the child you were at birth?
tiny and wrinkled
from between your mother’s legs
you cried — I am here! I am alive! —
such was your first yell — joy of birth!

Were you a sinner then?
Was it sin to cry for your mother’s breasts?
were you damned by your desire
for the warmth of your father’s arms?

Years grew you.
Your ears heard the lessons
of your elders who taught you
the rules to live by:
how you took them to heart.
How you chastised yourself
when you stepped out of bounds
in body, in mind.
How you took them to heart

as alone in your bed
you lay in the quiet.
You stared at your fear,
your eyes searched the night.
Your mind search your soul —

evidence — why
examination — am I
condemnation — vilify
queer — cry

— such were your tears, pressed into your pillow.
Such were your muffled sobs — grief of damnation

III

Be honest — which of you chose it?
Which of you when first you learned
you were queer — faggot! lezzie! homo! —
accepted that label with joy — celebration?

Which of you did not deny it?
Which of us did not seek to hide it?
Some hide it still — some are yet there.
Who knows silence better than we?
How we take it to heart.

Searching, seeking the root of our anguish —
how many of our sisters, our brothers
swallowed some pills, or took a mighty leap
to lie broken and crushed on the pavement?
How many of us climbed into a bottle
or crucified ourselves on a needle
or lost ourselves in an endless tangle
with the bodies of others such as we?
ecstasy! of orgasm — but after,
as we lay together side by side
in the tangle of sheets we wrestled amongst —
we wrestled alone with our dread
in the silent prisons of each heart, each head.

IV

But listen: you’ve heard of the patience of Job?
He was not so patient. Nor should we be.

How many of us looked to heaven to plead —
to shout — which of us demanded —

Yo, God!
Who’dja make the bet with this time?
Some bet. A sure thing.

Do you get your omnipotent jollies
from fate — create a creature
who by nature is unable
to adhere to your commands
without lying, without denying
what you created us to be?
I must abandon my integrity
or you abandon me?
Do you laugh to see us wriggle
with predestined misery?
Who then is righteous, who the sinner,
oh Lord God Almighty?

If this be heresy, if I blaspheme,
then teach a clear lesson, Lord God Supreme.
Cut short the suspense. Loose your thunderbolt.
Fry me where I stand and end my revolt.

Till then, this gospel I give:
curse God — and live.

V

But no — we curse not God,
but this false image of God they’ve made:
a warped, twisted abridgment

stuffed into a book, a Sunday sermon,
their cramped and distorted souls.

Can God be contracted —
compressed — compacted —
and still be God? Can you
hold in the palm of your hand
the width of the cold winter sky? Can you
forge the evening star into a ring
to adorn your little finger? Can you
play the harp of the northern lights? —
each touch of God’s fingers recolors the strings
in hues none of us has imagined.
Can you hide the summer sun
under a bushel basket? — Listen:
blind can lead blind, but the sun will still shine.

God cannot be enclosed in a book
or in the miser’s soul
which portions out justice in dribbles
and rations out love in crumbs,
then wonders why we starve.

God is too wide and vast and long
and knows us for what we are
as is known the sky, the river, the rocks,
as is knows each creature that breathes.

God is too wide, too vast, too long
and knows us as we are.

[December 29, 1992]

Related posts:

1. No Questions, Questions (poem)
2. Does Anyone Beat Your Heart for You (poem)
3. I won’t abandon my integrity, even if you abandon me

Support Equality Works!

Usually Friday nights for me are home nights. After all, that’s the night “Battlestar Galactica” is on!  Except that… “Battlestar Galactica” is over [sigh].  But [brightening up] at least I have the DVDs!

Okay, well, that’s the night “Dollhouse” is on!  Except that… “Dollhouse” had its season finale last week [sigh].  But [brightening up] — we got the happy news yesterday that Fox had renewed it for a second 13-episode season!  Yeaaaaay!

Still, what now am I to do with a Friday night?

