James Crump came to Alaska to find himself, and stayed in Alaska to share himself with us. His death on June 25 at Anchorage’s Pride parade was a blow not only to his family & friends, but also to our whole community. But just what is our community — and where do we go from here?

A week ago Wednesday, June 29, I went to the Service of Remembrance held for James Crump at St. Mary’s Episcopal Church. St. Mary’s has always been one of the really welcoming and inclusive churches in Anchorage. As its senior priest Father Michael Burke put that night, “All are welcome here — and all means ALL” — which seems to be a common saying at St. Mary’s. I’d first heard the phrase at St. Mary’s the previous Sunday (June 26) at the Pride ecumenical service, which, because of James’ death the day before at the start of Anchorage’s Pride parade, was in part a memorial to him. The ecumenical service was led by four local LGBT clergy from four different faith groups. One of them — Susan Halvor, a chaplain at Providence Hospital — led the June 29 Service of Remembrance.

There were a lot of people there: three members of James’ family up from the Lower 48; Elvi Gray-Jackson, who is my representative on the Anchorage Assembly and is one of our strongest allies in local government; James’ boss from the Municipality of Anchorage’s Department of Health & Human Services, where he was a nurse; some of James’ coworkers; fellow students and a faculty member from the University of Alaska Anchorage School of Nursing, where he’d gotten his nursing education; one of his patients, whom he had helped nurse to health; and lots of us from the LGBTQA community — most of whom were James’ friends, but some, like me, who had never known him.

I looked around, and I thought: I am so proud of my community.

It was a feeling like the one I had two years ago, after the introduction in the Anchorage Assembly of proposed ordinance AO-64. Under AO-64, sexual orientation and gender identity would have been added to the list of personal characteristics in Title 5, Anchorage’s equal rights code, that it’s prohibited to use as a basis for discrimination in employment, housing, public accommodations, education, and municipal practices.

The summer of 2009 in Anchorage featured a protracted period of public testimony at the Anchorage Assembly, with accompanying sign-waving and letter-writing both by ordinance supporters and those who opposed equal rights — led in particular by antigay pastor Jerry Prevo of the Anchorage Baptist Temple (ABT) who as usual made frequent use of hate-terms like perverted to describe LGBT people, and Jim Minnery, whose Alaska Family Council supplied red-shirted ordinance opponents with scores of red and white preprinted signs reading Truth is Not Hate and other begs-the-question slogans.

… (Of course truth is not hate. But the implicit claim: that these sign-wavers had the truth or that they were free of hate: not so self-evident. Three of them surrounded a friend of mine and told her she was going to hell. Is that love?)…

Kids on youth mission from Mississippi Avenue Baptist Church (MABC) of Aurora, Colorado were bused over by Anchorage Baptist Temple to wave signs printed by Alaska Family Council. June 17, 2009.

Lots of the the anti-ordinance sign-wavers weren’t even Anchorage residents, but had been bused and carpooled in from the Mat-Su (yet were permitted by Assembly Chair Debbie Ossiander to testify). Some of them weren’t even Alaskans: a group of teenage missionaries from Mississippi Avenue Baptist Church (MABT) of Aurora, Colorado, who were being hosted by ABT, spent several hours of their youth mission on two different days to wave signs on behalf of Prevo et al. urging the denial of equal protection under the law for citizens of a city and state not even their parents had right to vote in. Some of them were young kids, who just like Westboro Baptist Church kids, were used as billboards to carry their elders’ antigay messages.

One of the children bused in to wave signs for ordinance opponents on June 9, 2009. Courtesy Phil Munger of Progressive Alaska.

Hence the name given the summer by one commentator: the Summer of Hate — a name Anchorage’s LGBT community has used about that time ever since.

The ordinance passed the Anchorage Assembly by a vote of 7 to 4 on August 11, 2009, but was vetoed six days later by Mayor Dan Sullivan. It was the third time in Anchorage history that equal protection under the law for at least some LGBTQ people in Anchorage was granted, only to be stripped away again. In fact, it was Mayor Dan’s dad, George Sullivan, who vetoed our first equal rights ordinance way back in 1975 — also backed by Jerry Prevo and his ABT followers.

My nephew Miles and his two friends outside the June 17, 2009 public hearing at Anchorage Assembly

But back to my point: pride in my community. Part of the Summer of Hate took place during Pride week that year. And outside the Loussac Library where the Assembly chambers are housed, the Loussac’s big green lawn facing the major thoroughfare of 36th Avenue had become part of our Pride celebration.

Yes, the redshirts were there — the Christianists with their red and white Truth is Not Hate signs. But so were we, wearing not only blue shirts, but ALL the colors of the rainbow. We were having a big damn happy Pride festival right out there: people with signs most of them handmade, people with rainbow flags, people with hula hoops, my nephew Miles who showed up with a couple of his friends, unasked, just because my fight was also their fight. Gay, straight, trans, nontrans — it wasn’t just us, embattled: it was our nongay friends, too — our families, our allies.

I remember walking across that lawn toward 36th seeing a woman in a long skirt blowing bubbles, adding to the color and joy of the moment even in the face of the Truth is Not hate that was having a barbecue on another part of the lawn. That’s when I felt it: I thought to myself, I’m so proud of my people; and I realized in that moment that who I thought of as my people no longer just consisted of LGBT people, but of my non-LGBT friends and family and allies too. Our friends, our families, our allies. I saw a glimpse, then, of what life is in a place where difference is not just tolerated or accepted, but is celebrated. Every. Damn. Day.

I caught that same glimpse at the Service of Remembrance. I saw my community — LGBT and non-LGBT alike, all means all, gathered together to mourn but also to celebrate the life of a remarkable well-loved man in the presence of his family. And his family — his father, one of his two sisters, one of his three brothers, others of his family who have checked in on the first post we wrote about James’ death: it’s clear how much they all love him, how important it was and is for all of them to know how James was known and loved here, in this, the place he chose —as his sister put it — to share himself with.

I am so proud of these my people, this my community, this my extended family, and how my family and James’ family met and became family to one another.

This is what we have become. What a beautiful what it is.

* * *

Not that it’s all lovely and hula-hooped and bubble-blowing acceptance here. Not that everyone in Anchorage or in Alaska has had something comforting or caring to say to James’ family and friends after his death. A lot of the same Truth is Not Haters who were here in 2009 are still here in 2011, after all. And so, on the first stories published on local media websites after James’ death, some comments went in a mode exactly opposite to the love, care, and compassion that anyone who has lost a son, brother, and friend is in need to hear.

Two of the comments posted June 25 at KTVA Channel 11′s story about James’ death —

Well that is what happen when you are at a dirty little Faggit event

Just another example that gay life style can be deadly

— just two of the ugly slurs and hateful comments compiled by Christopher Constant and brought to the attention of the Anchorage Assembly and Mayor Dan Sullivan when Christopher testified before the Assembly on June 28.

Majik Imaje, site owner of A blog of ICE — a blog normally devoted to Inupiat art — wrote a post titled “ALASKA GAY pride (CANCELED)” comprising mainly a quote of a June 25 Fox News story about James’ death. But Majik Imaje (an invented name made up from the names of his four sons) first prefaced the news story with a cheery graphic reading “Let the PARADE * begin * !” and went on to claim,

PROOF: GOD does indeed work in mysterious ways. Let this be a message to all !!

— the death of a loved son, brother, coworker, caregiver, and friend reduced to an object lesson from a murderous God, by a man who didn’t even know James’ name — only his own unexamined prejudice.

Note, 11 July 2011: I have corrected details about Majik Imaje’s name based on comments made by David Eves, his apparent real name, at both Henkimaa and Bent Alaska. See comments for details.

Comments got so vile at the Anchorage Daily News that ADN shut commenting down on virtually every story about James’ death or the investigation into how it happened. KTVA Channel 11, for its part, ran a story on June 28 called “How Tolerant is Anchorage of Homosexuality?” —

Some of the things that have happened since a Pridefest parade walker was accidentally killed have brought up the question of just how tolerant Anchorage is of homosexuality.

