Max Blumenthal in Anchorage: click on picture for full-size poster with details on where & when you can hear him during his visit.

Thanks to some problems with a print job I was needed to help solve, my lunch yesterday was late, & to compound frustration it was interrupted by a fire drill, which meant having to shut down my computer, do a quick pack-up, & join everyone else in the office — faculty, staff, students — in a walk in the rain.

But the worst of it was that it interrupted me in my reading: having learned at Phil Munger’s blog Progressive Alaska about the upcoming visit to Anchorage of Max Blumenthal, & further detail about the same at some of the other Alaska progressive blogs like Celtic Diva’s Blue Oasis, What Do I Know, Immoral Minority, and the Mudflats, I decided to check further into his recently published book, Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party. [Ref #1-6]

Palin's in here too, in case you were wondering.

Well, lunchtime wasn’t enough to get the full skinny out of what is something of a fat book (416 pages in hardback)  I ended up buying the book for my Kindle.  Didn’t have my Kindle with me, actually — but I did have my iPod Touch, with the Kindle for iPhone app, so after work found me reading at the bus stop at Prov Hospital, then on the bus, & then some more over dinner.  Per my Kindle, I’m now 14 percent of my way through the book at locations 1110-1119. That tells you a lot, doesn’t it? Sorry, Kindles don’t come with page numbers (I sure wish they did).  Okay, so another way of saying it: I’m at the beginning of chapter 8, “The Killer and the Saint,” which is about to describe to me how serial killer Ted Bundy got some last-minute attention prior to his execution in January 1989 by blaming his sociopathic ways on an addiction to pornography, & by seeking absolution from the father-confessor he’d chosen, Focus on the Family leader James Dobson.

That chapter should be interesting.  Back in the ’80s I’d read at least two or three books about Bundy, & I remember the date of his execution well — I was in Seattle at the time, where a lot of people were discussing him that day, especially women who lived in King County when Bundy was raping & murdering women there. Having read those books about Bundy, having read 7 chapters of this book already, I know even without having yet read chapter 8 that Bundy’s confession to Dobson was nothing more than self-aggrandizing publicity on both their parts. Bundy might claim to have been “born again” as a Christian on Florida’s death row, but best I can figure in all I’ve read about sociopaths of his ilk he had no soul to save: it had been, for whatever reasons, lost long ago — perhaps as a result of the abuse he himself had experienced as a child.  Dobson might be claiming to be witnessing Bundy’s salvation, but best I can see is he was either (1) a chump; or (2) delighted to have Bundy’s assistance in promoting his distorted idea of Christianity, which itself is marked by a promotion of child abuse (what Dobson called “discipline”).  Maybe both.  Y’think?

I hadn’t actually known before starting this book that James Dobson got his start as a child psychologist & was even a professor of pediatrics at USC School of Medicine in the late ’60s/early ’70s.  Then in 1970 he published his child-rearing manual, Dare to Discipline — his answer to the “permissive” child-rearing advice of Dr. Benjamin Spock.  Blumenthal quotes from Dobson’s book:

A little bit of pain goes a long way for a young child…. However, the spanking should be of sufficient magnitude to cause the child to cry genuinely.  After the emotional ventilation, the child will often want to crumple to the breast of his parent, and he should be welcomed with open, warm, loving arms. [Ref #6]

Wow.  If my partner & I had followed that advice in disciplining the already-abused boy who came to live with us at age 9, guess what would have happened to us?  We’d've been charged with child abuse. And rightly so.

Blumenthal makes a case that Dobson’s beliefs about corporal punishment extends into his views about — & indeed the overall Christianist view about — the Christianist believer’s relationship to (their version of) God. Blumenthal quotes from Philip Greven’s book Spare the Child: The Religious Roots of Punishment and the Psychological Impact of Physical Abuse:

The persistent ‘conservatism’ of American politics and society is rooted in large part in the physical violence done to children…. The roots of this persistent tile towards hierarchy, enforced order, and absolute authority — so evident in Germany earlier in this century and in the radical right in American today — are always traceable to aggression against children’s wills and bodies, to the pain and the suffering they experience long before they, as adults, confront the complex issues of the polity, the society, and the world. [Ref #6]

Blumenthal points out that many Christianist leaders — including Dobson — were themselves subjected to corporal punishment and/or outright physical abuse as children.

Now, this doesn’t surprise me.  I’ve felt for a long time that the God worshiped by Christianists was your basic big bully.  And that the fear of God’s bullying punishments & the threat of eternal damnation were the only things that many Christianists felt could keep them in line — if indeed they did keep them in line.  When you’re taught from babyhood that “responsibility” is no more than blind obedience under the threat of a slapping hand or a belt or a “board of education” (which I remember seeing in use two or three times in junior high: yes, teacher-administered corporal punishment with a wooden paddle was allowed in public schools when I was a kid), what kind of responsibility do kids really learn?  Do they learn the internal strength needed to make truly moral decisions? Or are they merely running scared from Mom’s or Dad’s or the (so-called) Lord God Almighty’s whiphand?

People in Anchorage probably won’t be too surprised, either, to learn that at least as of 1985, even preschool children in the Anchorage Baptist Temple-affiliated Anchorage Christian Schools were subject to corporal punishment. From an October 1985 story in the Anchorage Daily News:

The Rev. Jerry Prevo announced Thursday that pre-school children will no longer be paddled at the Anchorage Christian School following Wednesday’s sentencing of a school employee for child abuse.

Prevo, whose Anchorage Baptist Temple runs the school, said corporal punishment will no longer be used on the pre-schoolers, “based on the fact it’s hard to spank and not take a chance of accidentally bruising.”

“When that happens, it puts our employees in an awkward position, and it’s not worth the hassle,” Prevo said.

Mary Lou Love, 52, a secretary with the school, was given a six-month suspended sentence for bruising a 2-year-old child’s bottom. Love swatted the child, Jennifer Wheeler, three times with a wooden paddle last May when she refused to eat.

… During her sentencing hearing, Love testified that she had been deeply disturbed over the incident and said that she never meant to bruise the child. She said she spanked her only because her job required her to do so.

“I would not have swatted her if I’d knew it would have bruised,” she said, adding that she will never paddle another child even if it means losing her job.

In 1983, Love’s supervisor, Robert Moreland, was charged with bruising the bottom of a 2-year-old child who also refused to eat….

Prevo said the bruising incidents were isolated cases.

“The parents sign a permission slip knowing that corporal punishment will be used.

“We’ve had as many as 800 kids a day and in the 13 years (the school has been open) and we’ve had two incidents. We would think that’s pretty good.”

He said corporal punishment will continue to be used at the grade school, junior and senior high school levels. [Ref #7]

That was, of course, 24 years ago, in 1985 — I have no idea if Anchorage Christian Schools still hits older-than-preschool kids with wooden paddles for serious crimes against the Lord Bully Almighty like refusing to eat. It is, after all, possible that ACS has learned over the years using wooden paddles on older kids is just as much of a “hassle” as hitting two-year-olds with them. But then again… maybe not.

(Did I say I remembered seeing wooden paddles in use in my junior high days? Much more do I remember hearing them: the hard loud thwack of wood against a kid’s behind, & the kid crying out with each swat. None of the cases involved a kid having been violent. No, only the teacher was violent. This was in 1971–72. It’s a practice I hope the Columbia Falls, Montana school system has dropped long since.)

People in Anchorage will possibly also not be surprised that ABT’s pastor Jerry Prevo, like James Dobson, grew up in a household where incidents of abuse occurred:

Born Jan. 12, 1945 in Oak Ridge, Tenn., Jerry Prevo grew up as the eldest of two sons to a pious mother and an alcoholic father who worked at a nuclearfuel processing plant.

One of his earliest childhood memories is rooted in a latenight argument between his mother and father when he was 3. Prevo’s father was in a drunken rage and threatened to kill the boy to get back at the mother.

She retreated, dragging young Jerry across the family bed to safety. He stills bears a scar on his chin from hitting the bedstead in the frantic escape effort.

His father, Prevo says, was abusive only when drunk. When sober, he taught Jerry how to hunt and fish and other fatherson things. During Prevo’s high school years, his father tempered his drinking somewhat and life was a little easier at home.

But when Prevo went away to college, the drinking began again and his father eventually deserted the family for a barmaid.

In 1976, the day he received a letter from his son in Alaska that spoke of how he still loved him despite the drinking, Prevo’s father hung himself in a shower stall.

Prevo speaks openly about the alcoholism, the abuse, the desertion and the suicide. But the arrival at his decision to reveal the final chapter of his father’s life, which he did to his congregation upon returning from his father’s funeral, was not easy.

“The biggest problem I had,” he says, “was the pride factor. I asked myself, “Are you going to share that with others? . . . Well, no one is perfect and sometimes people expect perfection in a pastor and get hurt . . . But it was an example that everything doesn’t always go my way, that people don’t always speak highly of me, that I have personal problems that everyone else has.”

His childhood experiences hardened many of his current beliefs, including total abstention from alcohol. [Ref #8]

What really strikes me here is the apparent assumption on Prevo’s part that his father’s alcoholism, abuse, desertion, suicide — somehow had something to do with Prevo’s lack of perfection: as if the young Jerry Prevo was somehow at fault for his father’s imperfections.  For imperfections that, in fact, harmed Prevo’s mother & Prevo himself.

This isn’t just irony — although it is that, too.  But mainly: his is a common reaction in people who have been abused as children: they take the responsibility for the parents’ abuse of them upon themselves. They blame themselves: something must be wrong with them for their parent to hurt them so.

And then, all too often, unless someone helps them to learn differently, they grow up to pass that belief on, in word & in deed: the cycle of violence.  Some of them even teach that it’s what God wants.

What a horrible teaching.  What a horrible God. But this is the God Jerry Prevo, as much as James Dobson, calls upon us to believe in.

Sorry, but a Big Bully Child Abuser in the Sky is not anyone I want to worship.

I have more to say about what I’m learning from Max Blumenthal’s book, but it’s way past midnight & time for sleep — so it’ll have to wait.

But before I shut my laptop & shut my eyes, I want to reiterate what the other folks have been saying: Max Blumenthal is coming to Anchorage this weekend, & you have a chance to see & hear him. Phil Munger has the full lowdown on where he’ll be. [Ref #9] And if you’ve got a spare dime, please consider donating using the PayPal link on Phil’s site to help cover costs of Mr. Blumenthal’s plane ticket up here!

References

1. 9/21/09. “Max Blumenthal Returns to the Land of Queen Esther” by Phil Munger (Progressive Alaska).
2. 9/18/09. “Now THAT’S what I call some down-home ‘indoctrination’!” by Linda Kellen Biegel (Celtic Diva’s Blue Oasis).
3. 9/21/09. “Frank Schaeffer on Evangelicals – Max Blumenthal in Anchorage Next Weekend to Tell us Personally” by Steve Aufrecht (What Do I Know?).
4. 9/21/09. “Help Max Blumenthal receive the Alaska Bloggers bump” by Gryphen (Immoral Minority).
5. 9/21/09. “Max Blumenthal is Comin’ to Town!” by AK Muckraker (The Mudflats).
6. Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party by Max Blumenthal (Nation Books, 2009).
7. 10/18/1985. “Children won’t be paddled” by Kim Rich (Anchorage Daily News, p. C1).
8. 10/30/1986. “No middle ground” by Andrew Perala (Anchorage Daily News, Lifestyles section p. 1).
9. 9/18/09. “Max Blumenthal in Anchorage Next Week” by Phil Munger (Progressive Alaska).

Related:

1. Prevo’s red herrings
2. No Questions, Questions (poem)
3. Prevo’s devil masks

Jerry Prevo on my TV. June 21 Father's Day sermon at the Anchorage Baptist Temple: lots of damning things to say about homosexuals. As usual.

I’m not sure this is it in final, but as I just told a friend, poetry is nothing if not full of variants.  (As I’m sure all the poets of the Bible full well knew.) So, call this version 1 if you like; I’ll see if there are any others.

No Questions, Questions

The man, smug in his pulpit,
has no questions.
He never has questions
except the rhetorical
question always followed
by his ready knowing answer read
from the book at his right hand:
the book at the right hand of God,
the book — the right hand of the judge
who judges the quick and the dead
to damn whoever fits
the words of his ready
answers read from that book.

I have questions…
What makes one so certain?
How does one live inside a closed book
behind closed doors in a windowless room
surrounded by a great great wall
blocking off all the horizons,
everything known, counted, familiar?
How does one live on a flat, flat Earth,
a horizonless planet where nothing new
ever walks, is seen, is encountered?
How does one breathe there?
How does one breathe where there are only
two kinds of people, the damned and the damning? —
and the smug man in his pulpit smiles,
knowing himself as the latter,
casting the former to flames,
smiling to serve such a God
who made things this way.