Tiffany McClain of Equality Works

Last night it was to go to a fundraiser for Equality Works, the coalition that’s working to end discrimination against lesbians, gays, bisexuals, & transfolk in Anchorage.  That includes making sure we’re heard when the Anchorage Assembly takes public testimony on June 9 on the ordinance introduced last Tuesday that will, if passed, ban employment, housing, public accomodations, & other forms of discrimination based on sexual orientation or veteran status.

Tiffany McClain, Brittany Goodnight, & Ryan Lawton, raising funds for Equality Works

I was a little worried as I drove there, because there were only 6 people, including me & two of the organizers, had RSVPed “yes” to the Facebook invitation for the fundraiser.  But I need not have worried: when I got there (as Linda Kellen Biegel has already blogged at Celtic Diva’s Blue Oasis), the street was already lined with cars, & the backyard barbecue/party was already in full swing.

My first impression — besides that there were sure a lot of people there! — was, Whoa! everyone is so young! Please, take no  offense at that; take it from the perspective of me, a 50-year-old whose strong years as an activist ended nearly two decades ago, when burnout & the private concerns of family life & personal goals led me to kinda fade out of the public LGBT activist scene.  Which explains why most of the people there (unless they happened to have caught Channel 11 News last Wednesday night) had no idea who I was.  Or if they did, like Equality Works’ Tiffany McClain, only by way of recent occasional emails.

Linda Kellen Biegel & Mel Green

The big exception to that was Linda Kellen Biegel.  Linda is well-known in Alaska & beyond as the prominent progressive political blogger Celtic Diva of Celtic Diva’s Blue Oasis.  But back in the day, the early 1990s, I knew her as Linda Kellen, a member of the local folk/rock band Sky is Blu, which amongst other things performed in at least a couple or so of the annual women’s show Celebration of Change, in which I also performed.  And if you don’t already know, let me tell you: Linda is one fine damn singer.

Linda Kellen Biegel (Celtic Diva) & Mel Green

As Linda described this past Thursday in a post about her experiences during the 1992-93 equal rights ordinance battle,

I was in the folk/rock band “Sky Is Blu,” whose members were either LGBT or LGBT-friendly.  We ended up playing many gigs for LGBT events and for six years, I felt privileged to be involved in this wonderful, close-knit community.

It was in that context that I knew Linda.  But while I’ve been following her blog since last August, I hadn’t seen her in years.  I can’t say what a delight it was to hang out with her last night, catching up, but mainly talking about how important this ordinance is & what we could to ensure its success.

(Go & read Linda’s post about 1992-93 in full.  There you’ll find that, in the poisonous atmosphere created by the likes of the “Reverend” Jerry Prevo in their fight to prevent equal rights protections for LGBT folk, it’s not just the LGBT folk who take this hits, but also our nongay friends & allies.  But will that stop people like Linda from standing with us this time around?  Nope, didn’t think so.)

Tiffany McClain & Linda Kellen Biegel

The other high points of the evening for me were meeting Tiffany McClain & some of the other people who are working hard behind the scenes at Equality Works.  It’s wonderful to see the vital, fresh energy being poured into this effort — & their willing, hard work made me feel a whole lot better at sticking with my own self-knowledge: I cannot, any more, do the kind of work that I was doing in the ’80s & early ’90s.  I’m a writer: what I can do best for this effort is to write.  Like I’m doing now.

We asked them what they’d like us to tell supporters of the ordinance about Equality Works & the June 9 Assembly meeting, at which the Assembly will take public testimony on the ordinance.  What they said:

Turn out! Even if you don’t plan to testify, we still want to see you there.  And we’d like to see you there in blue — blue dresses, blue shirts, blue sweatshirts — let’s have a sea of blue around the first floor of the Loussac Library that Tuesday evening.

And support Equality Works with your time & your money. There’s a donation form on their website which you can print out & send in with your donation.

Bent Alaska has more suggestions on how you can help to pass the ordinance.