After several media organizations, including KTVA, posted the story over the weekend, many negative comments soon followed, and some of the anonymous postings were just plain hateful.

Some people said the man who was killed deserved to die because they believed he was gay. We spoke with one of the Pridefest organizers who told us she does not think the comments represent how most people in Anchorage feel.

“I have never experienced the kind of hatred you are seeing on the website or in response to the news stories,” says Anne Marie Moylan, co-chair of Identity Inc.

When published on the web, the story soon accrued its own collection of frequently ugly comments, leading one commenter to lament on her Facebook page,

Are we returning to another Summer of Hate in Anchorage, Alaska for who we are as a community?

It’s not exactly what I hoped for on June 25, as I walked down H Street to the Park Strip praying, in part,

I pray that those who hate us open their hearts so far as not to use this death, this loss, as another avenue of hate. I know that’s asking a lot, but I pray for it anyway.

* * *

But wait.

Think about how parts of the larger Anchorage community have stepped up to help James’ friends, family, and community in the wake of his death.

Identity, Inc. Identity is, of course, the organization that organizes our Pride week. In one part its board, staff, and volunteers have been reeling from the impact James’ death has had on them both as an organization and individually as people; but in another part they’ve also worked hard and tirelessly to ensure that everyone who’s been most seriously affected — witnesses of the accident and of James’ death, especially — are being helped and cared for. Thank you, Identity, for all the work you do, and for the hard work you’re doing now, in the face of your own grief. Please let us know how we can help.

University of Alaska Anchorage (UAA). Three different UAA entities (the Psychological Services Center, the student health center, & the Dean of Students office) have offered free counseling both short term and long-term for those affected. As a UAA staff member myself, I can’t say how proud I am of how the University has stepped up to help us in our time of need. Thank you, UAA, and all the psychologists who are giving of your time to help us in our grief.

The faith community. Rev. Susan Halvor is acting as the central contact person for people in need of spiritual counseling, working with other local clergy both LGBT and non-LGBT. Thank you, Susan, and all the other clergy who are helping us to grapple with our loss.

Harriet Drummond (in pink) and Elvi Gray-Jackson (black dress and white sweater) shortly before the Pride parade began, June 25, 2011

Our local government. The Anchorage Assembly had its regular meeting on Tuesday night, June 28, just three nights after James’ death, and honored him there in the presence of his family. My Assembly representative Elvi Gray-Jackson and another of our Assembly friends, Harriet Drummond, had been banner-carriers in the Pride parade not far behind where James was walking when he was accidentally killed on June 25 — I’m not sure, but I believe they may have been witnesses. They introduced a resolution to honor and remember James Crump, who of course was an Anchorage municipal employee. According to the paperwork, the resolution was submitted by ALL the Assembly members — including the normally antigay ones — along with Mayor Sullivan, who two years ago vetoed AO-64. Harriet Drummond read the resolution, and it passed unanimously. Thank you, Elvi and Harriet, and all the members of the Assembly, and Mayor Sullivan, for giving honor to the memory of a man who so richly deserved it.

Resolution AR NO. 2011-183 honors James’ work as a nurse working with tuberculosis patients for the Municipality of Anchorage’s Department of Health and Social Services and as a loved member of the Anchorage LGBT community.

James Crump (left) and Michael Smith, ca. 2003. Courtesy Michael Smith.

Loved indeed. Though I never knew James, I’ve learned of him by way of the Pride ecumenical service on June 26; the Anchorage Assembly meeting on June 28 where he was honored; the Service of Remembrance at St. Mary’s Episcopal Church on June 29; the Circle of Support organized by Amber DoAll LaChores Sawyer at UAA. And last Friday a comment on the YouTube video I made of his honoring at the Assembly put me in touch with Michael Smith, who had been James’ partner for four years in the early 2000s. Michael had just learned that morning of James’ death, and he was desperate to talk with people who knew James, or at least knew what had happened. I talked with him for an hour. (People who would like to be put in touch with Michael can contact me at bentalaska2@gmail.com.)

I leaned that James Crump was a person –

James Crump receiving an ICOAA scholarship. Courtesy ICOAA College of Emperors and Empresses Scholarship Committee.

• who as a boy preferred National Geographic Magazine to the erector sets and slot cars enjoyed by his brothers because he liked reading about animals;
• who was such a good cook;
• who was a long-time member of Metropolitan Community Church of Anchorage;
• who wanted to be a nurse all his life, and finally realized that dream in 2009 at UAA with the help of four scholarships from a scholarship program of the Imperial Court of All Alaska;
• who had a cat he regarded as his son, named Fraidy, who died of cancer just a day before the Pride parade;
• who was very, very, very proud of his “man purse” and showed it off to his coworkers at HHS;
• who, even back when he worked at Fedex, made kick-ass cupcakes;
• who was hit hard by his mother’s death from cancer in 2000;
• who knew how to make friends, and did;
• who really really knew how to cook (there’s a theme here);
• who was there for his TB patients when they woke up, and helped them to get better;
• who could explain things to fellow students in ways that Nursing faculty never could;
• who loved to swim, and not only because of the lifeguards;
• who was always accepted and loved by his family, without regard to issues about sexual orientation;
• who one day told a Nursing professor that it was his birthday, and he wanted to see a baby born, and circumstances intervened to grant him his wish just 3 months ago (the baby’s name is Max);
• who brought joy to everyone he came in contact with;
• who used to speak with his family members about the community here he was part of, and his eyes would light up as he did so;
• who, by word of his sister, came to Alaska to find himself, and stayed in Alaska to share himself with us, because he loved us so much.

But why did he love us so much?

Here’s what I think. I think he saw the same thing that I saw as I sat in St. Mary’s at the Service of Remembrance. The same thing I saw when I walked across the Loussac Library lawn and saw a Pride celebration just elbows over from Truth is Not Hate, and saw a woman blowing bubbles, and thought, I’m so proud of my people. And knew that my people is not just an equation of “LGBT people + A for Allies”: but all my people, the people who not only love, but also fight for what they love, which includes justice and fairness and equality — which includes each other, everyone, all means all.

* * *

On June 25, I walked all over Delaney Park Strip, where Pridefest was held, taking photos as I had already been taking photos that morning before the parade began, before James died. At Pridefest: people who had known James, people who had not: people going on with their lives, celebrating what James would have been there to celebrate if he could. I wasn’t anywhere near the stage a lot of the time. At some point, I am told, someone on stage got on the mic and asked, Who here is not LGBT? And about half the crowd raised their hands.

Think about that. It’s not just “us” that is “our community.” Straight people like hanging out with us too. Straight people — more and more of them every passing year, every passing day — have an investment in equal rights for all (means ALL). My nephew Miles, my other nephew Jesse. Your niece. Our fathers and mothers and children and sisters and brothers. Our coworkers. Our bosses. People who love us and respect us just as much as James Crump’s family and friends and coworkers loved and respected him.

Think about that. Think about the fact that, of the 9 people nearest to James Crump when he died, all of them celebrants in the Pride parade —

— at least four are partners in marriages recognized by the State of Alaska — i.e., heterosexual marriages, “between one man and one woman,” as dictated by a 1998 amendment to the Alaska Constitution — and a fifth has also been identified as a “straight ally.” Think about the fact that all of these 9 human beings whether LGBT or non-LGBT wanted to be there, in that parade, and believed in its message of Pride, of “Step Up and Step Out”; that all of them, whether non-LGBT or LGBT, were shaken and shattered. Loss has nothing to do with sexual orientation or gender identity.

Nor does compassion. Think about the fact that Steve, the man who held James as he died is married, is “straight,” is a… well, please. Tell me. Is he an “A = Ally”? Or is he, simply, a human being who sees in you and me human beings with inherent worth and dignity? A human being who, at great cost to his own emotional equilibrium (there are no words for this) saw James, a human being, and gave him the gift of his love and presence and touch, so that James should not be alone in the moment of his death.