Somewhere beyond a horizon
on a round Earth set among stars
crafted by illimitable god,
I catch my breath.

Melissa S. Green
Tuesday, 23 June 2009
Anchorage, AK

My first brand-spanking new poem in awhile. Inspired by — hard to guess, innit? Same place, same circumstances, same ideologues — just a different year — as what drew “Sermon” out of me in 1992. Most of this was written yesterday on People Mover bus #36 during the long construction-interfered-with journey from UAA to the Loussac Library. Tip o’ the nib to James P. Carse whose The Religious Case Against Belief has been a necessary friend these past months.

Related:

1. Sermon (a poem)
2. Does Anyone Beat Your Heart for You (poem)
3. Religion v. belief

Christianist is a term I first heard from Atlantic Monthly blogger Andrew Sullivan — a useful term that to me conveys not Christiantity as religion, but rather Christianity as political ideology.  Sullivan, who is gay, Catholic, & conservative — but not a “war of values” social conservative — does not feel any more represented by the religious right than my friend Dianne O’Connell of Immanuel Presbyterian Church does; in an essay written for Time magazine, Sullivan writes, “let me suggest that we take back the word Christian while giving the religious right a new adjective: Christianist. Christianity, in this view, is simply a faith. Christianism is an ideology, politics, an ism.”

Hence, a handy term to distinguish the politics of Jerry Prevo & his followers & allies — the ideological contemporaries & descendants of the Moral Majority — from other forms of Christianity found in Alaska, the U.S., & the world.

Related:

1. Debbie Ossiander & the Christianist filibuster
2. The new Carrie Prejean?
3. James Dobson’s God is a child abuser, & so is Jerry Prevo’s

Assembly Chair Debbie Ossiander

Into my email inbox about an hour ago came the following Anchorage Daily News breaking news item:

Breaking News

Gay-rights ordinance appears doomed

The prospect of a gay rights ordinance passing look dim as Anchorage Assembly Chairwoman Debbie Ossiander says she will continue to allow testimony from anyone who wants to speak on the issue, effectively preventing passage of the ordinance under the watch of a supportive city administration.

If you click through to the story now, you’ll find that it’s been retitled “Prospects dimming for gay-rights ordinance” — a renaming which occured about 11:54 AM between me posting my first comment on the article (at 11:53:39 AM)  & my second (at 11:55:03 AM).

The story is by ADN reported Megan Holland — the same person whose earlier story, entitled “Residents demand to air views on gay-rights amendment”, prompted me earlier today to cancel my electronic subscription to the ADN.  Why? Because the story failed to make any mention whatsoever of the long-brewing issue of nonresidents from Mat-Su being permitted to testify — just more evidence that the ADN is falling down on the job when it comes to actually investigating news stories instead of acting as mere stenographerers for whatever they’re being told by the people they talk with.

You might recall that I wrote a post about the Outside influence issue last week.  Fascinatingly, finally now in this doomsaying article, Megan Holland finally mentions the problem — the first time I’ve seen it mentioned in the ADN (unless I missed something — & I am willing to be corrected).  Holland writes:

Opponents of the measure have been organized, showing up by the hundreds, bringing in Christian youth groups, and busing in churchgoers from Mat-Su, some of whom work in Anchorage.

Wow, finally some acknowledgment from the city’s newspaper-of-record!

A few days ago a friend of mine wrote to the Assembly objecting to permitting the testimony of non-Anchorage residents.  He received a reply back from Assembly Chair Debbie Ossiander, which he shared with me.  The pertinent parts (emphasis added):

The decisions on how best to conduct the hearings are made by the chair. I have taken into consideration the requests to limit testimony to residents of the municipality and have decided against that for several reasons. Many, many of the people who work and play in our town live in the Valley. Anchorage is a true regional city in the sense that its impact extends beyond its physical boundaries in many ways.

And so therefore those people who work & play in Anchorage but do not pay Anchorage taxes or vote in Anchorage elections should have the right to influence our elected representatives to permit discrimination against Anchorage citizens?

Try it this way:

Many, many of the people who work and play in our country live in Canada or Mexico, or hold green cards from other nations. The United States is a true regional power — in fact a world power — in the sense that its impact extends beyond its physical boundaries in many ways.

So let’s let Canadian, Mexican, & other foreign citizens come testify before Congress to influence U.S. lawmakers’ decisions about how to govern U.S. citizens!

I think not.

Then there’s the other issue the article mentions:

Some backers of the proposed law have accused opponents of filibustering — packing the hearing with opposition voices to stall the proposal until it falls in Sullivan’s term. Ossiander said she has suspected that at times but she has also heard very impassioned testimony that convinces her the issue is deeply important to people.

Jerry Prevo at Wednesday evening's Anchorage Baptist Temple picnic on the Loussac Library lawn. Prevo canceled ABT services that night in order that ABT members could attend the Assembly hearing.

Sure: the same impassioned testimony heard over & over from the same small subset of the Anchorage (& let’s not forget the Mat-Su) population, repeating the same talking points over & over again ad nauseum from the filibustering Christianists.  As John Aronno of Alaska Commons wrote in his account of Wednesday night’s testimony before the Assembly — the same night, you might recall, that Anchorage Baptist Temple pastor Jerry Prevo canceled evening services so that his congregation could head over to the Loussac to overwhelm the Assembly —

I was there from the beginning of the meeting at 4pm, and left shortly after nine-thirty. The “voices of the people” are not sending any new messages that need to be put on record. The “voices of the people” are now a loop.

And later,

I don’t know where we go from here. If there is an upside, it is in the clarity that the Assembly has offered us. They have made up their minds. They’re not telling us how they’ve made up their minds, but it is clear that the time for changing their minds has solidly run out. The first attempts to filibuster the discussion and subsequent vote on this ordinance continue. But, even more prevalent is the new tactic to literally strong arm the law. The anger. The bully mentality.

One should add that most of the people who testified Wednesday night were the last of the people who originally signed up to testify on the night of Tuesday, June 9 — & thus probably included at least some of those persons originally bused in or carpooled over from the Mat-Su.  Noncitizens that Debbie Ossiander persists in giving ear to.  Because the repetitive testimony, principally from congregants brought to the Assembly en masse from Anchorage Baptist Temple & other fundamentalist or evangelical churches, and some of whom are noncitizens of Anchorage, is — y’know — impassioned.  Well, filibusters usually do have something with group’s passion — including a passionate desire to run out the clock.

Debbie Ossiander is only cooperating in that, whether knowingly or unknowingly.  One rather suspects the former.  As a Facebook contact of mine wrote after the ADN doomsayer story came out,

I hate to say it, but I call it like I see it. It seems to me Ossiander is prolonging it so we can’t get it passed.

Yep, looks like it to me, too.  Assembly  Chair Ossiander has been uncertain in her own support or nonsupport of the ordinance, and by doing this “everybody should get heard even if they don’t live in Anchorage and even if they’re all repeating the same talking points over & over again,” she’s effectively also making it so that she perhaps won’t have to vote, and can escape unscathed from making a choice that will get her in trouble with either her conscience, or the conservative portions of her constituency.  It’s questionable, to say the least, if this is a responsibly neutral way to handle the chair’s responsibilities.

As Celtic Diva (Linda Kellen Biegel) wrote, the first of the reader comments on the Megan Holland’s doomsayer story:

If this doesn’t pass, I hope Alaskans will remember that Debbie Ossiander is the reason why:

1) She allowed all of the bussed in Valley people to sign up and testify. Gee, I wonder what would happen if I wanted to testify on and Ordinance in Wasilla or Palmer?

2) She continued to allow people to sign up for testimony every day they’ve had it. Since I was one of the last people to sign up on the first day and I testified Thursday, they’d be done by now and voting on Tuesday.

Darn betcha I’ll remember — and I’ll be doing my best to ensure other people remember as well.

(P.S. You must’ve been in a hurry, Linda: I think you mean Wednesday.  Though it was probably so late on Wednesday that it felt like Thursday!)

How many of these ordinance opponents are Anchorage residents, and how many are not? And why do they all sound so much alike?

Related:

1. Outside influence
2. No, Debbie, Title VII does NOT prohibit sexual orientation discrimination in employment. Hello?
3. Delay by “task force”: My testimony to the Anchorage Assembly

See you tonight! Please wear blue, & your Equality Works button.

I’ve still been too wiped out to do much of any productive thinking or blogging today.  But I was able to say a bit about the first two public hearings about Anchorage equal rights ordinance AO 2009-64, & so have other people.  And other people have also talked about last night’s (the third) public hearing too.  So I’m just gonna collect up some of the relevant stuff here, for your reading pleasure.

These are organized by which hearing (& the doings outside the library that they discuss, not necessarily the date they were posted or published.  As usual, however, I do give the date of publication or posting at the beginning of the item, & identify the source at the end.  Note that I’m not giving any precedence to stories by professional news media: I’m with Phil Munger on this, they’re so overextended & under-resourced that it’s clear full reporting is never going to get done without us bloggers.

I doubt this is comprehensive, but I’ll do my best, & add more to this list as I find it.  (Or write it, since I’ll be adding a few more posts to the coverage too.)

[Updated 6/19 to add more links.]

Anchorage won't discriminate (June 17 along 36th Avenue)

Prequel

• 6/4/09. “In Support of a Transgender-Inclusive Ordinance” by E. Ross (Bent Alaska). Anchorage pollster Ivan Moore suggests that gender identity be taken out of the ordinance: no way.
• 6/4/09. “We are all, or none” by Mel Green (Henkimaa). Another response to Ivan Moore; the Anchorage LGBT community & our allies say “We are all, or none.”
• 6/6/09. “City revises gay-rights proposal: Gays and lesbians lose some protections” by Don Hunter (Anchorage Daily News).Discusses the first S (substitution) version of the ordinance.
• 6/7/09. “Keeping the T in LGBT” by Mel Green (Henkimaa). Problems with the “bathroom language” in the subsitution version of the ordinance.
• 6/7/09. “PA Arts Sunday – June 7, 2009 – A Play for Eddie Burke” by Philip Munger (Progressive Alaska). A short play in one scene entitled “The Spirit of Elizabeth Peratrovich Confronts Rev. Jerry Prevo.”
• 6/8/09. “Sex is between the legs, Gender is between the ears” by April Rains (Bent Alaska).  A “modest proposal” essay in response to Ivan Moore’s suggestion that we take protections for transgender people out of the ordinance.
• 6/8/09. “Revised Ordinance Weakens the law and Endangers Transgender people” by Equality Works (Bent Alaska). Critique of the first substitution version of the ordinance.
• 6/8/09. “Attend the Public Hearing: Tuesday, June 9 at Loussac Library” by Equality Works (Bent Alaska). Info for ordinance supporters.
• 6/8/09. “Anchorage ex-Marine faces Work Discrimination for being Transgender” by Laura O’Lacy (Bent Alaska). Laura O’Lacy’s letter to the Anchorage Assembly describing the harassment and discrimination she has faced as a transgender woman trying to get a job in her field of training.
• 6/8/09. “Revised Ordinance Exempts Small Businesses, Religious Groups, and Bathrooms. Prevo still opposes it” by E. Ross (Bent Alaska). On the first substitute ordinance.
• 6/8/09. “Public Testimony on Sexual Orientation Discrimination Ordinance” by Erick Cordero Giorgana (Think Alaska). A brief rundown of events leading up to testimony.
• 6/8/09. “It’s only natural…help protect our LGBT friends from discrimination in Anchorage” by Linda Kellen Biegel (Celtic Diva’s Blue Oasis). Gay penguin parents, & more.
• 6/9/09. “Speaking out against sexual descrimination in Anchorage and the story of my daughter” by Gryphen (Immoral Minority). Gryphen tells the story of his daughter’s coming out and the harm she suffered from antigay prejudice at her mother’s conservative church in Georgia. Luckily she has much more acceptance up here with her dad.
• 6/9/09. “LEGISLATING HATE: The Real Anti-Christ” by Shannyn Moore (Just a Girl from Homer). On Jerry Prevo of Anchorage Baptist Temple, Ron Hamman of the Independent Baptist Church of Wasilla, and other “not-so-Christ-like” voices of hate.
• 6/9/09. “My pastors are mightier than Prevo” by Amanda Coyne (Alaska Dispatch). On Rev. John Carey & Rev. Dianne O’Connell of Immanuel Presbyterian Church.
• 6/9/09. “Kelly’s Story: A Transgender Christian woman explains Gender Identity Disorder” by Kelly (Bent Alaska). Guest post by a Christian transwoman who lives part of the year in Anchorage.
• 6/9/09. “See you tonight” by Mel Green (Henkimaa). My prequel compilation of some of the other posts from our allies in support and solidarity as we headed into the first evening of testimony.