Also from Bent Alaska,

Share your story
Are you an LGBT person who believes that you have been discriminated against by an employer, landlord, or business? Have you ever been told to stay closeted on the job? Are you a straight ally or family member who has felt the sting of public harassment or discrimination because of your friends or relatives, or because you were perceived as being “too masculine” or “too feminine”? There is no better time than at the public hearing on June 9 to share these stories with the people in a position to make a difference. If you can participate, please e-mail Tiffany McClain.

Although I hope you’ll keep reading my blog, Bent Alaska remains your best single online source for news about the ordinance, with periodic news roundups on the ordinance, as well as other news for the LGBT community in Anchorage & statewide. Thanks to E. Ross and Stacy, who work together to put out Bent Alaska & the Alaska GLBT News email list.

Related posts:

1. Equality Works optimistic on gaining equal protection (press release)
2. Equality Works Sets the Record Straight
3. Three things I did at lunchtime

Not Eddie Burke (...or is it?)

Yesterday, in between finding myself in front of a TV camera at lunchtime & watching the results in the evening, I listened in on Eddie Burke’s talk radio show on KBYR 700-AM.  I’d heard Mr. Burke would be devoting his show to discussion of the equal rights ordinance that was introduced the night before in the Anchorage Assembly.

It was an interesting, weird, sometimes toxic, & sometimes informative experience.

For anyone who lives, as I do, well outside the sphere of conservative talk radio, the toxic aspects should be obvious.  KBYR is a Fox News affiliate, and includes on its daily schedule such prominent conservative pundits as Bill Bennett, Laura Ingraham, Dennis Prager, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, Rusty Humphries, and Michael Medved. The other local voice I saw in their line-up besides Eddie Burke is Glen Biegel. Except for Glenn Beck & Sean Hannity, I’m not familiar with these people — & even Beck & Hannity I know more from seeing their… shall we say antics… put on display on “The Daily Show” & “The Colbert Report,” not to mention Keith Olbermann’s show on MSNBC. (Have you done that waterboarding-for-charity event you volunteered for yet, Hannity?)

In what I heard yesterday, I found Mr. Burke to be rather like Hannity or other Fox News types (like Bill O’Reilly), albeit with some of his own color thrown in. Once, he boasted of having the nickname “the Hammer” — which, sorry, just put me in mind of a certain Dr. Horrible’s Singalong Blog.   But really, doesn’t the character of Eddie Burke bears some similarity to that of Captain Hammer? — a smug bully who views himself as a defender of right?  (Well, of the right, at least.)  Who but Eddie Burke would make a point several times during his show to brag proudly about the “homophobe t-shirt” he was wearing?

And what are we to make of his contention that, by virtue of the ordinance being introduced, “They drew first blood — the homosexuals drew first blood!” Huh?  What blood?

Just a silly rhetorical flourish, I’m sure.  Not real blood.  Not, say, the blood of Peter Dispirito.  Who, you ask, was he?  Well, yesterday I opened my copy of Identity Reports to page 50 to read the headline of the “Prima Facie” case describing how I was fired from the Book Cache in 1984.   Tonight, I’ll jump another 20 pages, to page 70, to read from the first of that study’s cases based on documentary sources (hence the d in the case number):

Male, age unavailable
d-1 — MURDER OF PETER DISPIRITO BY GARY LEE STARBARD August 10, 1974

At 4:30 AM on August 10, 1974, Delbert Smith of the Anchorage Police Department was awakened by his wife, who told him there was an injured man lying in the street.  Smith looked out and saw a nude man, later identified as Peter Dispirito, a longtime Anchorage resident and hairdresser and owner of Peter’s Salon, lying in a pool of blood.  Smith called the Anchorage Police Department, then went out and covered Dispirito with a blanket.  Dispirito had stab wounds in his chest and one arm.  He told Smith that “Gary did it.”