Yes. This is community. This is “my people.” This is what Truth is Not Hate fails to see, but which we all need to see, and to act upon, and fight for. John Aronno wrote it the other day:

Anchorage is a beautiful place to live, filled with the most amazing people I have been privileged to call as friends. But there remain rigid divisions that we need to man up and address. It’s easy to sit at home and make fun of the brazen idiocy of how politics works. But policy is different than politics, and politicians are different than statesmen. It’s time we demanded one over the other, in every category.

What happens if we stand up together? The future is ours. We just have to start showing up and claiming it.

Chris Constant wrote it too:

If you are wondering, I think this is what it is all about: Everything we do should pave the way for a better world beyond the reach of our lives. As they say, your reach exceeds your grasp. Any confusion or obfuscation of our mission as a community just evaporated.

Watch. We will recommit ourselves as individuals and as a community. We will fight harder, organize better, and love more. We will have more fun. We will reach more people who don’t understand the nature of our community. We will shine our light to dispel fear and darkness and to illuminate understanding.

Gay/lesbian, bi, straight, trans, nontrans, all means all: we are already the community that can do this, if we choose to. We’re the community James chose to share himself with. And we’re worthy of what he shared.

This one for you, James Crump.

If you or someone you know has been affected by the tragedy at the Pride parade in Anchorage, please be reminded that generous support has been offered by our allies in the community. You can get more information by calling the Gay & Lesbian Community Center of Anchorage at (907) 929-GLBT, (907) 929-4528. Or you can call the Psychological Services Center at UAA (907) 786-1795.

Except when otherwise credited, all photos by Melissa S. (Mel) Green, yksin on Flickr.

Related posts:

1. The Daily Tweets 2011-06-29: Anchorage Assembly honors memory of James L. Crump
2. Happy wedding! (for John & Heather)
3. A word about our friends

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

Identity Reports (1989) and One in 10 (1986)

In the 1980s, the nonprofit organization Identity, Inc. conducted two major research efforts to profile Alaska’s lesbian/gay/bisexual community and to document sexual orientation bias in Alaska.

One in Ten: A Profile of Alaska’s Lesbian & Gay Community (1986) provided the first statewide portrait of Alaska’s lesbian and gay (and to some extent bisexual) population, describing our experiences of coming out, of discrimination, our physical and emotional health, religious and political affiliations, demographic characteristics, and a general needs assessment.  Identity Reports: Sexual Orientation Bias in Alaska (1989) focused on discrimination and bias, documenting 84 actual instances of antigay bias, discrimination, harassment, or violence (including three murders) around the state, as well as the positive willingness of 20% of landlords and 31% of employers in the Anchorage area to discriminate against persons who were — or were perceived to be — gay or lesbian.

A lot has changed in the two-and-a-half decades since.  There’s a lot more live-and-let-live, a lot more acceptance of lesbians and gays.  Yet the continuing legacy of antigay prejudice and discrimination persists. Arguably, prejudice against transfolk is even more virulent — often even within our own community.

One of the chief arguments used by opponents of last year’s Anchorage Ordinance 64 — which would have added sexual orientation and gender identity to the Municipality of Anchorage’s equal rights code — was that there was no evidence of discrimination against LGBT people.  This claim was made in spite of the weight of evidence provided in One in Ten and Identity Reports.  But of course, that evidence was two decades old, so ordinance opponents found it easy to ignore; and they found it just as easy to close their ears to the public testimony of Anchorage LGBT residents who stepped forward to testify to very recent experiences of discrimination and bias — even as one opponent openly told the Assembly that he’d once beaten a gay man so badly that he put him in the hospital.

And so — we’ve decided to bring One in Ten up-to-date by conducting a new statewide survey — the Alaska LGBT Community Survey.  Like its predecessor, the Alaska LGBT Community Survey aims to create a profile of our community in all its diversity and with all its diverse concerns; and as we did in 1985-86, we’ll use the survey as vehicle to solicit case histories to document our community’s continuing experiences with discrimination, harassment, and violence.  Unlike One in Ten, the Alaska LGBT Community Survey will include transfolk as well as gay, lesbian, and bisexual folk, in the design of the survey questionnaire as well as in filling it out.

We’re in a very early stage right now.  We just made the firm commitment to do this last week! But we wanted to tell you about it right away.

We aim to have at least initial results of our survey by April 2011. For more and continuing information as we go along:

• subscribe to our blog at alaskacommunity.org;
• “like” our Facebook page;
• follow @alaskacommunity on Twitter; or
• do all three!

We’ll also doing our best to keep you updated through our regular LGBT news channels such as Bent Alaska, TransAlaska Pipeline, Grrlzlist, the Alaska GLBT News maillist, and — well, yeah, my own blog, Henkimaa.

Stay tuned!

— Melissa S. (Mel) Green

Learn more about Identity Reports and One in Ten.

Related posts:

1. Alaska LGBT Community Survey: Who we are & where we’re at
2. Anchorage’s LGBT Discrimination Survey
3. Alaska LGBT Community Survey: It’s not only about discrimination

And so I begin the new year by coming out of a period of silence.

A silence, to be sure, less profound than the one I inhabited this time last year.  And for different reasons.  In the last month or so, mainly I’ve just needed a break.

1. The cave

But on New Year’s Day 2009, I was living in a kind of emotional cave, with no desire or wherewithal to communicate with anyone outside my day-to-day life except immediate family.  Especially my dad, who I’d learned just a couple of weeks before had been diagnosed with a terminal lymphoma. That news came on top of stuff I’d already been struggling with for some months, after my then-partner, Rozz who is now Ptery, made the decision while in school in Seattle to transition as a female-to-male (FTM) transsexual, & made accompanying decisions that have essentially ended our partnership as-it-was.

Thus, the cave, about which I wrote on April 2, a few days after coming out of it,

I seem to be have come out of the cave now. Not just feeling better — I’ve felt better a number of times (only to then go back into the grey again) — but actually able & willing to communicate. Maybe it was that I’m finally accepting the inevitable with my partner. Maybe it was finally getting the plane tickets bought to fly down in late April to see my dad. Maybe it was taking enough 5-HTP to keep the serotonin cooking in my brain. Maybe it’s the light coming into the days after a looooooong winter. Maybe it’s all just been perimenopause. Anyway… seems I’m back in the world again.

Now, before I go on, let me explain: this post isn’t just about the history of what I did or experienced in 2009: it’s also about what it meant.  Or, better yet, the meanings I’ve made of it — because that’s what it’s all about, for me — the story, the stories each of us make of our lives.  And this is my blog, of course, so this is my damn story.

And the story of coming out of the cave also has these meanings attached to it:

(1) The cave itself became a new term, describing a new form, of that rather large aspect of my life popularly known as depression (or, sometimes, despair): along with the grey, along with the pit, along with limbo — all of which are described in my late 2006 post The grey — the newly-discovered environment of the cave can include any one of the first three, or exclude all of them; it is chiefly characterized by that deep inability & lack of motivation to communicate.  Big whooptie, a new term — but I do find the language useful in understanding myself around this stuff.  Since, hey, halfway through my life give-or-take, I don’t see the depression/despair gunk suddenly evaporating from my life.  It’s a part of who I am.  I’m just lots better at handling it than before, & part of that is in refining my understanding of how it works in me.

(2) If I were to mark the exact date the cave walls dissolved around me, it would probably be March 30, 2009, which coincided with some important phone calls with Ptery, & also with my brother Mark & I buying our tickets to Spokane to see our dad for what we both understood would probably be the last time this side of our own deaths.  And also on that day, I wrote a lengthy post in memorial to Nicholas Hughes, a fisheries biologist formerly at University of Alaska Fairbanks who had taken his own life the previous week.  I hadn’t known him, but he was the son of the poets Sylvia Plath & Ted Hughes, & Plath especially had been an significant figure in my life.  Not for the right reasons, initially — but the post explains that: it was my effort to honor Mr. Hughes not as mere adjunct to his famous parents’ biographies — as many of the news accounts of his death seemed to view him — but for who he himself was & for what he brought to all the people in his life, who were mourning him that day.