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

• 

  Ordinance supporters Arliss Sturgulewski, Vic Fischer, Jane Angvik, and Chuck O'Connell (in foreground) on the first night of ordinance testimony

  6/9/09. “Mat Su residents testifying in Anchorage?” by Erick Cordero Giorgana (Think Alaska). The first blog report I’m aware of that people had been bused in from the Mat-Su Borough to advocate that a government not their own testify against against its own citizens.

• 6/9/09. “Live from the City Assembly…” by Heather James (SOSAnchorage.net). Liveblog of the Assembly hearing from the person sitting right next to me.  I helped her spell the names right (except that I helped her spell Loren Leman’s name wrong).
• 6/9/09. “News from Assembly Meeting” by AKMuckraker & many many mudpuppies (The Mudflats). This post turned spontaneously into a liveblog by members of the Mudflats community watching the livestream of the hearing — a practice they also followed in the next two Assembly hearings.
• 6/9/09. “A long night (one of many?)” by Patrick Flynn (Patrick Flynn’s Blog). Assemblyman’s post from four hours into the five-hour meeting.
• 6/9/09. “June 9 public testimony at Anchorage Assembly” (photos) by Mel Green (Flickr photostream). 49 photos taken mostly inside the Loussac and Assembly chambers, with some supplementary photos courtesy Phil Munger of Progressive Alaska and AKMuckracker of the Mudflats.
• 6/9/09. “Emotional testimony on both sides gay rights amendment” by Jason Lamb (KTUU Channel 2 News).
• 

  Jeffrey Mittman of the AkCLU and Tiffany McClain and Mia Oxley of Equality Works

  6/9/09. “Hundreds air views on gay-rights ordinance — ONLINE: Followers max out streaming feed from meeting” by Don Hunter (Anchorage Daily News).

• 6/9/09. “A sea of red and then purple” by Amanda Coyne (Alaska Dispatch). Brief story on the night’s events.
• 6/9/09. “At the Anchorage Assembly Meeting on Civil Rights” by Philip Munger (Progressive Alaska). What was going on outside during testimony; the large number of kids bused in by fundamentalist churches, of which Phil took photos, influenced my decision to write my later “Billboards” post.
• 6/10/09. “Equal Rights in Anchorage. A Small Step on a Long Road” by AKMuckraker (The Mudflats). Like Phil Munger, AKMuckraker spent some time photographing the activism outside the Loussac; her observations about kids also informed my “Billboards” post.
• 6/10/09. “Photos from the Ordinance Hearing” by E. Ross (Bent Alaska).
• 

  How many of these ordinance opponents are Anchorage residents, and how many are not?

  6/10/09. “Last night’s anti-descrimination testimony in front of Anchorage Assembly full of emotional testimony and tears” by Gryphen (Immoral Minority). An overview of the night’s testimony.  Here’s also where you can read about the altercation between a blue-shirted ordinance supporter and drunken red-shirted opponent which led to the red-shirt striking the blue-shirt and being arrested.

• 6/10/09. “Eleven Hours in a Library; the City Assembly Meeting on Equal Rights Ordinance” by John Aronno (Alaska Commons). I think John wrote this in the middle of the night after getting home. His discussion of the “outsider” influence (Mat-Su people bused in) at the Assembly meeting influenced my decision to write a post about it later. Reposted at SOSAnchorage.net (the Prevo debunking site).
• 6/10/09. “Assembly report 1″ by Mel Green (Henkimaa). A brief complilation of some of the other blog posts that have already reported on the hearing.
• 

  Crowded Assembly chambers on June 9

  6/10/09. “Social Justice in Anchorage” by Mags (Winston’s Mom). Account of a heterosexual married woman who felt compelled to testify that the “GLBT community get that same protection under the law that all the rest of us enjoy.”

• 6/10/09. “Writing like a fiend…” by Linda Kellen Biegel (Celtic Diva’s Blue Oasis). Recovering from testimony night, with a photo of Prevo.
• 6/10/09. “Coverage of Tuesday’s MOA Civil Rights Ordinance Hearing in Local Media” by Philip Munger (Progressive Alaska). Compilation of links to the best coverage.
• 6/10/09. “Outside influence” by Mel Green (Henkimaa). A reaction to non-Anchorageites being permitted to testify before the Assembly to influence our municipal government that they are not citizens of.
• 6/11/09. “City Assembly Meeting Transcripts: Volume 1″ by John Aronno (Alaska Commons). John’s transcription of the testimony from the first ten witnesses. Reposted at SOSAnchorage.net.
• 6/11/09. “Assembly report 2: June 9 public testimony” by Mel Green (Henkimaa). My full account of Tuesday night’s Assembly meeting.
• 6/11/09. “Balancing rights” by Patrick Flynn (Patrick Flynn’s Blog). Assemblyman Flynn addresses balancing of rights between discrimination rights for LGBT people & Christianist claims about infringements on their right to practice their faith. (Note: he doesn’t use the term Christianist — that’s me).
• 6/12/09. “Billboards” by Mel Green (Henkimaa). On Prevo & co.’s use of children as billboards for their parents’ prejudices and hatreds.
• 6/13/09. “City Assembly Meeting Transcripts: Volume 2″ by John Aronno (Alaska Commons). John’s transcription of the testimony from the second ten witnesses. Reposted at SOSAnchorage.net.
• 

  Mrs. Alaska United States protesting against proposed Anchorage equal rights ordinance. Photo courtesy Philip Munger ( Progressive Alaska)

  6/13/09. “Saturday Alaska Progressive Blog Roundup – June 13, 2009″ by Philip Munger (Progressive Alaska). Highlights some of the best commentary on the ordinance hearing.

• 6/14/09. “PA Arts Sunday – June 14, 2009 – Peter Dunlap-Shohl Pegs Prevo’s Phoniness” by Philip Munger (Progressive Alaska). Cartoon by Peter Dunlap-Shohl.
• 6/15/09. “The new Carrie Prejean?” by Mel Green (Henkimaa). Prevo & co.’s cynical ploy to use the newly-crowned Mrs. Alaska United States to bait the LGBT community.
• 6/15/09. “Palin Snubs PrideFest, Wasilla Fundies Protest Gays” by E. Ross (Bent Alaska). Mat-Su residents brought in to testify against equal rights for Anchorage LGBT people, Wasilla native Gov. Sarah Palin ignoring Pride, & President Barack Obama declaring June as LGBT Pride Month: these reminders of the state of affairs as we prepared for the second hearing.

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

• 

  What I testified about: At Kinko's with a couple of the copies of the "Prima Facie" component of Identity Reports, which I later gave to members of the Assembly

  6/12/09. “Ordinance Hearing, Week 2″ by Equality Works (Bent Alaska). Info for ordinance supporters for the second hearing.

• 6/15/09. “Gearing up for Round Two” by Heather James (SOSAnchorage.net). A compilation of links of commentary from the June 9 hearing & prequels to the June 16 hearing. Reposted (with some preferatory comments) on 6/16/09 by John Aronno at Alaska Commons.
• 6/16/09. “Gay rights ordinance gets 2nd Assembly hearing tonight” by Megan Holland (Anchorage Daily News).
• 6/16/09. “Hearings on Tues. & Wed., Buckley Brigade formed to Welcome and Protect” by Equality Works (Bent Alaska). Pre-hearing info for ordinance supporters.
• 6/16/09.  “2nd Hearing Today: Who Should Determine the Laws of Anchorage?” by E. Ross (Bent Alaska). E. Ross asks who should make Anchorage laws: the mayor & Assembly, with input from a variety of Anchorage residents; Wasilla residents who are being permitted to testify; or Jerry Prevo?
• 6/16/09. “ABT is a Political Action Committee…NOT a Church” by Shannyn Moore (Just a Girl from Homer). Prevo’s mobilization letter to his congregation at Anchorage Baptist Temple.
• 6/16/09. “Equal Rights Just Became Less Equal” by John Aronno (Alaska Commons). John comments on the new substitution ordinance drafted by Assembly Chair Debbie Ossiander, which removes all protections from discrimination for gender identity/expression & removes private employment protections for sexual orientation.


Three livebloggers all in a row: John Aronno (Alaska Commons), Heather James (SOSAnchorage.net), and Mel Green (Henkimaa)6/16/09. "Live Blog from the Assembly" by John Aronno (Alaska Commons). John & Heather & I were all sitting next to each other liveblogging awa

• 6/16/09. “A new day, a new version” by Patrick Flynn (Patrick Flynn’s Blog). A quickie rundown on the provisions of Debbie Ossiander’s substitution version of the ordinance. See comments for some discussion of the Mat-Su “let’s go make sure those Anchorage LGBTs continue to be discriminated against” outsider influence issue.
• 6/16/09. “Live Blogging Round Two…” by Heather James (SOSAnchorage.net). All the liveblogs are worth looking at for the different observations offered.
• 6/16/09. “Liveblogging Assembly meeting, June 16″ by Mel Green (Henkimaa). My liveblog & live-Twitter of the hearing.
• 6/16/09. “Anchorage Assembly Meeting – Non-Discrimination Ordinance Testimony” by AKMuckraker & many many mudpuppies (The Mudflats). Liveblogging by members of the Mudflats community watching the livestream of the hearing. Thanks AKMuckraker for the link to my Twitter feed!
• 6/16/09. “June 16 public testimony, Anchorage Assembly” (photos) by Mel Green (Flickr photostream). Large set of 103 photos, both inside the Loussac and Assembly chambers, and outside.
• 6/17/09. “Anti-discrimination debate raises passions” by Megan Holland (Anchorage Daily News).
• 6/17/09. “The Second Anchorage Assembly Hearing” by John Aronno (Alaska Commons). After reading accounts like this, I’ve gotta say that John is fast-emerging as one of the most incisive local bloggers I know.
• 

  EQUALITY NOW: Outside on the Loussac lawn while testimony goes on in the Assembly chambers

  6/17/09. “Ordinance Hearing #2: Religious Rule has it’s Day in Court” by E. Ross (Bent Alaska). E. Ross observed (& photographed) the activist crowds outside & the overflow crowd watching testimony from the Wilda Marston Theatre.

• 6/17/09. “Anchorage Non-Discrimination Ordinance. (Photos)” by AKMuckraker (The Mudflats). Photos of events outside Tuesday night’s hearing.
• 6/17/09. “Last night at the Assembly meeting was emotionally draining and yet quite uplifting. Is that even possible?” by Gryphen (Immoral Minority). Includes text from Rev. Jerry Prevo’s mobilization email sent to ABT members. Gryphen reports he also interviewed Prevo, video forthcoming.
• 6/17/09. “Whining in the Assembly” (Fairview View). Reposted on SOSAnchorage.net.  Author thinks ordinance opponents are experiencing one of the first challenges to their calcified ways of thinking, & should get over it.
• 6/17/09. “Sex in the City” by Brendan Joel Kelley (Anchorage Press).  Observing activists on both sides of the issue, including the blue-sponsored lawn party going out outside Tuesday’s Assembly hearing.
• 6/17/09. “On gays and God” by Krestia DeGeorge (Anchorage Press). “The whole point of this exercise,” the author writes of Prevo’s mobilization letter to his congregation, “was reinforcing lines that keep some people in and others out, the lines that divide those who belong from those who don’t.” She goes on to desdribe how her own conservative religion upbringing kept her shielded from knowing people different from her — until an important friend came out to her, & her own beliefs about sexual orientation began to change.  An important piece.
• 6/18/09. “My daughter makes videos!” by Gryphen (Immoral Minority). Gryphen’s daughter made a YouTube video focusing particularly on the red-shirted Christianists waving preprinted signs outside the Loussac Tuesday night: definitely worth watching!  Gryphen also asks, as so many of us do, why Assembly Chair Debbie Ossiander is permitting testimony from people who have been imported from outside the boundaries of the Municipality of Anchorage.

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

• 

  Day Three: Red Sea Rising inside the Assembly chambers

  6/17/09. “Wednesday Meeting Information” by Heather James (SOSAnchorage.net). Pre-meeting info.