About 45 minutes later Dispirito died of his wounds at Providence Hospital. In a case marked by procedural problems — two warrantless searches, a problematic interrogation of Gary Lee Starbard — Starbard was able ultimately to plead down to a charge of manslaughter, which could have led to as many as 20 years’ imprisonment. At the sentencing hearing, the defense attorney made numerous references to Dispirito’s homosexuality, finally leading Judge Seaborn Buckalew to rebuke him that “the victim is the dead man” and that the defense attorney’s remarks could be interpreted to mean that Starbard had killed not a man, but a “queer.”  But despite this ever-so-vigorous defense of Dispirito’s humanness, in pronouncing sentence, Judge Buckalew referred to the murder as “an unfortunate accident — incident” — and gave Starbard just one year.

Who drew first blood?  Doesn’t look to me like it was the homosexual.  Looks, rather, as if it was a homosexual whose blood was drawn, rather violently in fact, by — guess what — a heterosexual. (Or at least that’s what all the heterosexuals involved in processing the case presumed Starbard to be.)  We can at least be satisfied that the later judges did better than Judge Buckalew in sentencing the convicted murderers in case d-12, “Murder of Oscar Jackson by William M. Justice aka William M. Rima, December 21, 1984″ (p. 76) and case d-14,”Murder of Raymond Barker by Charles Cole and Matthew Decker, April 3, 1985″ (p. 78), both cases in which heterosexual perpetrators felt justified in killing homosexual men because they were homosexual.

Now, those cases involved the spilling of blood. What’s been presented in the Anchorage Assembly, and what’s before them now,  is a call simply for equal protection from discrimination — which, while involving lives, does not in fact involve the “drawing of blood.”

So much for cheap rhetorical flourishes.

Which isn’t to say Mr. Burke ceased from making them, or from trotting out many of the same ludicrous claims that we’ve come to expect from opponents of equal rights.  For instance, the argument that the ordinance would grant homosexuals “special rights” — that is, the “special” rights already adhering to Anchorage residents to not be discriminated against on the basis of race, religion, age, sex, color, national origin, marital status, or physical disability.  By this argument, if you are a woman protected through Anchorage’s human rights code from being paid less than a man for performing the same work, that’s a “special right.” If you’re a black man protected from being fired from a job by a racist white boss, or a white man protected from being fired from a job by a racist black boss — that’s a “special right.”  If you live in a large apartment complex and faithfully attend Anchorage Baptist Temple each Sunday, and are protected from being evicted from your apartment by a Mormon or Catholic or atheist or [gasp!] homosexual landlord (they do exist) who disagrees with your beliefs or is even downright hostile to the church you belong to (imagine such a thing!) — that, too, is a “special right.”

Ooh.  Special rights.  Better get rid of ‘em.  It’ll clearly make the world so much better.

What a load of hooey.  Expect to hear a lot more of it from the Mr. Burke, his hero Pastor Prevo, & their followers before all this is done & over.  Expect to hear repetitions of Mr. Burke’s joke that “soon we’ll be giving ‘special rights’ to NAMBLA” [i.e., pedophiles], or his assertion that homosexuality is an “addiction” like alcoholism, & other equally ludicrous assertions.

Okay, enough about the toxic.  I said that listening to the show was a sometimes informative experience — what’s up with that?

It had chiefly to do with the presence of Jeffrey Mittman of the ACLU as a guest on the show. Here’s where we got into the substance of what the ordinance as drafted has endeavored to do: to advance Anchorage’s commitment to equal protection under the law for all its citizens, in this case by adding sexual orientation and veteran’s status to the human rights code, while simultaneously protecting the right of religious organizations to discriminate within the bounds of their legitimate interests as religious organizations.  I found this portion of the discussion fascinating and useful. In one interesting exchange, a caller’s question led to the identification of a fuzzy aspect of the religious exception, which Mr. Mittman believed could encroach on the right to discriminate by religious organizations.  This had to do with who actually determined what was a bona fide religious purpose and what was not: e.g., under the religious exception contained in the ordinance, the Anchorage Baptist Temple would never be forced to hire a gay or lesbian Sunday School teacher, but what about the bus drivers who drive ABT’s buses on Sundays, or the buses of their Christian school?  Mr. Mittman felt that the Assembly may still need to adjust the ordinance’s language to protect ABT’s and other religious organizations’ rights in this area.  (For my part, I recognize the Sunday buses as a part of ABT’s ministry — though I sure never would’ve let my kid climb onto one of them.)