(3) My dad knew I’d been having a hard time. He was at peace with his own approaching death, & wanted us to be too.  But beyond that, he wanted our happiness.  He was so glad when he heard I’d come out of the cave.  That was one of the very best things about it.

2. Lima beans against WAR

Wow, after the Summer of Hate experienced by the Anchorage LGBT & allied community over Anchorage Ordinance 2009-64, one almost forgets its political prelude, when then-Gov. Sarah Palin named Wayne Anthony Ross — widely known by his license-plate acronym as WAR — to succeed the disgraced Talis Colberg as Alaska’s Attorney General.  Alaska’s top LGBT blog Bent Alaska informs us that its post about WAR, “Palin’s AG Pick Called Gays “Degenerates” (3/29/09), was one of its two 2009 posts to go viral — & that was even before he compared gays to lima beans, a vegetable that he “hates” but still claimed he could represent if he were, say, the lawyer for “United Vegetable Growers.”  We lima beans were, needless to say, not favorably impressed.

Ross also had a history of biased & even misogynistic attitudes in relation to domestic violence, sexual assault, & violence against women; hostility to Alaska Native sovereignty & subsistence rights; a mediocre reputation as a practitioner of law amongst his fellow members of the Alaska Bar Association; & a pretty shaky attitude about executive branch ethics.  Bad news all around: it motivated me to spend a considerable amount of time & energy researching him, listening to legislative confirmation hearings, & writing a very long letter to legislators, which I posted on my blog — thus embarking upon a part-time career as an occasional political blogger.  I wrote a few other posts about WAR, & commented on other sites’ coverage of him (especially Bent Alaska), & celebrated with most of the rest of Alaska when the Alaska Legislature rejected him by a vote of 23 yeas to 35 nays — an unprecedented rejection of a governor’s cabinet pick.

It took a day or two for the Alaska Department of Law to remove WAR from its website. This screenshot was taken on April 16. The red X is mine.

3. Dad

I flew to Spokane with my brother Mark in late April to visit Dad.  We also saw my sister Mer & brother-in-law Julius, with whom my Dad lived, and my brother Dave drove over from Montana.  Ptery hitchhiked up, at my request, so I got to see him too.

Dad was so happy to have all of us there. He had a lot of energy too, considering how ill he was; but near the end, as we began to return to our homes, he took a turn for the worse, as if he’d been holding to life so that he could see us all before he left us to be with Mom.  She had died in November 2005.

I took this picture during that trip: Dad telling one of his wonderful stories about growing up in the lumber camps of eastern Oregon in the 1920s where Grandpa Claude ran locomotives on the Sumpter Valley Railroad for the Oregon Lumber Company; or about the bootleg operation he & his pals in the Army Air Corps had in England during WWII; or about how he met my mom when he was looking for a job, & guy at Ellingson Lumber Company suggested he head to Izee because the camp cook there had two beautiful daughters. It was the younger of the two daughters, my Auntie Pat, who actually introduced my parents after Dad gave her a ride into John Day, where Mom was then working.

That photo on the wall behind Dad was his favorite picture of Mom, taken by a professional photographer shortly before they met. When I look at this photo, I feel his yearning to be with her again.

I last saw him on April 29.  He died not quite a month later, on May 27.  My sister was with him.

I’ve been at peace about Dad’s death almost from the beginning, partly because the peace he himself had about it put me at peace, & partly because of what for lack of better words I will call the messages that came, three of them — two of them to other family members, & the last one to me. My message was from my mother, in the form of sunflowers.  It told me that Dad was with her, & they are both okay.

On July 12, as many family members as could make it, including me & my sister & brothers, all gathered together in Spokane to remember Mom & Dad & to celebrate all that they gave us.

I love you, Mom & Dad.

4. Anchorage Ordinance 2009-64

The Anchorage equal rights ordinance AO 2009-64 was introduced in the Anchorage Assembly on May 12, & thus was my career as an occasional political blogger made much less occasional.

AO 64 would have added sexual orientation and gender identity to the list of personal characteristics in Title 5, Anchorage’s equal rights code, which prohibits discrimination based on those characteristics in employment, housing, financial practices, education, and practices of the Municipality of Anchorage. The summer of 2009 in Anchorage featured a protracted period of public testimony at the Anchorage Assembly, with accompanying sign-waving and letter-writing both by ordinance supporters and those who opposed equal rights — led in particular by Jerry Prevo of the Anchorage Baptist Temple, who used “perverted” and other hate-terms to describe LGBT people, hence the name given the summer by commentator at the Anchorage Press: the Summer of Hate.

Identity Reports (1989) and One in 10 (1986)

From May to September, I wrote in the area of 60 posts about the ordinance, including a number that delved into the background & prevarications of its most vociferous opponent, Jerry Prevo.  I also testified in support of the ordinance on June 16 ( the second of five nights of public testimony). My testimony was based on two major research efforts in the 1980s for Identity, Inc. in which we documented the rampant discrimination in Anchorage & in Alaska based on sexual orientation. (Our research unfortunately did not cover discrimination on the basis of gender identity, which we knew little about at the time.)

The ordinance passed the Anchorage Assembly on August 11, 2009, but was vetoed the following week by Mayor Dan Sullivan — the third time in Anchorage history that equal protection for at least some LGBTQ people in Anchorage was first granted, & then stripped away again.

We weren’t real happy.

5. Friends & allies

The Summer of Hate wasn’t all hate & horror.  There was also some really cool stuff.

Cool stuff was people like Vic Fischer, Jane Angvik, & Arliss Sturgulewski testifying for the ordinance — people with just a teensy bit more credibility than, say, self-declared homophobic Bible-thumping Nazi “rascist” Eddie Burke.

Cool stuff was the huge number of people who turned out on the lawn of the Loussac Library to dance, blow bubbles, & hold signs upholding equal rights for all. The second week of public testimony, on which testimony was heard on two successive nights (June 16-17), was also the run-up to PrideFest, & every time I stepped out of the Assembly chambers for a breather, I felt like PrideFest was already in progress (once, that is, I got past the ABT redshirts & their hot dog tables).

I remember going out there one day & seeing how everyone — members of the LGBT community, & lots of non-LGBT folks including my nephew Miles & some of his friends — was celebrating equality & love for their fellow human beings, as sour-faced, red-shirted opponents stood nearby with their preprinted “Truth is Not Hate” signs agitating against equality.  I thought to myself, I’m so proud of my people — & I found myself for the first time consciously including in my people not just other LGBT people, but all the numerous non-LGBT allies who took it for granted that equality meant all of us.  And were as dumbfounded as we were at the “Truth is Not Hate” hate speech dropping out of the mouths of red-shirts both inside & outside the Assembly chambers.

On a personal level, I was lucky to make some new friendships.  John & Heather Aronno, both now of Alaska Commons, who I met a few days before the first public hearing, became my favorite folks to sit next to at Assembly public hearings: three bloggers, all in a row.

One of my other favorite new people was (& is) Janson Jones, whose fantastic photography at Floridana Alaskiana v2.5 (including of the ordinance battle) first drew my attention. He’s also an all-around cool guy who also became a new dad over the summer — & his photos of his precious daughter Aurelia are pretty wonderful too.

Thanks to the ordinance battle, I also got reaquainted with a friend from way back, Linda Kellen Biegel of Celtic Diva’s Blue Oasis, who I hadn’t seen in years. I’d known Phil Munger of Progressive Alaska through email, but not until this summer did I meet him in person. I’ve known M.E. Rider of Grrlzlist, E. Ross of Bent Alaska, & longtime activist (& maker of Equality Works buttons) Stef Gingrich for years, though it was only through the summer that we saw much of each other, since normally — yes, true story — I’m pretty much a hermit.