• 6/17/09. “Gay rights measure’s changes criticized by both sides” by Megan Holland (Anchorage Daily News).
• 6/17/09. “Gay Rights – A Fathers Testimony” by Emperor Bob (Emperor’s Rants and Observations). Straight talk from the father of a lesbian daughter (& some straight kids as well).
• 6/17/09.  “Personal is Political. And vice versa” by Daniella Marie (Mouthy Maries Speak Up). Straight talk from the straight sister of a lesbian (& another of Emperor Bob’s kids).
• 6/17/09. “Assembly Hearings, Day Three” by John Aronno (Alaska Commons). Liveblog of the hearing up through about 8:29 PM.
• 6/17/09. “Anchorage Public Testimony on Non-Discrimination Ordinance – Chapter III” by AKMuckraker & many many mudpuppies (The Mudflats). Liveblogging by members of the Mudflats community watching the livestream of the hearing.
• 6/17/09. “The Daily Tweets, 2009-06-17″ by Mel Green (Henkimaa). Automatically-generated list of my tweets, several of which refer to events at the Loussac.
• 

  Jerry Prevo at the ABT picnic on the Loussac lawn

  6/17/09. “June 17 public testimony at the Anchorage Assembly” (photos) by Mel Green (Flickr photostream). Large set of 142 photos taken at the Loussac Library both outside and inside the Assembly chambers.

• 6/18/09. “Day Three, Red Sea Rising” by John Aronno (Alaska Commons). Must-read analysis of Day 3 of testimony.  This was the day that Jerry Prevo canceled Anchorage Baptist Temple’s church service so that ABT members could “overwhelm” the Assembly.  Most (though not all) testimony was from Assembly opponents who are part of  Prevo & co.’s fillibuster effort. John writes:  “I was there from the beginning of the meeting at 4pm, and left shortly after nine-thirty. The “voices of the people” are not sending any new messages that need to be put on record. The “voices of the people” are now a loop. These talking points were repeated all night long, often sprinkling old wounds with the salt of homosexuality being an abomination, perverse, a lifestyle choice, a deviant behaviorism.” Reposted at SOSAnchorage.net.
• 

  But there was plenty of Pride along 36th Avenue too

  6/18/09. “Anchorage Anti-Discrimination Ordinance Rally: Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four“ by Janson Jones (Floridana Alaskiana 2.5).  A series of four posts of photos chronicling activists on both sides of the issue outside the Loussac Library on Wednesday night as testimony was heard inside.  I love the comment on part one in reaction to a sign that said “I was born Asian. You choose to be gay” — commenter Poietes (a name that I as a poet love!) replies, “Well, I was born Asian, and I choose not to be stupid, uninformed, closed-minded, and bigoted.”  Meanwhile, I’ve added this blog to my Google Reader for all the fine photos from Alaska, Florida, Oklahoma, & elsewhere.  Well-met, Janson!

• 6/18/09. “More reflections on Day Three” by Heather James (SOSAnchorage.net). Brief compilation of other posts on Day 3 testimony.
• 6/18/09. “Photos from Ordinance Hearing #3″ by E. Ross (Bent Alaska).
• 6/18/09. “Our view: No exemptions —City’s equal rights law should not leave any group out” (editorial) (Anchorage Daily News).  ADN comes down strongly in favor of Matt Claman’s substitution version of the ordinance, but likes Debbie Ossiander’s provision for the Equal Rights Commission to track & report on LGBT discrimination cases now.
• 6/19/09. “Honk if You’re Straight” Civil Rights Ordinance Video” by Shannyn Moore (Just a Girl from Homer). “There are many loving Christians in Anchorage who support the ordinance to give equal rights to our GLBT brothers and sisters,” Shannyn writes,  “yet the Xians are the ones marching. If you have any doubts our community suffers from discrimination against our GLBT community, just watch this.” Images of the Christianists from all three public hearings & associated protest, to the music of Amy Ray.

Yes on 64 along 36th Ave.

Related:

1. Assembly report 1
2. Liveblogging Assembly meeting, June 16 (Assembly public hearing #2)
3. My letter to the Anchorage Assembly

Anchorage Christian School teenagers brought en-masse to protest the proposed ordinance

I wrote this poem many many years ago, mostly in my head, one day walking across my home town of Columbia Falls, Montana, & thinking about people who seem to need to have other people tell them what to think & believe.  Much of last night’s testimony against the Anchorage equal rights ordinance reminded me of this, as did the sight of the numerous teenagers bused in from Anchorage Christian Schools (affiliated with Anchorage Baptist Temple) to picket against the proposed ordinance along 36th Avenue — another use of kids as billboards to advertise the prejudices of adults.

I wonder if their classes in school gave these kids extra credit for waving their preprinted signs for Prevo?  I wonder how many of them might actually be gay or lesbian or trans, but can’t tell anyone, & fight earnestly inside themselves against it because the adults in their lives teach them to distrust their own self-understandings?

Does Anyone Beat Your Heart for You

does anyone beat your heart for you —
oh yes I know there are some who
will quicken it
or slow it at their leaving —
but when you are alone at night
and sleeping, dreamless . . .
it is there . . . beating —
it will be there . . . beating —
till you die

does anyone beat your heart for you
does anyone live your life for you
do you cast a vote — plea for
intercession
do you hasten your death by forgetting

do you close your eyes and believe
what others say you see

[January 9, 1982]

Related:

1. Sermon (a poem)
2. No Questions, Questions (poem)
3. Saying “I Love You” (poem)

As tomorrow approaches, there are some things I wonder, & some things I don’t.

• I don’t wonder if the fundamentalist anti-ordinance forces will bus in a lot of red-shirted adults from the Mat-Su — outside the boundaries of where the ordinance, if passed, will have effect — to advocate for the denial of equal rights protections from people who will be affected by whether the ordinance passes or not.  After all, they’ve already signed up to testify, & have already been told that their testimony will be heard.
• I do wonder if the fundamentalist anti-ordinance forces will also bus in scores of kids in red shirts, as they did last week, to act, again, as walking billboards for the Alaska Family Council and other views that the kids themselves necessarily understand.
• I don’t wonder if I’ll be there.  In blue.
• I do wonder if the the latest beauty queen candidate to join Carrie Prejean in the hearts & minds of conservative antigdaydom will make another appearance in tiara, sash, & bright red shirt.

But I shouldn’t wonder.  Maybe I should just look up the official events on the schedule of the recently crowned Mrs. Alaska United States®, Renee’ Scott.  Nope, nothing for Tuesday the 16th on the calendar.  We’ve learned the Anchorage Assembly will continue taking testimony at a special meeting on Wednesday the 17th, too — but nope, nothing on Mrs. Scott’s calendar for that day, either.

But if you look back a week, at June 9 — last Tuesday — you’ll see this item:

June 9, 2009
Anchorage City Assembly Meeting
Mrs. Alaska and Mrs. Anchorage attended the Anchorage
Assembly Meeting discussing city ordinance measures.  CLICK
HERE to watch the Channel 2 KTUU video footage.

I first heard of Mrs. Alaska United States® last week shortly before I headed over to the Loussac Library for last Tuesday’s Assembly event, when I checked Facebook & found someone had posted a brief item by Julia O’Malley.  Julia, you may remember, had the week before posted a story about meeting Rev. Jerry Prevo of the Anchorage Baptist Temple. In this item, titled  “Mrs. Alaska and gay rights,” Julia wrote:

Just when I thought I’d heard everything when it comes to the city’s equal rights ordinance, I got a press release about Renee’ Scott, aka Mrs. Alaska, the state’s newly-crowned representative in the competitive world of married beauty queens.

As her first act of business, she will be showing up at the Assembly meeting tonight to stand against the mayor’s “effort at instating special rights for homosexuals.” She’ll be wearing red, the color of the ordinance’s opponents, along with her crown and sash.

Really? We have record numbers of homeless people dying in the woods in Anchorage, villages decimated by flooding on the Yukon, sky-high rates of domestic violence and alcoholism, and the Mrs. is getting wound-up about protecting gay people from discrimination? This is priority number one?

Julia went on to quote Mrs. Scott’s press release, which was apparently issued on June 8, the day after the Mrs. Alaska United States® pageant was held at the Anchorage Marriott Downtown:

Newly crowned Mrs. Alaska to stand against proposed Sexual Orientation special rights proposal at Anchorage Assembly meeting.

Just last night, Renee’ Scott of Anchorage was crowned Mrs. Alaska United States 2009 and tomorrow night, June 9th, she will be at the Anchorage Assembly meeting at 6:30 pm at the Loussac Library to stand against Acting Mayor, Matt Claman’s, last second effort at instating special rights for homosexuals.

On Sunday night, June 7th, Renee’ Scott won the title of Mrs. Alaska 2009, and just 2 days later, June 9th at 6:30 pm at the Loussac Library, she will be wearing her newly acquired Mrs. Alaska sash and crown at the Anchorage Assembly meeting standing against Acting Mayor, Matt Claman’s, move to instate special rights for gays, lesbians and transgenders.

A member of Anchorage Baptist Temple, Renee’ Scott plans to wear the color “red” with other opponents of the proposed measure, along with her new Mrs. Alaska sash and crown.

Renee’ Scott plans to use her title as Mrs. Alaska United States to represent traditional marriage and family-focused issues.

I read that & just kind of shook my head.  I’d never heard of the Mrs. Alaska United States® pageant before — I’m not a pageant follower — though like pretty much everyone else I knew that Gov. Sarah Palin was a past runner up in a statewide contest.  And who hasn’t heard about former Miss California USA 2009 Carrie Prejean, who having initially retained her crown in the wake of her anti-same sex marriage comments at the national Miss USA contest, lost it last week (the day after Mrs. Scott donned her red shirt at the Loussac)  on the grounds of “continued breach of contract issues.”  I haven’t cared about the Carrie Prejean controversy any more than I have about beauty pageants in general — sorry, the world of beauty pageantry is not that significant to me.  Besides,  maybe I’m just used to beauty queens making themselves into representatives of the forces opposing equal rights for LGBT people.  Remember Anita Bryant?

So here’s what I learned from the story:

1. there’s a pageant called Mrs. Alaska United States®;
2. a new Mrs. Alaska U.S. had just been crowned;
3. the newly-crowned Mrs. Alaska U.S. was a member of the Anchorage Baptist Temple; &,
4. guess what, she’d be using her official Mrs. Alaska U.S. tiara and sash to stand forth against “special rights” [sic] for LGBT people.  (Translation: she would be standing up for special rights for Anchorage Baptist Temple members & other conservative Christians to discriminate against LGBT people in employment, housing, credit/finance, and public accommodations, & to demand that all other people including those who didn’t want it have that special right too.) — Oh yes, & I also learned from the story that
5. anti-ordinance forces would be wearing red.  I hadn’t known that before.

Mrs. Alaska United States® and Mrs. Anchorage United States outside the Wilda Marston Theatre near the Assembly chambers

Other than passing that info on to another couple of people, I forgot all about it until later in the evening, when I  took advantage of a break from the proceedings inside the Assembly chambers to visit the restroom, & caught a glimpse (duly recorded with my Nikon Coolpix S10 digital camera) of not one but two women in tiaras & sashes standing just outside the Wilda Marson Theatre.  The other woman, I learned later, was Mrs. Anchorage United States ®, Anna Foerster, who had also received her title on June 7, apparently a title which came to her as runner-up in the pagean.  No idea if she’s also an ABT member.

Mrs. Carol Prevo (Rev. Prevo's wife) beside Mrs. Alaska United States®, Renee' Scott. Photo courtesy AK Muckracker

Then back inside the Assembly chambers and, as I described in my account of Tuesday night’s events, I knew little else of what was going on outside until I got home that night and read Phil Munger’s Progressive Alaska post about outside events, & the following day AK Muckraker’s Mudflats account.   AKMuckraker reported:

Miss Alaska and Mrs. Alaska were both there in tiny dresses and tiaras to support those who were opposing the ordinance. I don’t get that excited about beauty pageants, but aren’t these women supposed to be representing the whole state? Why, I thought, were they here in full regalia on such a divisive issue?

(Slight correction: based on other info, I think it was the newly-crowned Mrs. Anchorage U.S., not Miss Alaska, who was accompanying Mrs. Scott.)

Mrs. Alaska United States® prepares to parade children through the protest. Photo courtesy Phil Munger

Phil Munger’s post was principally about on the red-shirted kids that had been bused in by Anchorage and Mat-Su fundamentalist churches; his mention of Mrs. Alaska U.S. was in that context:

The kids, some less than ten, were mostly without parents. They were sort of clumped together, perhaps by congregation, or by home schooling support group. Dozens of adults were taking pictures of the kids, some encouraged by the Christianist adults around the youngsters. I took about 70 photos. Here are a few. The first six are of some of the kids. The last two are of Mrs. Alaska, as she prepared to parade some of the kids through the demonstrators, and then as she paraded them.

(Christianist is a term I first heard from Atlantic Monthly blogger Andrew Sullivan — a useful term that to me conveys not Christiantity as religion, but rather Christianity as political ideology.  Sullivan, who is gay, Catholic, & conservative — but not a “war of values” social conservative — does not feel any more represented by the religious right than my friend Dianne O’Connell of Immanuel Presbyterian Church does; in an essay written for Time magazine, Sullivan writes, “let me suggest that we take back the word Christian while giving the religious right a new adjective: Christianist. Christianity, in this view, is simply a faith. Christianism is an ideology, politics, an ism.” That’s the sense in which Phil used the term.  I use it sometimes too.)