Homeless camp in Valley of the Moon woods. According to Jim Minnery, you're only discriminated against if you're homeless, which in Anchorage would mean living at Brother Francis Shelter or in a camp like this. Oh, yes, & you'd also have to be unable to get a job.

But equally instructive were the occasional exchanges between Mr. Mittman and Mr. Burke’s other guest, Jim Minnery  of the Alaska Family Council. Mr. Minnery set the bar of discrimination pretty high: in his opinion, gays can only claim they’re discriminated against if they’re homeless & completely unable to get any job at all.   A couple of times Mr. Minnery brought up objections to specific provisions of the ordinance relating to the religious exception; but then, when Mr. Mittman attempted to address the objections with possible solutions and asked if they would be satisfactory, Mr. Minnery made it clear that it didn’t really matter: no matter what was done to improve the problems he had identified, he still wouldn’t support the ordinance.  No matter what.

And that, to me, turned out to be the biggest lesson of the show: there’s only one side negotiating here.  The Assembly, charged by voters with the task of representing all citizens of the Municipality of Anchorage, has been working to craft an ordinance that will as far as possible respect and protect everyone’s rights — our right to not be unfairly discriminated against, conservative religious organization’s rights to discriminate within the bounds of their legitimate religious purposes and activities.   But the conservatives as represented by Mr. Minnery and Mr. Burke will have none of that: if they don’t have carte blanche to discriminate as much as they want wherever they want against whomever they want — or at least against homosexuals — then, according to them, their rights have been trampled on.  There is no middle ground.  No matter how the ordinance is changed to meet their more specific objections, in the end they’re in the “debate” only for their prejudice.

So no matter how civil the discussion might appear — and yes, even on Eddie Burke’s show there was some civil discussion — in the end (especially when coming upon a commercial or news break), Mr. Burke would cut Jeff Mittman off and go into a sort of mini-rant that showed that nothing, nothing, nothing that Mr. Mittman or anyone else said, no matter how rational or persuasive, had modified Eddie Burke’s thinking one bit.  It might as well have never been said.  His show is not to negotiate a way for all the members of a pluralistic society to live together even with their disagreements. For him, it’s all just an exercise in getting us to waste our time, and then to go on to enthusiastically trash us with the enthusiastic participation of his fans.

Don’t ever call into or go on a show like Eddie Burke’s expecting to win a debate or to change his or his follower’s minds.  It ain’t gonna happen. Go with the expectation, rather, that there might be a few people listening who might be more openminded than Eddie-bragging-about-wearing-his-homophobe-tshirt-Burke (was it a Captain Hammer t-shirt?), people who are perhaps willing to sit down at the table and negotiate for a way in which all of us, straight and gay alike, conservative and liberal alike, can live together peacefully.  That seems to have been how Jeff Mittman approached his appearances on Mr. Burke’s show, so that he was able to maintain a relaxed calm and good humor all the way through. (I missed all but the end of Jackie Buckley’s call into the show as a representative of Equality Works, but from what I heard, she did a great job of it too.  No surprise there — I’ve seen Jackie do it before.)

I got a lot out of it.  But the toxicity was such that I hope I don’t have to listen again real soon.

(With apologies to Joss Whedon, Nathan Fillion, & the rest of the writers, cast, characters, & crew of Dr. Horrible’s Singalong Blog.)

Related posts:

1. Protesting the veto: Photos
2. Righty-tighty mobocracy
3. The noise begins