It was the ordinance that brought me out, for ill & for good. Despite the ordinance’s eventual fate — for me personally, thanks to people like these, it was mostly for good.

6. Palinesque

Somewhere in the middle of this was Sarah Palin’s announcement on July 3 that she would be resigning her position as Governor of Alaska.  I don’t blog that much about Palin — there are other Alaska bloggers who cover her quite thoroughly (thank goodness!) — but within a few days after her announcement, I got fed up with how the national mainstream media was uncritically passing along what I dubbed the 2 million dollar meme: Palin’s claim that $2,000,000 taxpayer (or rather, oil revenue dollars — this is Alaska, after all) had been spent on responding to ethical complaints against her. So I started taking it apart, & continued to do so over at total of six blog posts.

Wow did that raise traffic on my blog. I got nearly 1,800 hits on the first post of the series the first day after it was published; to date it’s gotten 5,530 hits, making it the most read post on my blog.  The pie chart I created for that post also proved to be pretty popular.

My stuff didn’t stop Palin from repeating her lie; but then, who expected that it would?  I’m no fool.  I just hoped the damn mainstream media would wake up & do the job they’re paid to do — so that bloggers like me wouldn’t have to do it for free. I am proud to say that my efforts, which Anchorage Daily News reporter Sean Cockerham picked up on, contributed to Linda Perez of the Governor’s Office being forced to admit there were errors in the hokey spreadsheet the Governor’s Office had cooked up in an incompetent attempt to back up Gov. Palinocchio’s claim.  Cockerham’s story (posted, as far as I know, only on the ADN’s Politics blog, but not as a full-fledged ADN story) said that Perez was going to follow up on further questions he’d brought up — I’ve seen no sign that she ever did, or that ADN itself cared.  I didn’t follow up further myself because by time Perez ‘fessed up as much as she did, I was in Spokane with my family remembering my mom & dad.  I have a feeling everyone who had actual responsibility (because, of course, they were more than mere “community organizers”) decided to drop it.  Gee. I wonder why.

7. I got a new couch

More properly, it’s a futon loveseat. Whatever.  I got it in August, & I’ve been vegging more happily (when I vege) ever since.  My cat loves it too.

8. An effort to up-end the Alaska Judicial Council

Other things were going on in my life too, of course.  But the political stuff stands out, because political blogging is not my great purpose in life — writing my own stuff is. And yet, I kept doing it.

And so it happens that in late August I learned of a lawsuit by which certain Alaska conservatives, most if not all of whom have ties to the so-called right-to-life movement, had filed suit nearly two months before — a fact not covered at all by Alaska’s mainstream media in spite of all of them having received the press release when the suit was filed — which would, if successful, overturn major provisions of the Alaska Constitution with regard to the selection & retention of state court judges. The lead attorney for the plaintiffs, James Bopp, Jr., is a big name: he has litigated similar issues elsewhere.  My own feeling is that this guy is more likely to have shopped around for the Alaskans who could be named as plaintiffs in this case, than that the plaintiffs shopped around for him.  His agenda appears to be a nationwide effort to politicize judicial selection, so that candidates can be selected through popular vote based on litmus test questions on hot-button issues (“What is your opinion on abortion?” — “What is your opinion on same-sex marriage?”), instead of being selected for their judicial integrity & knowledge of the law.

Through my job on staff of the Justice Center at University of Alaska Anchorage, which I’ve held since 1990, I’d become very familiar with Alaska’s judicial merit selection process, & have a lot of respect for it too, & for the quality of judges we have in this state.  Not perfect — but a helluva lot better than in states that have the politicized & often politically corrupt types of selection processes that Bopp seems to prefer.

So, I read about Miller v. Carpeneti, & I wrote about it, & I even took a day off work to attend the hearing before Judge John W. Sedwick in the U.S. District Court for the District of Alaska on September 11.   I’m not a lawyer, but I read through most of the briefings, & it didn’t seem to me that Bopp’s arguments held much water.  Judge Sedwick apparently agreed: he heard arguments from both sides & then dismissed the case. His opinion was published on September 15.

But we haven’t heard the last from Mr. Bopp: he’s appealed the case to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and, last I heard, the last briefs in the case must be filed no later than February 10, 2010. Oral arguments might then follow.  If Bopp fails at the Ninth Circuit, there’s every possibility he might appeal all the way up to the Supreme Court — he’s argued before them before, & won.

Meanwhile, I continue to wonder what in hell is wrong with the Alaska mainstream media, including our supposed paper-of-record, the Anchorage Daily News. First they all failed to follow up any further on Palin’s spreadsheet-of-hooey in support of her 2 million dollar meme-of-hooey; now it turns out they sat for nearly two months on a press release issued in early July about a lawsuit that could theoretically undermine our state constitution with regard to judicial selection.  Phil Munger at Progressive Alaska has drawn attention to numerous other instances in which the press has sat on its duff instead of investigating & reporting stuff that in some cases is right in front of their faces — for instance, the numerous lies propounded throughout Palin’s putative “memoir,” which the ADN has yet to write any review on.  What else are they sitting on?  How are we to have democracy that way, if the MSM isn’t doing its job?

Oh yeah, I remember now.  Bloggers like me are supposed to do that job nowadays.  In our spare time.  For free.

(All due respect to those reporters who as far as I can tell are doing their best to do their job — but are being shut down by management. I know you guys are out there.)

9. True Diversity Dinner

In the aftermath of Sullivan’s veto of AO 64, several of us bloggers who had been heavily involved in writing about it started talking about what we might do keep the flame alive.  Several of us met at lunchtime one day, & out of someone’s suggestion — I don’t remember whose — next thing you know, the True Diversity Dinner was born.  Its immediate impetus was that the upcoming Mayor’s Diversity Dinner, an event originally created during the administration of Mayor, now Senator, Mark Begich, had been renamed Mayor’s Unity Dinner by Mayor Dan Sullivan — the same guy who had just vetoed equal rights for Anchorage’s lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transfolk.

Instead of protesting, we decided to celebrate the rich diversity that the Mayor’s renaming of the dinner seemed designed to whitewash away. The True Diversity Dinner was our alternative, with the motto, “Because we all deserve a seat at the table.”  It was organized by the bloggers of Alaska Commons, Anchorage Won’t Discriminate, Bent Alaska, Floridana Alaskiana v2.5, Grrlzlist Alaska, Henkimaa, and SOSanchorage.net — but especially by John & Heather Aronno (Alaska Commons & SOSAnchorage.net), who I fear fell far behind in their studies thanks to the dinner.

But it was well worth it, right guys?  It was a tremendous event, with great speakers including my Assembly person Elvi Gray-Jackson, former Congressional candidate & longtime activist for Alaska Native rights Diane Benson, Rev. Marquita Pierre of the Center for Spiritual Healing, & radio host & blogger Shannyn Moore.

On top of that, I was honored to be the recipient of a True Diversity Award for Excellence in Online Media for coverage on my blog of the battle for the Anchorage equal rights ordinance.  Booyah!

10. Hilton workers

And more occasional politics.

When the True Diversity Dinner was first thought up, I hadn’t known that Mayor Sullivan’s Unity Dinner was booked for the Hilton Anchorage Hotel — which was (& still is) under boycott by its workers due to the bad faith practices of its management on orders of the Hilton’s owners, Kentucky-based Columbia Sussex Corporation.  A blog post by Shannyn Moore brought my attention to the fact that the Mayor’s Unity Dinner was also a union-busting dinner. I spent some time researching & writing about the labor dispute, & also attended the Hotel Workers Rising March from the Sheraton (which is now also under boycott due to similar management abuses of workers) to the Hilton two days after the True Diversity Dinner was held.