Mrs. Alaska United States parades kids outside the Loussac Library, June 9, 2009. Photo courtesy Phil Munger

But all in all, the exploits of the new Mrs. Alaska United States® were pretty low on my radar, & on the radar of most people I was talking with too. But it did come up in discussion last Thursday on the Facebook wall of a friend of mine.  A few of us started exchanging information.  Being something of a research geek about things that inspire my curiosity — given the right hook, apparently even about beauty pageants — I started doing some extra digging.  Here’s some of what I & other people learned:

• First of all, don’t confuse Mrs. Alaska United States® with Mrs. Alaska America.  They are two different pageants with two different sets of sponsors. This year’s Mrs. Alaska America will be held on July 18 at Bartlett High School; the pageant is affiliated with the national level Mrs. America pageant.  I can’t find any official statement to confirm, but private information has it that the Mrs. Alaska America pageant organizers are less than happy with the confusion created by use in the media & blogs of plain old “Mrs. Alaska” as Mrs. Scott’s pageant title, since the Mrs. Alaska America pageant doesn’t wish to be mistakenly associated with Mrs. Scott’s anti-ordinance, anti-gay political agenda, which they do not apparently share.  Notice how carefully I’ve been using the title Mrs. Alaska United States® or Mrs. Alaska U.S. throughout this post?  This is why.  Don’t forget the little registered trademark mark! ®
• The Mrs. Alaska United States® pageant is affiliated with the national Mrs. United States pageant. Eligibility requirements for competitors: “The Mrs. Alaska pageant requires its competitors to be at least 21 years old, a property owner or resident of Alaska, and married (no specific length of marriage is necessary).   Contestants are judged on 1/4 personal interview, 1/4 swim wear, 1/4 evening gown and 1/4 on-stage question.  Besides the overall title, contestants may compete in various optional competitions.”
• For those who wonder, as I did, if title-holders are supposed to wear official tiaras and sashes while representing political views which may not be the official views of the pageant, I could find only this  statement: “The Pageant Sponsors, Directors, Judges and Pageant Officials Do Not Represent the Personal Opinions, Expressions or Platforms of the Contestants, Reigning Mrs. Anchorage, or Reigning Mrs. Alaska.” My thought: all those capital letters make that Really Hard To Read.  My other thought: don’t you have that backwards?  Don’t you really mean to say that the personal opinions etc. of the contestants & title-winners don’t represent the views of the pageant sponsors & official?  Think about it: would Donald Trump really need to tell us that he doesn’t represent the views of Carrie Prejean?  Just saying.
• Speaking of sponsors, here’s their sponsor page. Apparently the list is not quite complete, since it omits a sponsor mentioned on the events page, to wit: “Escorted by an official pageant sponsor, Harley Davidson of Alaska, Mrs. Alaska United States® 2009, Renee’ Scott and Mrs. Anchorage, Alaska 2009 will be participating in the downtown Anchorage 4th of July parade.”
• The pageant’s director of Laura Dagon, who is founder and director of pageant sponsor Laura’s Modeling & Talent Agency.
  

Now, I don’t plan myself to write to the pageant or any of its sponsors to protest Mrs. Scott’s use of official tiara & sash in her Tuesday anti-ordinance action. I’ve got better things to spend my times writing — like this blog post!  Besides, I don’t personally use the services or products of any of the pageant’s sponsors, not did I even have Clue #1 that this pageant even existed before last Tuesday, so for me to tell them I was going to boycott their services would be something of an empty threat, no?  Besides which, I believe in free speech.  Of course, free speech also means you have the free speech right to write to the pageant & it’s sponsors if you want to, which is part of why I put this info together: so you’ll write to the correct people.  Again, don’t confuse the Mrs. Alaska United States® pageant with the Mrs. Alaska America people.

Besides which — well, read that press release again.  Here, let me post it again:

Newly crowned Mrs. Alaska to stand against proposed Sexual Orientation special rights proposal at Anchorage Assembly meeting.

Just last night, Renee’ Scott of Anchorage was crowned Mrs. Alaska United States 2009 and tomorrow night, June 9th, she will be at the Anchorage Assembly meeting at 6:30 pm at the Loussac Library to stand against Acting Mayor, Matt Claman’s, last second effort at instating special rights for homosexuals.

On Sunday night, June 7th, Renee’ Scott won the title of Mrs. Alaska 2009, and just 2 days later, June 9th at 6:30 pm at the Loussac Library, she will be wearing her newly acquired Mrs. Alaska sash and crown at the Anchorage Assembly meeting standing against Acting Mayor, Matt Claman’s, move to instate special rights for gays, lesbians and transgenders.

A member of Anchorage Baptist Temple, Renee’ Scott plans to wear the color “red” with other opponents of the proposed measure, along with her new Mrs. Alaska sash and crown.

Renee’ Scott plans to use her title as Mrs. Alaska United States to represent traditional marriage and family-focused issues.

Now think of some of the other things we saw last Tuesday night that originated wholly or in part from the Christianist political mind of the Rev. Jerry Prevo.  Anti-ordinance people in red shirts bused in from the Matanuska-Susitna Borough to ask a government other than their own to continue to permit discrimination against its own citizens.  Check.  A hundred or so freshly scrubbed children in red shirts bused in to carry signs mass produced by Alaska Family Council which made the ridiculous assertion that ordinance AO 2009-64 would “outlaw dissent.”  Check.  Do you begin to see a pattern here?

With this very specific press release, with all its repetitions of details — “wearing her newly acquired Mrs. Alaska sash and crown and along with her new Mrs. Alaska sash and crown — well, isn’t it pretty obvious that this was all a cynical ploy by Prevo & company, with Mrs. Scott’s willing participation, to bait us? They wanted us to react.  They were hoping we’d make a big old stink, & then they could complain about what intolerant meanies we were, just like that meanie Perez Hilton & all those other meanie California homosexuals who were just so mean to poor Miss (former) California Carrie Prejean.  Perhaps they hoped to make Mrs. Scott into the next Carrie Prejean, a martyr to the cause of Christianist special rights.

How disappointing for them, then, that mostly we ignored her.  While there’s been some comments here & there, mostly of the “do you believe this?” sort, we have better things to do than worry about a pageant that frankly most of us had never heard of before. Let the pageant owners & sponsors themselves police whatever contractual obligations Ms. Scott has as a representative of the pageant; let the pageant owners and sponsors worry about the cynical use Prevo & company have made of their organization. Frankly, I reckon this was just what Rev. Prevo did instead of putting some beardo-in-a-devil-mask in the Loussac women’s bathroom that night.

Pretty comical, really.  Rev. Prevo, you’re losing your knack.

Or maybe it’s just that more people in Anchorage are on to you now. Enough, even, that you had to bus people from outside the Municipality to shore up your support.

That leaves me just a couple more points to make. First, when we were discussing this on Facebook last week, I initially believed that Mrs. Scott had possibly colluded with Rev. Prevo in manipulating the pageant without the pageant’s knowledge.  It seemed to me that she had possibly mispresented her platform as a contestant.  A couple of weeks before the pageant, answering Kellie Davis of examiner.com, she gave her platform as follows:

My platform is age oppression in young girls. As a mother of a seven year old daughter I have found that the media in every facet is trying to shrink the window of innocence in our young girls. Influencing them to dress provocatively which has even been linked to the decrease of self esteem and increase in suicide rates in teen girls. Promoting birth control instead of abstinence, and marketing “toys” like tattoo Barbie. Parenting isn’t about raising a daughter that has low self esteem that feels like she needs to be 16 when she’s 7. I want to raise a confident, strong, beautiful on the inside and out young woman. I believe if we raise awareness in other mothers about this issue we could change our next generation mothers and create stronger healthier women.

But according to her press release:

Renee’ Scott plans to use her title as Mrs. Alaska United States to represent traditional marriage and family-focused issues.

I have no idea know what she told pageant judges during the pageant itself, but if she told them the same thing about age oppression in young girls as she told Kellie Davis, that too gives the impression that she misrepresented her intentions about how she would wield her crown to the pageant.  But then again, in her June 8 radio interview on KASH Country 107.5, when asked about her agenda as Mrs. Alaska United States, she talked very personably about the age oppression issue, and said nothing about the ordinance or plans to represent “traditional” marriage.  So maybe this was just a one-time deal?

At any rate, turns out that at least some pageant officials approved of her ordinance plan.  I emailed Julia O’Malley to ask if the press release she’d quoted in the ADN came from Mrs. Scott personally, or from pageant.  Her message back was brief and to the point:

The press release came from the Mrs. Alaska USA Pageant, and gave the head of the pageant as the contact person.

Given that her activities last Tuesday night at the Loussac are also included on her official Mrs. Alaska United States® events page, this indicates that opposition to the ordinance, and opposition to equal protections under the law for LGBT Anchorage residents, is an officially sanctioned position of the Mrs. Alaska United States® pageant. (I have no idea if it is also sanctioned by the national Mrs. United States pageant.)

And you know what?  That’s fine. That’s Mrs. Scott’s right, & that’s the pageant’s right.  The pageant is, after all, a private enterprise.   Registered trademark and all.  So as far as I’m concerned, I’ll leave ‘em to it, & let ‘em alone — other than to point out, as I have now, at length, their participation in a fairly obvious tactic by Mrs. Scott’s pastor to bait us.

Point the last. Who does Mrs. Alaska United States ®egistered Trademark represent?  Here’s what she claimed to KTUU Channel 2 News:

As Mrs. Alaska I represent married women and Alaskans and I find it shocking that the Assembly is trying to pass this ordinance without giving Alaskans the right to vote.

Hey, I’m an Alaskan, she doesn’t represent me.  But how about married women?  Why, I know a married woman who also happens to be an Alaskan.  I decided to ask her.  So earlier this evening, I called up my sister-in-law.

“I’ve got a couple of questions for you, Linda,” I said.  “First, did you vote for Mrs. Alaska United States®?”

Turns out Linda, too, had never heard of this pageant, but after a brief moment of confusion, she laughed and said, “No, of course not!”

“Do you feel that Mrs. Alaska United States® represents you?” I asked.

“No,” she repeated, “What are  you talking about?”  After a brief explanation of the pageant and Mrs. Scott’s claim of representation, Linda told me that she figured the only people who had voted for Mrs. Scott were the pageant judges, opined that privately trademarked beauty pageants were not, in point of face, representative democracies, and furthermore said she doubted Mrs. Scott represented any of the married women who are Linda’s friends.

No more representative of them, in fact, than the Christianists are of the rest of the Christians.

Related:

1. Billboards
2. Outside influence
3. Debbie Ossiander & the Christianist filibuster

Children of Westboro Baptist Church

I said something nice about Jerry Prevo once. Honest.  I really did. I even published my positive comments online.  They were contained in one of the earliest posts in on the very first blog I ever had, in 2003, at the unlikely address of henkimaa.blogga.nu.  You can still find them there if you look.  — But let me save you the trouble: I’ve gone to that old blog & copied the relevant posts to this site. All of them refer to some degree to Anchorage’s 2003 PrideFest celebration, & to the visit being made to it by members of the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas.

Westboro Baptist Church kids

If that name is unfamiliar to you, try this name: Fred Phelps.  No?  Okay, try this one: godhatesfags.com.  Yeah, that’s right, those folks: the one’s who first achieved national notoriety protesting the funeral of Matthew Shepard, the gay University of Wyoming student who was kidnapped, tortured, tied to a fence, & left to die in a remote area near Laramie, Wyoming, in October 1998. Phelps & his church members picketed Matthew Shepard’s funeral carrying signs bearing such comforting slogans as “Matt Shepard rots in Hell”, “AIDS Kills Fags Dead” and “God Hates Fags.”  Since then, WBC has continued to show up all over the place protesting one thing or another that they hate — or rather, according to them, that “God hates” — which proves to cover quite a wide territory.  Their version of God hates “fags,” it’s been established; their version of God also hates America, Sweden, Italy, Catholics, Boy Scouts, soldiers, most other religions, most other Christian denominations, even most other Baptist churches. They especially like to protest funerals — of gays, soldiers, the Boy Scouts who were killed in a tornado in Iowa in June 2008. They carry provocative signs that loudly advertise their — er, I mean “God’s” — hatred of these things.

Westboro Baptist Church kid. Photo by andyofne; see photo credits.

In 2003, they decided to come to Anchorage to protest during the LGBT community’s annual Pride week.  They intended to picket the “fag/dyke Parade and Festival, the fag-infested Univ. of Alaska, Anchorage, and the sodomite whorehouses masquerading as churches in Anchorage” in “religious protest & warning.” Sadly, it seemed: God hated Anchorage.