11. But I’m really about writing my own stuff, & that’s what I need to do now

I’d like to follow up on the hotel workers struggle, both at the Hilton & now the Sheraton.  I hope someone will.  But I can’t.  Here’s the deal.  There are people on this planet, there are people in this state, who thrive on political blogging, & what’s more excel at it.  I think I’m pretty damn good at it when I’m doing it — but I don’t thrive on it.  I start with enthusiasm, but over time… I wear down, my spirit flags, & pretty soon it winds right back into what I started this post with: depression & despair.

Midyear, in the post in which I claimed to be an occasional political blogger, I wrote,

The main reason I set up this site & blog was to help me get back into the flow of writing, of living my life as a writer.  And while writing about politics is writing — well, it’s not my writing, the stuff close to my heart.  Besides, I also work a full-time job.

Besides, sometimes the political stuff can really whack me out….

Another factor about how I handle political posts is that my style isn’t really amenable to fast-response writing, which is a feature of a lot of the best political bloggers I read.  But me, I like to think a lot about what I’m writing.  I like to go deep.  I like to be thorough & as comprehensive as I can.  I like to source all my references thoroughly.  I like — apparently — to write term papers.  (I sure never thought so when I was in college).  And that takes a long time.  Especially since, as previously mentioned, I work a full-time job.  And I also need a certain amount of down time or I am liable to put myself into a depression.

Sometimes, writing my own stuff actually feels like down time.  Reason: I said it above, it’s stuff that close to my heart.

So October saw me returning to writing — at that time, mostly background stuff or responses to stuff that I was reading in preparation for National Novel Writing Month 2009 (NaNoWriMo).  In looking back, I remember that True Diversity Dinner month — that is, September — also saw a bit of focus on writing: a couple of politically-oriented pieces about homophobia in science fiction, including one involving a publication I was writing a story for.  As it happened, I wasn’t far enough along on that story to meet the submission deadline of September 30 — so I picked up & polished an older thing instead.

And whaddaya know! in early October, I was told they wanted to publish it!  Which did much to make me feel like a writer again.

“Cold” was published on October 31, 2009 in Crossed Genres Issue #12, the LGBT issue, & you can still read it online there.  (When it’s no longer live there, & my contract with Crossed Genres permits, I will republish it right here at Henkimaa.com.)  “Cold” was also selected for inclusion in Crossed Genres‘ first-year anthology, which will include one story from each of the magazines first 12 issues.  I think it’s still on schedule for publication in February.

My username on NaNoWriMo: yksin.

November for me was the headlong hurry of NaNoWriMo.  As a result, as anyone who knows this blog saw, I didn’t do much blogging at all.  Such blog posts as got posted were mostly automatically generated “Daily Tweets” posts from my Twitter feed.  And I haven’t done much blogging since NaNoWriMo ended, either.

But whoa! I did a lot of writing — 51,607 words worth of it in November, making me a NaNoWriMo winner this year…. er… I mean, last year.  I was writing in the same story universe as “Cold,” which is about two young women on an extrasolar planet (that is, in another solar system) in the late stages of terraformation, which I’ve finally named Oikos — but my NaNovember 2009 writing was mostly about three centuries earlier in the timeline, before & around the time the ships that will eventually arrive at Oikos leave our solar system.  I called it Long Dark.

And a lot of it was background writing, rather than the story itself.  Because there is so damn much science that I need to have at least some kind of grasp on before I can do the story for real.

Though I came up with at least four stories over the course of the month that I know I can shape into good damn stuff.  And I also discovered that a character of mine from a supposedly completely unrelated project is, whaddaya know, an important historical figure for the society in Long Dark and Cold.  And since that character is very closely based on me… whoa, it’s an awful lot like, well, writing myself into history.  How cool is that?

(Or how egotistical?)

12. Since then…

… that is, during December — what have I been doing?  Not blogging, clearly. Except for one extensive rant about the leakage in various portions of my ceiling.  (Now cured, but the holes in the ceiling still need patching.)  Other than that, lots of vegging out, some writing, lots of reading — my latest topics have included atmospheric pressure, altitude sickness, & spacesuit design (background research for a story in the Cold universe) & how people with strabismus or amblyopia (the latter being the case for me), most of whom grow up stereoblind, might be able to develop stereo (binocular) vision.  Even at 50 years old. Which is what I am now.

50 years old, soon to be 51. And now I reflect on where I was at when I turned 50, early in 2009.  I was still in the cave.  But there were inklings of possibility.  I was still in the cave, for instance, when a confluence of ideas led me to decide how to go about my writing life, which included blogging & other forms of social media to get my stuff out there, instead of just through the old “send out craploads of query letters & get a shitload of rejection letters back before someone finally decides your stuff is good enough to publish” method that has been standard for a very bloody long time.  I knew I’d feel a lot more at ease finding my own audience through social media than going through the query letter drudgery.  It was still pretty remarkable that I made such a decision at such a time, though: social media? for someone who, at that point, was incapable & unmotivated to communicate at all?  But then, I knew the cave walls would dissolve sooner or later.  And they did.

I was also deciding, back in February of 2009 that age 50 was a good time to reach the milestone that I had apparently reached in the sorrows of that time.  The boy that I & Rozz-now-Ptery raised from age 9 was now 21 (& now, some months later, is actually 22), & is setting out on his own course in the world.  He’s in a residential job training program; I seem him some weekends when he comes into town.  Ptery is embarked on another course, living a nomadic life mostly off-the-grid in the Lower 48; we are no longer partners, however much we still love each other. So, I am single &, except for my cat & the boy’s dog, essentially alone.

When I was in college & took a class on Hinduism, I learned that the traditional life path for very pious Brahmin males was supposed to consist of several stages — four of them, I think — with the third stage being that of husband, father, & householder.  When the householding stage was over, these guys were apparently supposed to just up & lickety-split out to the forest to become religious ascetics.  Or something like that.

And when I turned 50, I thought: that’s it, I’m no longer a householder.  Well, I still have my apartment.  And I don’t plan to go live in the woods as an ascetic.  (Ptery’s path is a little closer to that, really.)  But I no longer have the responsibilities of a spouse/partner or of a parent to a minor child.  I can do what I want.  And what I need.

Which is to write.  But dang, it sure takes me a long time to get the politics out of my way to do it.

But I got to that point, & now I plan to continue.

That’s my story.

I’m such a cathead.

Related posts:

1. True Diversity Dinner 1 & 2: Video by Janson Jones
2. True Diversity Dinner video, part 3: Hotel workers, & Elvi's speech
3. True Diversity Dinner: September 25, 2009

Identity, Inc. is a GLBTA nonprofit in Anchorage, Alaska. www.identityinc.org

In the 1980s, the nonprofit organization Identity, Inc. conducted two major research efforts to profile Alaska’s lesbian and gay community and to document sexual orientation bias in Alaska. The studies which resulted have gained relevance again with the introduction in the Anchorage Assembly in 2009 of ordinance AO 2009-64:

• One in Ten: A Profile of Alaska’s Lesbian & Gay Community by the volunteers of Identity, Inc. (1986)
• Identity Reports: Sexual Orientation Bias in Alaska by Melissa S. Green and Jay K. Brause (1989)

To make the studies more easily available, Identity has granted permission to scan the documents in and make them available on the Internet and to the Anchorage Assembly. Find both reports here.

Identity Reports (1989) and One in 10 (1986)

Some of the relevant findings from both reports:

Of the 734 respondents to One in 10 (statewide survey in 1985):

• 61% reported having been victimized by violence and harassment while in Alaska because of their sexual orientation;
• 39% reported having suffered from discrimination in employment, housing, and loans/credit; and
• 33% reported having suffered from discrimination because of sexual orientation from services and institutions.

From the “Closed Doors” component of Identity Reports (based on a 1987 survey):

• 31 percent of the 191 employers in the survey said they would either not hire, promote, or would fire someone they had reason to believe was homosexual.
• 20 percent of the 178 landlords in the survey said they would either not rent to or would evict someone they had reason to believe was homosexual.