And so finally my old posts, where you can read my account of events as they took place:

• 6/20/2003. Fred Phelps coming to Anchorage
• 6/27/2003. Anchorage Pride 2003: Look how far we’ve come
• 7/8/2003. Those Phelpists aren’t too clever, are they?
• 7/8/2003. Publicity, publicity, publicity

Little girl between Westboro Baptist Church adults

It’s in the third of those posts, the one that called into question the Phelpists cleverness, that I said something positive about Jerry Prevo. It seems that for some reason (& you can read that entire post to learn the theories as to why), the Phelpists decided that one of the “sodomite whorehouses masquerading as churches in Anchorage” they should picket was none other than the Anchorage Baptist Temple.

This part’s worth quoting at length, because it’s where I say something nice.

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

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

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

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

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

Good for you, Jerry.

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

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

Do you think these kids understand the signs they're carrying? Or do they just love the adults who asked them to carry them?

Of course, you must take into account that I wrote that before I knew that in October 1994 he had preached at the Anchorage Baptist Temple about shooting liberals, telling his congregation that, “The only reason I would not take a gun and do it is because of God. That’s the only reason… In fact, it would be better to shoot a liberal, then, and then be put in jail. Maybe they’d at least feed you.” [Ref. 1] He later said that he wasn’t serious about shooting liberals, but had only been engaging in hyperbole. [Ref. 2] But then I guess you could say the Phelpists mostly engage in hyperbole too: in spite of all their hate-filled signs, they have never, to my knowledge, engaged in violence at their pickets or otherwise.

But I still wouldn’t say that Rev. Prevo or his church engages in the same aimed-in-every-direction hatred that the Phelpists practice.  Rev. Prevo is very specific in his hatred: Love the sinner, hate the sin.

Though in the current battle over the equal rights ordinance, as in the two that preceded it, I think he might more truthfully state his belief as being: Love the sinner, hate the sinner’s ability to keep a job or home without being fired or evicted at the drop of a hat. And one can’t help but notice that it’s only one set of “sinners” that Rev. Prevo feels should be left open to such discrimination.  Can you guess which ones?

Just a couple of days ago in a post entitled “Is Jerry Prevo mishandling the Anchorage Gay Ordinance issue?” Alaska Standard publisher & conservative talk show host Dan Fagan wrote,

On Monday Dr. Jerry Prevo was a guest on my show to talk about the proposed Anchorage Gay Ordinance. I will have to admit I experienced some discomfort with the interview. My fear is those of us opposing the ordinance are so obsessed with winning the debate we are sending the gay community the wrong message.

In the accompanying audio clip, with the filename it’s not just about winning the debate.mp3, Mr. Fagan observes that (according to Christian theology) we are all sinners, but the message Rev. Prevo seems to be putting out is that homosexuals are the worst of the worst, are lesser & lower than other sinners such as those who make up the body of the conservative church.  Mr. Fagan suggests that some ordinance opponents — he actually uses the word “we” — have become so intent upon winning at any cost that they’ve lost sight of what Christians are supposed to be about.  I don’t agree with everything Mr. Fagan says here, far from it, but I respect it a lot.  It’s a clip well-worth listening to — what has every appearance of being an earnest self-examination about how conservative Christians might better fulfill their calling in the face of their beliefs about homosexuality & gender identity.

But in the meantime, yes, it’s been obvious to me for much longer than just this battle that Rev. Prevo is far more interested in winning the debate, whatever debate he happens to be in at any given moment, than in following the message of love that the Christian church is supposedly here to proclaim. There are not too many LGBT people that I know, myself no exception, who feels much love at all in the message Rev. Prevo directs at us.  Not to many nongay people that I know either — just read the letters in the Anchorage Daily News, or the reader comments, & you’ll see that the majority of commenters whether straight or gay are sick of Rev. Prevo, consider his “Love the sinner hate the sin” as so much empty rhetoric, & wish he’s just shut up.  To me, Rev. Prevo’s chief distinguishing feature is an arrogant, smug will to win.

And it shows in his tactics.

Which is what brings me, finally, to what about last Tuesday’s events reminded me so extraordinarily of the Westboro Baptist Church.

The kids.

One of the kids bused to the ordinance hearing Tuesday night.

Because the Westboro Baptist Church is well-known for bringing their children to their protests as billboards of their hatreds.  And while Rev. Prevo’s hatred — masked as it is in the language of “hate the sin, not the sinner” — is less crude, more sophisticated than that of Fred Phelps & his children, he is no less guilty of using his children, or the children of his congregants, as propagandist billboards on issues that most of them are as innocent of as are the Westboro kids.  They are not comprehending: they are merely repeating what their elders tell them in order to please them — in order to please the people they depend upon & whom they love.  And to make such use of their brightness, their innocence — well, I’ve gotta say.  That’s a cold & cynical move indeed.

Kids bused in to the hearing

There were two separate worlds at play at the Loussac Library last Tuesday night: inside the Assembly chambers, & outside them, in the lobby & outside the building altogether.  And I was inside.  I had learned, of course, that adults from the Matanuska-Susitna Valley, which is outside the boundaries of the Municipality of Anchorage, had been bused or carpooled into Anchorage to testify, despite their non-resident status.  But other than some chanting heard briefly through the walls from equal rights supporters, I was minimally aware of what was going on outside the building until I got home that night & read Phil Munger’s blog post about it at Progressive Alaska. As he reported,

Little girl bused in to Tuesday night's ordinance hearing

Anchorage and Mat-Su Valley fundamentalist churches bussed in well over a hundred kids to the Anchorage Assembly meeting this evening…

The kids, some less than ten [years old], were mostly without parents. They were sort of clumped together, perhaps by congregation, or by home schooling support group. Dozens of adults were taking pictures of the kids, some encouraged by the Christianist adults around the youngsters. I took about 70 photos. Here are a few.

Phil has graciously permitted me to reproduce a few of his photos here, as has AKMuckraker of Mudflats, whose post the following morning also mentioned the kids.  As she wrote,

Kids bused in

I was stunned at the number of children that were there waving red signs.

I stood for a while looking at them, and I wondered how many of them were gay. One in ten. I picked out one little boy, and imagined it was him. He will grow up among people who think like this. As he becomes aware, he will think that he is wrong, and bad, and unlovable. He will remember this day when he and his family stood holding signs. He may try to hide who he is. His parents, standing next to him right now, may not accept him. He may be afraid to tell them, and live his life as a lie. Or he may deny who he is and try to fit in, and trying hard to prove that he isn’t what he is. He may even bring his wife and kids to rallies like this.

Many of the witnesses last Tuesday night could tell stories of  childhoods much like that.  On both sides of the debate.

References

1. Jones, Stan. (1994).  “Prevo’s sermon draws fire: Some fear preacher may incite the fringe.” Anchorage Daily News. Oct. 22, p. A1.
2. Phillips, Natalie. (1994). “Prevo plays to packed house: Preacher, guest evangelist keep up attack on liberals.” Anchorage Daily News. Oct. 31, p. A1.

Related:

• 6/20/2003. Fred Phelps coming to Anchorage. The “godhatesfags.com” followers of Westboro Baptist Church pastor Fred Phelps announce plans to picket in Anchorage during PrideFest 2003.
• 6/27/2003. Anchorage Pride 2003: Look how far we’ve come. A brief history history of the annual Pride parade in Anchorage from 1983, in which there were 19 marchers, to 2001, in which there were two to three thousand. Can the followers of Fred Phelps wreck that? Don’t think so.
• 7/8/2003. Those Phelpists aren’t too clever, are they? Why did Westboro Baptist Church, famous for their website “godhatesfags.com,” picket Anchorage Baptist Temple — famous in Anchorage as the very center of antigay attitudes in Alaska?
• 7/8/2003. Publicity, publicity, publicity.  Which Anchorage churches during PrideFest 2003 did the Phelpists picket, & which not, & why?
• 6/12/2009. Billboards. While in 2003 Jerry Prevo decried Westboro Baptist Church tactics, in 2009 he & his allies didn’t hesitate to use children — even some younger then 10 —  in a very like way, as billboards for their parents’ prejudices.

Do you think the kids in this photo understand the signs they're carrying? Or do they just love the adults who asked them to carry them?

Photo credits:

• Photo 3, “Westboro Baptist Church kid.” Photo by andyofne; used under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 Generic license. Taken in Chalco, Nebraska at WBC protests of Boy Scout funerals on June 17, 2008. For related photos, see andyofne’s set Fred Phelps Westboro Baptist Church Picket Boyscout Funeral. Flickr.com.

Related:

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

In the parking lot

Heather James and John Aronno of SOSAnchorage.net. Not dot com or dot org. dot net!

I got there pretty early on Tuesday, June 9, first parking and walking over to the nearby post office to mail my kid’s cell phone to him.  (A couple of weekends ago he took the train down from Denali Park, where he’s working this summer, and forgot to take back the cell phone back with him.)  When I walked back across the parking lot — at this point full of cars & trucks belonging to regular everyday library patrons — someone hailed me by name.  Lo & behold, there were my new friends Heather James and John Aronno, who I’d only met last Friday.  They are, you might recall, the people behind the website SOSAnchorage.net, which started by debunking the misinformation on the Prevo church-fundraising-through-homophobia website of similar name (the dot com/dot org version), & has since continued to comment on the ongoing fight for equal rights for the LGBT people of Anchorage.  John also has another blog he recently started called Alaska Commons. We chatted for a few minutes, & then I went on to check out how things were shaping up on the Loussac Library’s first floor, where the Anchorage Assembly chambers and Wilda Marson Theatre are located.

“Your powerful Christian Left”

Rev. Dianne O'Connell (retired), member of Immanuel Presbyterian Church

There I found another friend I had last seen Friday night, but in this case one I’ve known far longer — Dianne O’Connell.  Amongst other things, Dianne is a retired Presbyterian minister (ordained November 15, 1987), & has served as campus minister with University Community Ministries in Anchorage, as a chaplain at Alaska Psychiatric Institute and Providence Alaska Medical Center, and as Interfaith Caregivers coordinator at Providence, all that time continuing as a member of Immanuel Presbyterian Church. Which is undoubtedly how I first met her, because Immanuel is my brother’s family’s church, & I’ve gotten to know many of its members over the years, & every one of its pastors since I first came up to Anchorage in 1982.

Hanging out with Dianne

Immanuel is a More Light church, which amongst other things means it shares in the More Light Presbyterians mission of working toward “the full participation of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people of faith in the life, ministry and witness of the Presbyterian Church (USA).” Dianne is as committed to this mission as everyone I’ve met at Immanuel, all of them witness the dishonesty of those who claim that all believing Christians condemn homosexuality & transgenderism.  And that, of course, is why Dianne was there. So of course we chatted for a few minutes too.  She was still feeling simultaneously complimented & surprised by fellow Immanuel member Amanda Coyne’s description, in an article just posted in the Alaska Dispatch, of her and Immanuel’s pastor Rev. Dr. John J. Carey, as “your powerful Christian Left.” Let me tell you something, Dianne: it might not be loud, it might not draw a lot of attention to itself, but the care that you & all the Immanuel family give strangers and friends alike every day as a matter of course is more powerful than words can say.  And I hope I’ve embarrassed you too. I will certainly never forget all that all of you at Immanuel did for my little family in the early days of our taking care of a very hurt little boy, and the welcome you still show us when we visit.

Okay, okay, enough mushiness!

Blue & red

Mike Travis of GSLEN hands out Pride sashes

After a few minutes, we went entered the library to find a few people already there, most of them in shades of blue, indicating their probable support of the ordinance.  This was at perhaps 2:30 or 2:45 PM; at that point, only one person there was wearing red, which I had just learned an hour or so before was the color that ordinance opponents were going to be wearing.  More people began slowly to arrive.  Mike Travis of Anchorage GLSEN — the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network — went around offering ordinance supporters sashes in all the colors of the rainbow that had been used for a few years by the now-defunct Pride chorus.  (I took a green one, after my name.)  Shortly after 3:00, a security guard opened the Assembly chambers and those of us present went in & began choosing seats near the front of the room.

Ordinance supporters, mostly wearing blue and/or Equality Works buttons, dominated the seating in the front of the chambers

And that’s where I stayed for the rest of the evening except for two brief forays out (once to sign up to testify & once to use the restroom).  I started getting a little goofy — I asked someone if we were supposed to be the Jets or the Sharks, & pretty soon was snapping my fingers & humming songs from “West Side Story.” But I settled down, spent some time helping a friend edit her testimony so that it could be read in under three minutes, the time that each person testifying would be permitted.  By the time we got done with that, members of the Assembly had begun to arrive and most of the seats within the chambers had been filled.  I’d say that the front three-fifths of the room were dominated mostly by ordinance supporters, mostly in shades of blue and/or sporting Equality Works buttons, which my friend Steve was distributing, though some empty seats in the front were filled by ordinance opponents in red.  I felt bad at one point when a couple in red were asking about empty seats in our row & I was unable to answer them because my friend and I were halfway through timing her testimony.  I wasn’t really trying to be rude!  Fortunately, they were still able to get seated in our row four or five seats down, and as far as I know everyone was able to coexist peaceably enough through the entire evening, despite our opposing positions on the ordinance.

Outside the chambers, a protest against something the proposed ordinance wouldn't do ("Outlawing dissent"). It wasn't until I got home that night that I learned tons of these pre-printed signs were being waved around outside.

Around 3:40 we were told that to sign up to testify we had to go out into the lobby.  Since we were seated near the front of the room, that meant a lot of people closer to the lobby were lined up ahead of us.  I took the opportunity as I waited in line to take a few photos, & again found that everyone was behaving civilly whether they were in red or blue.  I even shared a couple of good-humored jokes with the guy in red behind me. Eventually, I signed on as (I think) number 93 to testify.  Which led me to think (as eventually proved true), that they wouldn’t get to me this night.

Jeffrey Mittman of the AkCLU and Tiffany McClain and Mia Oxley of the Equality Works coalition

“Long night to come”

Okay, so back to my seat.  I was sitting right next to Heather James, who had her laptop & began a live-blog on her SOSAnchorage.net site, which she kept up through the night — when she could get it to load, anyway.  I finally figured out that I needed to go into the settings on my iPod Touch in order to pick up one of the Loussac Library’s WiFi connections, so now & then I’d turn it on & tweet about the goings on — my Twitter feed also updates my Facebook status, & later than night when I got home I checked out my contacts reactions to stuff I tweeted about.  My first tweet was at 5:07 PM, & said, “Assembly meeting begun. Room full, blue & red.” The second, at 5:16 PM, said, “180 names on testimony list. Long night to come.” Somewhere in the middle of everything were procedural announcements to the effect that people who couldn’t fit in the Assembly chambers could sit in the Wilda Marston Theatre; overflow after that would go to the lobby.

Assembly Chair Debbie Ossiander

The Assembly got down to business: although the main business of the night was public testimony on the ordinance, there was still five & a half pages of agenda to get through first — & a lot of it pretty dry stuff for people unfamiliar with the issues at hand, or unaquainted with parliamentary procedure. Probably the most interesting part of the early agenda was three resolutions honoring long-term Municipality of Anchorage employees, who were perhaps a little discomfited to be on the agenda on such a discordant night, but simultaneously honored by the enthusiastic applause from everyone present, blue & red alike.  This, at least, everyone could agree on: the well-deserved recognition and thanks due to 19-year MOA electrician Michael B. Swensen, 30-year APD police dispatcher Pamela J. Provost, and liason to the Assembly Mike Abbott.  I’m pretty sure it was the last unanimous applause of the evening.

Tony Knowles, former two-term mayor and two-term governor, outside the Assembly chambers. He's an ordinance supporter.

Then back to the drier parts of the agenda again.  I occupied myself part of that time editing & timing (by “reading aloud in my head) my own planned testimony, though I was so far down on the list that I doubted I’d be reading it.  Occasionally I’d check my email & Twitter.  Around 6:00 PM, Assembly Chair Debbie Ossiander gave us the opportunity to take a restroom break. In order to make sure that the people who went out were the only people who came back in, we were instructed to give our IDs to police officers at the door out to the lobby.  A young woman in red just ahead of me had forgotten her ID, & made up for it by taking a photo of herself on with her cell phone’s camera & leaving it with an officer.

Ordinance supporters Mary Parker & Mary Elizabeth Rider outside the Assembly chambers

I caught a few photos in the lobby on the way to & fro — former two-term Anchorage mayor & two-term Governor Tony Knowles; a couple of beauty queens in tiaras just outside the Wilda Marston Theatre, one of whom I assumed was the recently crowned Mrs. Alaska U.S.A. who I’d just read about before coming to the Loussac; a couple of friends, Mary Parker of the UAA Social Work Department & Mary Elizabeth Rider.

Then back inside, & more Assembly business. Finally, at 6:55 PM, I could tweet, “Testimony on ordinance now beginning.”

Testimony

If there’s one regret I have for how I handled the evening, it’s that I didn’t keep better notes of the names of speakers.  Some I know because I know the speakers, or recognize them for their importance in Anchorage or Alaska politics. The notes I did keep were mainly of the general arguments that witnesses made, & a running tally of how many opposed & how many favored the ordinance.  Some of the arguments against the ordinance:

• Julia O’Malley “testimony” (i.e., Julia O’Malley’s article in the ADN about meeting Jerry Prevo, in which she said she’d personally experienced no discrimination; never mind that one cannot generalize everyone’s experience from just one person’s experience)
• Religious freedom
  
• “Too quick” (i.e., the assertion that the ordinance was being acted on too quickly)
• Offensive to some witnesses for LGBT people to compare their struggles to the struggle for black civil rights
• “Bona fide religion” language in ordinance problematic
• Acting Mayor Matt Claman “just trying to make a name for himself”
• Anchorage already is an equal opportunity place, so we don’t need to add sexual orientation to Title V
• No evidence or documentation of sexual orientation discrimination in Anchorage; or else “not enough to justify such a big change in the law”
• One witness stated that her minor daughter had encountered a person she was certain was a man in a public restroom in the Dimond area of South Anchorage
• The ordinance “pushes gay lifestyles”
• The “Roman Empire” argument (claiming that acceptance of homosexuality inevitably leads to the breakdown of civilization)
• Sexual orientation is a “choice”; there is no gene for being gay
  
• The ordinance is a “bad research project” or “social experimentation”
• The ordinance would bring about too much litigation
• The case of the photographer in New Mexico who was made to pay attorney’s fees when the New Mexico Human Rights Commission ruled that she had discriminated by refusing to photograph a same-sex commitment ceremony
• Homosexuality and transgenderism/transexualism are “against the Bible”

Testimony in favor of the ordinance included:

• At least nine firsthand accounts of experiences of discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity
• Four or five accounts of discrimination that had been witnessed, including by parents of children who had been discriminated against
• The wrongness of discrimination
• The Human Genome Project hasn’t discovered the genes responsible for all kinds of human conditions, so saying that there’s been no discovery yet of a “gay” gene proves nothing
• Several witnesses testified that they had been homosexual for as long as they remembered, & had no sense of having “chosen” it
• Difference & diversity as being beneficial to society
• Diversity of workforce as good for business
• Christian acceptance of LGBT people
• Problems with the current draft of the ordinance’s language on “biological gender” in reference to gender-segregated language, with a request that the language be replaced by a less problematic construction
• Evolving understanding of civil rights as defined & given room for in both the Alaska Constitution and the Anchorage equal rights code (Title V)

By no means are these comprehensive lists of the arguments pro or con.  If anyone cares to analyze it in depth, John Aronno has committed to transcribing the recording he made of the proceedings.  I’ll probably make use of his transcription myself, when posted, just to help me remember the names of some of the witnesses.  For example, I don’t remember the names of  I believe it was three pastors who spoke against the ordinance on religious grounds, or the names of their churches, save to know that none of the three was Jerry Prevo (as I had tweeted at 6:37 PM, “Prevo apparently didn’t manage to get into assembly chambers or wilda marston theatre”).  One of them was also forceful in his condemnation of the comparison of the fight for equal rights for LGBT people with the black civil rights movement, which was part of his own family’s legacy.

I have a better memory for the names of one of pastors — in fact a priest — who spoke vigorously in favor of the ordinance: Father Michael Burke, Rector of St. Mary’s Episcopal Church. A representative of the 28-member Alaska United Methodist Conference came forward to read the organization’s statement calling for “equal rights regardless of sexual orientation” (which the Anchorage Daily News had reported on in an article the day before).

Allison Mendel waits to testify

Other testimony that stands out in my memory: two transwomen, one whom I have met a few times, with their stories of rampant discrimination.  Family law attorney Karla Huntington (who at one point represented my partner & I towards protecting my partner’s nephew from being forced into the custody of his abusive father — as I tweeted during her testimony, “Karla Huntington rocks”) & former Alaska Public Defender Barbara Brink both spoke from a legal perspective, arguing in favor of the ordinance and offering constructive criticism of the ordinance as currently drafted.  Another attorney, Allison Mendel, testified about her own experience of discrimination within the legal profession.  Equality Works spokesperson Jacqueline Buckley has a history of being discriminated against about as long as her history as an advocate for equality.  Chuck O’Connell (husband of a one of the aforementioned members of the “powerful Christian left”) gave a powerful recitation of the history of American bigotry as described by the slurs that once were commonly accepted words in American society — much like certain slurs now used for LGBT people.

Perhaps the best known opponent of the ordinance that night was former lieutenant governor Loren Leman.  (Heather James later gave me a special thanks “for keeping the mood light and correcting my spelling numerous times” as she live-blogged the hearing — I regret to tell you that I gave you the wrong spelling for Mr. Leman’s surname!)  Mr. Leman seemed taken aback when Assembly Chair Ossiander had to repeat two or three times a request for him to state his name — maybe he thought he was so well-known he didn’t need to? obviously, it was necessary to have him say it for the record– & again, when his three minutes was up, that she wouldn’t let him keep on talking.  (Not unless one of the Assembly had questions for him, but none did.)  His testimony was also striking for his assertion that unlike every personal characteristic already contained in Title V, sexual orientation was “behavioral” rather than intrinsic. That drew a lot of disbelieving looks from the people sitting around me.  Even assuming that it was a “choice” to be lesbian, gay, or transgender (which most of us would dispute), well, as Heather wrote in her live-blog, “I had forgotten that religion was assigned at birth.” I was quite a bit ruder in what I tweeted: “Excuse me doofus Lehman: religion is behavioral.” A later witness pointed out that marital status, too, was behaviorally based.

Another prominent anti-ordinance witness was Dave Bronson of the Alaska Family Council.  What was especially remarkable about his testimony was his free admission that many of the witnesses we had already heard had suffered from discrimination (one of two anti-ordinance witnesses I remember making that admission).  “I can’t top that,” he said — which stunned me: as though they were entertainers whose performance he knew he couldn’t out-do.  Good grief.  I don’t remember what else he said, other than he obviously couldn’t care less about what they’d suffered.

Vic Fischer answers Assembly questions

On the pro-ordinance side, three prominent Alaskans especially stood out.  And on them, I’m just going to borrow from Heather’s live-blog account (& yes, I spelled all these names out correctly for her!):

Vic Fischer, one of the original framers of Alaska’s Constitution, just gave a very enlightened speech on how the constitution of the United States and the constitution for Alaska were written at times when the framers could not possibly know how society would change.  He made the point that the amendments made to both constitutions were steps forward as society moved forward, and that this ordinance was one further step forward for Anchorage.

His wife, Jane Angvik, one of the framers for Anchorage’s charter, spoke about how the adding of sexual orientation to the city’s codes was proposed in 1975 was already overdue.  She feels that it is now very much overdue.

Ordinance supporters Arliss Sturgulewski, Vic Fischer, Jane Angvik, and Chuck O'Connell (in foreground)

Both Mr. Fischer and Ms. Angvik drew several questions from Assembly members, due to their knowledge of the intent of the framers of the Alaska Constitution (in Mr. Fischer’s case) & the unification charter that in 1975 united the previously separate governments of the Greater Anchorage Area Borough & the City of Anchorage into the unified Municipality of Anchorage that we have to this day.

A few minutes later, Heather wrote:

Arliss Sturgulewski has spoken out in favor of the ordinance.  She was also on the original Anchorage charter commission, and was disturbed to see the hate that was in evidence when sexual orientation was first proposed to be added to the city’s anti-discrimination laws in the 1970’s.

Arliss Sturgulewski finishes her testimony

Unbeknownst to Arliss Sturgulewski, she also has the distinction of being, so far as I can remember, the only Republican I have ever voted for, when she ran for Governor in 1990. (Ultimately losing to Walter Hickel, who had lost the Republican primary to her & abandoned the Republican Party for the time being to run on the Alaska Independence Party ticket.)

It was really a privilege to hear from these three elders of Alaska political life.  And, furthermore, to have their support in the fight for equal rights.

How many of these ordinance opponents are Anchorage residents, and how many are not?