From the “Prima Facie” component of Identity Reports (based on interviews and documentary evidence through 1987)

• 84 actual instances of antigay bias, discrimination, harassment, or violence (including three murders) were recorded involving 30 men and 21 women in the Municipality of Anchorage (64 cases), the City and Borough of Juneau (4), the Fairbanks North Star Borough (6), and 10 other localities in Alaska (10).
• Victims were predominately gay men or lesbians, but also included heterosexuals who were erroneously assumed to be gay or lesbian.
• Of the 42 cases of employment, housing, public accommodations, and business practices discrimination from personal (as opposed to documentary) testimony, 32 were evaluated by a former intake investigator with the Alaska Human Rights Commission as being jurisdictional under AS 18.80 (Alaska’s human rights statutes) if AS 18.80 had included “sexual orientation” as a protected class.

As I testified before the Anchorage Assembly on June 16, 2009, other testimony that had already been brought forward of actual cases of discrimination shows that sexual orientation discrimination, as well as gender identity discrimination, is still going on today. And I said that only two days into the testimony, which ended up taking up several hours over six different Assembly meetings, and including not only testimony from lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, and transsexual or transgendered people who had been discriminated against, but also testimony from ordinance opponents, many of whom made clear their prejudice and intention to discriminate. In fact, on the same night I testified, one man confessed to having physically assaulted a man who had (nonviolently) propositioned him — violently enough that he put the man in the hospital. And ordinance opponents applauded him!

Yet on August 11, 2009, in voting against the anti-discrimination ordinance AO 2009-64, two Assembly members — Chris Birch and Bill Starr — claimed that they could find no sign of “invidious” or “widespread” discrimination in Anchorage. Another Assembly member — Dan Coffey — constructed a resolution (which failed) for a task force to study the issue further, apparently because he also felt there wasn’t enough data. (Or not enough of the sort he wanted, perhaps.) Assembly Chair Debbie Ossiander described how she sought out data on sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination from the Anchorage Equal Rights Commission and the Alaska Human Rights Commission, only to find that there wasn’t any — because neither characteristic was covered by existing law. To Ossiander, that seemed to indicate that there was no data on discrimination — despite my testimony; despite my having provided every member of the Assembly with copies on CD of both reports, as well as a hard copy for each of them of the “Prima Facie” component of Identity Reports; and despite the testimony of other Anchorage residents on discrimination that they had actually experienced.

In this willful ignorance of data and testimony which had been placed before them, these four Assembly members were echoing much of the testimony of ordinance opponents, many of whom made the same claim: that “there is no evidence of discrimination.”  Can you imagine how crazymaking it was on June 16 to hear at least four or five people testify that — after I had just provided such testimony?  After other Anchorage citizens had just testified on the discrimination they had personally experienced?  This isn’t just them not having the facts.  This is them having the facts and intentionally refusing to look at them. Sort of like how some of Galileo’s contemporaries refused to look into his telescope to see the planets and moons that he had discovered.  There were even some of them who did look — and then blithely claimed that they had seen nothing: because it didn’t fit their preconceived notions and closed-system ideologies.

Take a look at the data for yourself.

In the meantime, thank you again to the seven Assembly members — Patrick Flynn, Sheila Selkregg, Jennifer Johnston, Mike Gutierrez, Matt Claman, Elvi Gray-Jackson, Harriet Drummond — who voted with the evidence, and passed an ordinance to prohibit sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination in Anchorage.

Call them and write them emails.  Let them know how much you appreciate them.

Don’t forget to call and write to Mayor Sullivan too.  Let him know how much you hope he, too, will go with the evidence.

Posts on this site which discuss data from the two Identity studies:

• 5/13/09. “Channel 11 interview, part 2 (the full story).” Both the Identity Reports write-up, and the full story, of my being fired from the Sears Mall branch of the Book Cache bookstore in 1984 after a coworker told my employers I was a lesbian.
• 6/2/09. “My letter to the Anchorage Assembly.”
• 8/7/09. “Delay by ‘task force’: My testimony to the Anchorage Assembly.” Text of my June 16, 2009 testimony.

Follow the tags to other posts at Henkimaa.com about One in Ten and Identity Reports.

Related posts:

1. Anchorage’s LGBT Discrimination Survey
2. My letter to Mayor Sullivan: Please let AO 64 stand
3. Identity Reports & One in Ten — now online!

Identity Reports (1989) and One in 10 (1986)

I will be testifying about these studies at tonight’s Anchorage Assembly meeting. They are are online by following this link: http://www.henkimaa.com/identity/.

Update (6/17/09)

I’ve turned this into a “sticky post” so it’ll stay on top for awhile, to make it easier for people to find the study documents. Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll be writing some additional posts highlighting some of the important findings from this studies.  Keep tuning in!

Meanwhile, follow the tags to other posts about One in Ten and Identity Reports.

Update (7/14/09)

Obviously I haven’t yet written those additional posts.  I still plan to, but time being what it is….

Meanwhile, I’m going to unsticky this post, & create a different top-level sticky post with more current topics.

Related posts:

1. Identity Reports & One in Ten — now online!
2. "There's no sign of discrimination" — uh, yes there is
3. My letter to Mayor Sullivan: Please let AO 64 stand

Identity Reports (1989) and One in 10 (1986)

You’ve heard about them — or maybe you haven’t — but now you have. Anyway: now they’re online!

As I wrote in my June 2 letter to the Anchorage Assembly:

It’s been pointed out that the government maintains no statistics on sexual orientation discrimination because it’s currently not illegal to discriminate on that basis. But it’s not entirely correct that there are no statistics at all. I was part of two research efforts in the 1980s to document the sexual orientation bias in Alaska. I was principal writer for One in 10: A Profile of Alaska’s Lesbian & Gay Community (Anchorage, AK: Identity, 1986), which reported on the results of a survey of 734 lesbian, gay, and bisexual Alaskans on a survey of 100 questions on various aspects of our lives, including experience of discrimination, harassment, and violence. I was coauthor, with Jay Brause, of the second, Identity Reports: Sexual Orientation Bias in Alaska (Anchorage, AK: Identity, 1989), which comprised three papers: “Coming Out: Issues Surrounding Disclosure of Sexual Orientation” (Green), based primarily on data from One in 10; “Closed Doors: Sexual Orientation Bias in the Anchorage Housing and Employment Markets” (Brause), based on a randomly selected, anonymous survey of 191 employers and 178 landlords in Anchorage; and “Prima Facie: Documented Cases of Sexual Orientation Bias in Alaska” (Green), which presented 84 cases from interviews, newspaper accounts, court records, and other documents of violence, harassment, and discrimination in Alaska on the basis of actual or assumed sexual orientation from 1975 to 1987. Copies of both reports are available in area libraries, including the Loussac and the UAA/APU Consortium Library.

But now no need to trot down to the library: just click through this link: http://www.henkimaa.com/identity/. Tell all your friends!

The files are quite big, by the way: because the original wordprocessing files weren’t available, they all had to be scanned in as images, so each document is howsoever many pages of full page images. Always a problem. I’ve broken down Identity Reports into its constituent papers too, but even then — “Prima Facie” is a big document.  Give it a try, if many people have problems I’ll see what I can do.  If you have a problem downloading, post a comment on this post, or on my “Equality” page.

A big thank you to Identity, Inc., the original sponsor of the research.  Although I wrote a lot of this stuff, they held the copyright — but they want people to know about this work, which is so very relevant to our current efforts to finally achieve legal equality in Anchorage.  Hopefully they’ll have copies posted to their website soon too.

Related posts:

1. Announcing the Alaska LGBT Community Survey
2. My letter to Mayor Sullivan: Please let AO 64 stand
3. Anchorage’s LGBT Discrimination Survey

Support Equality Works!

I finally completed my letter to the Anchorage Assembly today.  It went to all Assembly members as well as to Acting Mayor Matt Claman.  (Come to think of it, maybe I should send a copy to Mayor-elect Dan Sullivan too.  Whaddaya think?)