“Prevo’s army is out in force”

It was perhaps halfway through the testimony that I first learned, I believe from Assembly Vice Chair Harriet Drummond, that some of the people testifying against the ordinance were not Anchorage residents, but had in fact been bused or carpooled in from the Mat-Su Valley. I’m not going to discuss that in-depth here — I did that in my post yesterday called “Outside influence” — suffice it to say here that Debbie Ossiander, Assembly Chair, that the Mat-Su people who wanted to would still be permitted to testify, on the grounds that many Mat-Su residents come into Anchorage to work or shop.  I was okay with this decision at the time, having no idea of the numbers that might be involved & the strategy that those numbers implies: part of an attempt, it seems, on the part of anti-ordinance forces to stall the vote indefinitely.  A fillibuster. And given the numbers of Mat-Su residents shipped in, perhaps an indication of a changing demographic in Anchorage, perhaps not quite so amenable to Jerry Prevo’s arguments as it used to be — enough that perhaps he has no choice but to draw from outside the municipality in order to artificially shore up his support.

It was even later in the evening that I saw further news of what was going on outside: a post on Mudflats (which I must have seen on Heather’s laptop) called News from Assembly Meeting saying “Not good news.  Prevo’s army is out in force.  Bussed in from the Valley.  Sea of red shirts coming to rail against civil rights of Alaskans.  Please come if you can to show your support.  Wear anything but red…” It had been posted at 5:46 PM, but I didn’t know that at the time: I quickly tweeted a reassurance, at 10:33 PM, about the different situation inside the Assembly chambers: “I’ve been keeping tally: so far ~34 testified in favor ~30 against ordinance.”

Adjournment

The Assembly adjourned at about 11:00 PM.  After adjournment, I compared my tally with my friend Steve’s — we were pretty close.  As I wrote yesterday morning:

Testimony thus far has been a bit more blue than red, with (according to my tally, which I might have screwed up a couple times) about 40 people testifying in support of the ordinance and 31 in opposition. By the time things shut down for the night, I was perhaps ten people away from testifying myself, & according to Assembly chair Debbie Ossiander there’s a total of 320 or so people total who signed up to testify.

Debbie Ossiander told us before adjournment that everyone who had signed up to testify would be permitted to.  Additionally, anyone who had been called already but who had to leave before they were called would also be permitted to testify.  (One of those people is Immanuel Prebyterian pastor John Carey.)  Based on my tally, about 71 people total testified on Tuesday, which means that about 17 people didn’t come to the mic when their names were called, per Chair Ossiander’s information that Chuck O’Connell, the last person to testify, had been witness number 88.

And that’s where we stand.   Public testimony will resume next Tuesday, June 16.

Some thoughts

I was impressed about a number of things.  I was impressed, first, at the amount of work that our elected representatives in the Assembly do. This post cannot begin to bring justice to what they do.  I was impressed, to, by Debbie Ossiander’s even-handed but firm control of the meeting. She did a fantastic job of enforcing a civil atmosphere in a very contentious atmosphere, & I will say that in spite of my eventual disagreement, once I’d learned more, about permitting all the bused-in Mat-Su witnesses to testify.  I was impressed also at her fair treatment of all witnesses, in which regardless of their fame or position in society they were treated as equal citizens of — well, I was going to say equal citizens of Anchorage, but since some of them were from outside Anchorage, I’ll just say equal.

I was also impressed by the civil demeanor of all the people assembled. Regardless of which side they fell on, supporter or opponent, red shirt or blue shirt, everyone did just fine sitting crowded together in a room for eight or nine hours.  No, they didn’t applaud for the other side’s witnesses, and a few times Debbie Ossiander had to caution people to not interrupt each other’s witnesses with reactive noises, but we all existed in the same room together, some of us elbow-to-elbow with our opposition. That in itself I regard as a powerful argument for how even the most religiously conservative can coexist peacefully and civilly with people whose morality they abhor, just as LGBT people and our allies can in fact coexist peacefully and civilly with people whose religious beliefs we find intolerable.  So what’s the issue about us coexisting on the job or as neighbors?

And on a personal level, I was impressed by what a good time I had.  A good time?!!! Comparatively speaking, yes. During the 1992-1993 ordinance fight, I just wanted to curl up into a ball & hide, the hatred in the air felt so palpable to me.  But all of Tuesday night I was in a good humor, & (as Heather James said) “keeping the mood light” for myself & the people on either side of me.  I’m sure part of my good mood was simply that I’m in a better place emotionally at the moment, in spite of recent losses, than I had been in 1992.  But probably the bigger part is my sense that Anchorage has changed in the past 17 years: we had allies before, but we have even more now, & they are standing forth and beside us in ways that are wonderful to me.  Even if we don’t win this particular battle, I know that equal rights will come, and soon. The times they are a’changin’, inevitably, in favor of equality.

But I know the night did not feel the same to other LGBT people there.  Many of them felt the hatred just as palpably on Tuesday night, as I had in 1992.  Several of them who stood forth to testify did so at great risk to themselves, & with much pain. And in fact as I began to write this, I learned of a report that one of the people who testified on Tuesday night was fired from her job the very next day — because of her testimony. [Correction 6/13/09:  Since writing that, it's been confirmed that she was in fact asked to leave her job due to performance and attendance issues, unrelated to the hearing or to her personal life.] [Another addendum, 6/15/09: I'm not too clear what the truth of this is now, given later info. I think the only way anyone could know for sure why she was fired was if the Equal Rights Commission investigated. But the ERC isn't at this point legally empowered or mandated to investigate claims of sexual orientation discrimination.  That's why we're having this battle, after all.]

Even if we don’t win this particular battle, equal rights will come.  But as Jane Angvik said, we’ve been waiting since 1975, when the first Municipal Assembly unanimously passed an equal rights ordinance.  There is no reason, none at all, that we should have to wait any longer.

Okay, it’s late now.  I’ll take care of my typos tomorrow.  Good night.

Quickie post-toothbrush addendum!

John Aronno has posted his first set of testimony transcripts:

• At Anchorage Commons
• At SOSAnchorage.net

Also, if you want to see all the photos I’ve uploaded from Tuesday night, see them in my Flickr photostream:

• Public testimony at Anchorage Assembly, June 9, 2009 (set)

Related:

1. Liveblogging Assembly meeting, June 16 (Assembly public hearing #2)
2. Assembly report 1
3. Kelley testimony 1: Contrary to prior Assembly testimony, existing law does not protect LGBT people from discrimination

How many of these ordinance opponents are Anchorage residents, and how many are not?

I was going to use my lunch hour today to write my account of the Assembly meeting last night.  But that’s going to have to wait: there’s something more important to say at the moment.

We learned midway through the Assembly hearing that numerous red-shirted ordinance opponents had been bused in from the Mat-Su Valley — and some of these non-residents were coming forward to testify. Assembly Vice-Chair Harriet Drummond objected during the meeting to permitting their testimony but Assembly Chair Debbie Ossiander permitted decided to permit it, on the grounds that many Valley residents work or shop in town.

But Mat-Su residents are citizens of Mat-Su Borough, and the governments there. The Anchorage Assembly is supposed to be the government for Anchorage citizens, Anchorage voters. Why are people from outside being permitted to testify in an attempt to influence our government’s decisions about us?

John Aronno of the relatively new blog Alaska Commons, sitting just a couple of people away from me, was recording the entire proceedings, and intends to post transcripts as the week progresses. He was also paying close attention to the “testimony from non-residents” issue. In the wee hours of the morning, he had this to say:

[S]hould we be concerned that anyone was allowed to give testimony, regardless of resident status? Going into today, the vast consensus was that we would not reach a vote. The confirmation of this was not a surprise. However, only getting through eighty out of 300 plus three minute testimonies? There was, unquestioningly, some legitimate points made on each side that should be paid attention to, from people that reside outside of Anchorage. But, should they not be bringing their points, beliefs, and testimonies to their own assemblies? If everyone on the “waiting list” shows up again on June 16th to speak, we’re looking at easily another ten hours of testimony. And, as you’ll see when I am able to upload the transcripts from tonight, easily one third (a conservative estimate) was from out of town.

I will grant you that both sides had out of town representation regarding a bill restricted to Anchorage city limits, but for anyone who was there, and as I believe the transcripts will show, it would be very difficult to argue that it was even in displacement. While one out of state doctor argued the merits of the original wording of the ordinance and the importance of protection for transgenders, and four or five parents spoke on behalf of children who had left the state claiming discrimination on account of being gay, there was a heavy contingent from the Mat-Su Valley, who reportedly arrived in buses, that helped bolster the ranks of the Jerry Prevo, Ron Hammon persuasion. In effect, it looked more like a fillibuster than a string of testimonies.

Besides which, the four or five parents who spoke about their children who left the state were all themselves, from what I heard last night, Anchorage residents.  The only person identified as a non-Anchorage resident who testified in support of the ordinance was the doctor to whom John refers.

Celtic Diva asks Assembly chair Debbie Ossiander why she permitted testimony from nonresidents of Anchorage

There were a few Mat-Su supporters of the ordinance present last night, to be sure — Phil Munger of Progressive Alaska, for example, and Linda Kellen Biegel of Celtic Diva’s Blue Oasis [see correction below].  I saw Linda after the Assembly adjourned for the evening, when she came into chambers to ask Assembly Chair Ossiander why she’d permitted the non-resident testimony. (She received the same explanation we’d been given earlier, including Ms. Ossiander’s frank statement that other Assembly members had objected but that as chair, it was her prerogative.) Phil posted last night with photos of the Anchorage and Mat-Su children, some as young as ten, that had been bused in by Anchorage and Mat-Su fundamentalist churches to help front the outside-the-chambers propaganda battle; today, he points out how the Don Hunter, in his Anchorage Daily News story about the hearing, is “totally incurious as to where all those kids in red came from.” But — neither Phil nor Linda attempted But Phil made no attempt to testify. I doubt it even occurred to them him to try.

Correction! Linda informs me (in comment below) that I am in brain-fart-land — well, actually she didn’t use that term, I do. In any case, I was wrong in my belief that she now lived in the Valley. She’s an Anchorage resident, has been nonstop since 1984, & is on the list to testify. Way down on the list. #313. I wonder just how many bused-in Mat-Su residents are on the testimony list ahead of her?

Might there be legitimate reasons for a non-resident to testify? The testimony of the pro-ordinance doctor from out-of-state suggests one reason: expert information.  She testified specifically about the medical standards of care for transgender people undergoing transition, relevant in particular to the problematic “bathroom language” in the current draft of the proposed ordinance.  It would also seem a no-brainer that visitors to Anchorage might be victimized by the types of discrimination and bias that are at question in the ordinance, in public accomodations at least; and former residents might have stories to tell too — as indeed Linda Kellen might have: she received harassing phone calls and all four tires of her car were slashed simply because of her support for a similar ordinance in 1992. (I believe she later wrote that the tire-slashing was investigated as the Municipality’s first case under a hate crimes law put in place around that time.) Another reason I can think of for why a nonresident might legitimately testify would be if they ran a business in Anchorage, and would therefore be subject to the ordinance’s nondiscrimination provisions in how they treat their employees.

Did any of the Mat-Su residents who testified last night have reasons of that nature? It’ll be interesting to analyze, once John Aronno gets those transcripts posted, what exactly the Mat-Su residents imported into this Anchorage question testified to. Are they among those who claimed that there religious freedom was somehow being violated if Anchorage passes this ordinance — in spite of the fact that their churches are based in the Valley?

But the bottom line remains: the Anchorage Assembly is, in the final analysis, answerable to us, not to Mat-Su residents.

And one must wonder: why did Jerry Prevo & company feel the need to ship in resources from out of town?

In 1998, proponents of Ballot Measure 2, which resulted in the amendment to the Alaska constitution which defined marriage as being between “one man and one woman,” were able to win the battle for advertising in no small part because of huge influxes of money from Outside. As explained at the time by Dan Carter, treasurer of Alaskans for Civil Rights/No on 2,  in a letter to Alaska newspapers dated October 30, 1998:

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?

One can phrase a similar question now: Why should Mat-Su residents determine the fate of Anchorage’s equal rights ordinance?  What is their agenda?

In this battle, the opposition is not just borrowing outside expertise or outside money — they are using actual outside bodies. All those bright young kids in red t-shirts bused in by Mat-Su fundamentalist churches who stood outside the Loussac Library last night waving signs.  All those Mat-Su adults who spend time in Anchorage part-time at best, recruited by Prevo & company in order to try to affect the laws governing the citizens of Anchorage who live here full time.

But there’s another question we can ask too.  If this ordinance is as bad for Anchorage as Jerry and company claims — why do they have to bring in people from outside the Municipality to fight it?  Can it be that ordinance opponents simply don’t have as much support as they claim to in Anchorage?  And if they don’t — why are they trying to sabotage the democratic process of Anchorage government?

(Silly question, I know.  Since when did Prevo & company care about democratic process?)

Related:

1. Debbie Ossiander & the Christianist filibuster
2. The new Carrie Prejean?
3. Billboards