We’re one week away from ordinance testimony & possibly an Assembly vote. It’s time to write those letters to the Anchorage Assembly.  I’ve done mine, now it’s your turn!

Your letter doesn’t need to be as long and involved as mine — I am famously wordy.  There are some great suggestions for writing a letter by Equality Works’ Tiffany McClain at this post at Bent Alaska.  Equality Works has also put together an excellent summary of facts about the ordinance which address some of the common misconceptions (or downright fabrications) that people who are fighting equal rights are bringing up. Read it here.  Need Assembly contact info?  Follow this link.  There’s more info about the Anchorage Municipal Assembly at the Assembly’s website.

Letter in support of
Anchorage equal rights ordinance,
AO 2009-64

My name is Melissa Green. I have been a resident of Anchorage since 1982 (excepting a three-year period in Seattle), am an 18-year employee of the Justice Center at University of Alaska Anchorage, and have lived in Assembly District 4 since 2001.

I am writing in support of the proposed ordinance AO 2009-64 which would add “sexual orientation” and “veteran status” to those classes already included in Title V, Anchorage’s equal rights code.

I have been following the debate on the ordinance closely, and am disturbed by the misinformation being propounded about the ordinance by certain parties. For example, there have been efforts by Rev. Jerry Prevo and the Anchorage Baptist Temple, both through a letter faxed to “community leaders” on May 15 and through the website sosanchorage.com (and related television advertising) to confuse Anchorage residents about the definition of the term “sexual orientation” — both the common legal definition, and the definition actually contained in the ordinance. In both letter and website, it has been suggested that passage of the ordinance will somehow grant privileges to practitioners of a whole host of sexual practices listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th edition (DSM-IV), which in fact have nothing to do with the ordinance and which are in some cases — for example, pedophilia and necrophilia — illegal under Alaska statutes and federal law. (A bill outlawing zoophilia, also known as bestiality, is currently under consideration in the Alaska Legislature, and has already passed the House.) The letter, website, and ads also appear to be at the root of frantic claims that passage of the ordinance will somehow lead to the Boy Scouts being forced to hire homosexual scoutmasters, in spite of a U.S. Supreme Court decision which absolutely grants the Boy Scouts, as a private organization, the right to discriminate (under constitutional “freedom of association” guarantees); and similar claims that churches will be forced to hire homosexual Sunday school teachers, in spite of religious exemptions to the contrary that are built into the ordinance (not to mention the Constitution).

I understand that you as a member of the Assembly are under considerable pressure from the public opinion against the ordinance based on these misleading, red herring arguments. I urge you to base your vote on facts, rather than the false issues that have been raised.

Another common misconception that I’ve heard bandied about is that there’s no need for the ordinance because there’s no proven history of discrimination in Alaska or Anchorage based on sexual orientation. This is false. I myself have experienced job discrimination when I was fired from an Anchorage bookstore in 1984 for being a lesbian — an incident about which I was interviewed on Channel 11 News, and also wrote about in detail on my blog (http://www.henkimaa.com/2009/05/13/channel-11-interview-part-2/). I know of other cases that are more recent, and I hope some of the victims of that discrimination will overcome their fears of suffering further discrimination and will testify on June 9.

Identity Reports (1989) and One in 10 (1986)

It’s been pointed out that the government maintains no statistics on sexual orientation discrimination because it’s currently not illegal to discriminate on that basis. But it’s not entirely correct that there are no statistics at all. I was part of two research efforts in the 1980s to document the sexual orientation bias in Alaska. I was principal writer for One in 10: A Profile of Alaska’s Lesbian & Gay Community (Anchorage, AK: Identity, 1986), which reported on the results of a survey of 734 lesbian, gay, and bisexual Alaskans on a survey of 100 questions on various aspects of our lives, including experience of discrimination, harassment, and violence. I was coauthor, with Jay Brause, of the second, Identity Reports: Sexual Orientation Bias in Alaska (Anchorage, AK: Identity, 1989), which comprised three papers: “Coming Out: Issues Surrounding Disclosure of Sexual Orientation” (Green), based primarily on data from One in 10; “Closed Doors: Sexual Orientation Bias in the Anchorage Housing and Employment Markets” (Brause), based on a randomly selected, anonymous survey of 191 employers and 178 landlords in Anchorage; and “Prima Facie: Documented Cases of Sexual Orientation Bias in Alaska” (Green), which presented 84 cases from interviews, newspaper accounts, court records, and other documents of violence, harassment, and discrimination in Alaska on the basis of actual or assumed sexual orientation from 1975 to 1987. Copies of both reports are available in area libraries, including the Loussac and the UAA/APU Consortium Library.

I have attached a copy of the executive summary of the latter report to this email for your information. Some of the relevant findings from both reports:

Of the 734 respondents to One in 10 (surveyed in 1985):

• 61 percent reported having been victimized by violence and harassment while in Alaska because of their sexual orientation, predominately verbal abuse but also including threats, police harassment, property damage, and physical violence;
• 39 percent reported having suffered from discrimination because of sexual orientation in employment, housing, and loans/credit; and
• 33 percent reported having suffered from discrimination because of sexual orientation from services and institutions.
• 23 percent believed that they would be fired or laid off if their current employer or supervisor learned of their sexual orientation.
• 53 percent agreed with the statement that “I feel that my community is unsafe to live in as an openly gay man or lesbian.”

From the “Closed Doors” component of Identity Reports (based on a 1987 survey):

• 31 percent of the 191 employers who responded to the survey said they would either not hire, promote, or would fire someone they had reason to believe was homosexual.
• 20 percent of the 178 landlords who responded to the survey said they would either not rent to or would evict someone they had reason to believe was homosexual.

From the “Prima Facie” component of Identity Reports (based on interviews and documentary evidence through 1987)

• 84 actual instances of antigay bias, discrimination, harassment, or violence (including three murders) were recorded involving 30 men and 21 women in the Municipality of Anchorage (64 cases), the City and Borough of Juneau (4), the Fairbanks North Star Borough (6), and 10 other localities in Alaska (10).
• Victims were predominately gay men or lesbians, but also included heterosexuals who were erroneously assumed to be gay or lesbian.
• Of the 42 cases of employment, housing, public accommodations, and business practices discrimination from personal (as opposed to documentary) testimony, 32 were evaluated by a former intake investigator with the Alaska Human Rights Commission as being jurisdictional under AS 18.80 (Alaska’s human rights statutes) if AS 18.80 had included “sexual orientation” as a protected class.

Both One in 10 and Identity Reports were conducted by a nonprofit under grants from the Chicago Resource Foundation (with additional grant monies, in the case of One in 10, from the Anchorage Department of Health and Human Services) because, failing the ability of the government to compile statistics, it was only through private efforts that sexual orientation discrimination in Alaska could be documented. Results of Identity Reports were presented in 1989 to the Anchorage Equal Rights Commission, and played a role in the 1992-1993 equal rights ordinance battle. But its findings have been ignored and forgotten since, as have those of One in 10.

Regrettably, there is no similar documentation for the last 20 years of the sexual orientation bias and discrimination in Anchorage. But in spite of 20 years of growth in public tolerance and acceptance of lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transgender/transsexual people, discrimination still occurs, and equal protection in Anchorage from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is still warranted.

I ask you to vote to extend the same protections to us, as are already extended to Anchorage citizens on the basis of race, color, sex, religion, national origin, marital status, age, and physical or mental disability.

Thank you.

Sincerely,
Melissa S. Green

Attachment: A Summary of Identity Reports: Sexual Orientation Bias in Alaska [executive summary] by Jay K. Brause and Melissa S. Green, 1989 [filename ID-reports-exec-sum.pdf]

Related posts:

1. My letter to Mayor Sullivan: Please let AO 64 stand
2. Identity Reports & One in Ten — now online!
3. Delay by "task force": My testimony to the Anchorage Assembly

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