(hat tip for video: Bent Alaska)
I watched this KTVA report (done by one of my favorite reporters, Cory Allen Young -- click on the "Chuck Kopp" archive at the bottom left of the blog and you can see why) and got to see a face I haven't seen in many years...writer Mel Green. She talked about the discrimination she's experienced as a lesbian...how it lost her a job. She also discussed the many-long-years LGTB folks have been working to achieve protection from that discrimination in Anchorage. I immediately flashed back to the last attempt in the early 1990s.
I was in the folk/rock band "Sky Is Blu," whose members were either LGBT or LGBT-friendly. We ended up playing many gigs for LGBT events and for six years, I felt privileged to be involved in this wonderful, close-knit community.
As is ALWAYS true for me, I cannot be involved in a community without also becoming politically involved. When the Anchorage Assembly brought an Ordinance forward in 1992/1993 to add "sexual orientation" to the list of classes protected from discrimination within Municipal employment, I jumped in. I was part of a group that started a now-defunct 501 C3 to help educate the community-at-large. So, we wrote letters, we marched and I attended every day of the Assembly testimony.
To this day, that was the hardest thing I've ever done. We experienced:
-- The vile hatred that poured out of people as they stood there in front of the Assembly,
-- The betrayal I felt as Reverend Patterson, a man I had always admired while working with the Martin Luther King Citywide Celebration Committee, testified against the Ordinance,
-- The bile welling up in me as lie after lie about HIV/AIDS and sexual abuse came out of the mouths of Anchorage Baptist Temple members because their leader, Jerry Prevo, spouted them from the televised pulpit every Sunday as if they were fact.
(Seeing that Mr. Prevo is once again jumping on the "special rights" bandwagon I'm not surprised...I heard back-in-the-day it was quite a money-maker for him in the donation basket.)
For me, that was even harder than the flack Sky Is Blu got for our participation.
Coincidentally, there was a National March for LGBT Rights gearing up in D.C. for late April 1993. We were selected as the band going to represent Alaska so we were trying to raise/save money like crazy for the trip. The Alaska media interviewed us about it as well as our thoughts on the Ordinance. As a result, I received threatening phone calls (I remember my boyfriend at the time grabbing the phone from me to deal with one of the nasty callers) and all four of my tires slashed. Another member of the band was (literally) harassed and followed down the street!
Worst of all, the only male member of the band lost the job he had been offered with, ironically, the Municipality! As a result of this, he couldn't get hired in his field and eventually ended up moving to the lower-48 with his wife and child.
The outcome of the Ordinance back then was that it passed...but it was right before the Assembly election. The right wing did a media blitz and the Assembly moved to the ultra-Conservative body it remained as until last year.
As soon as they were elected, their very first act was to overturn the Ordinance.
I remember that the wonderful experience of the LGBT March on Washington was also peppered with a vat of tears; everyone who fought so hard for the Anchorage Ordinance suddenly had a safe place to grieve.
When I look at the names involved in Equality Works which is an organization supporting the Ordinance and working to end discrimination against LGBT folks in Alaska, I see many of the same folks I stood side-by-side with 16-years-ago. I'll be there again and I hope that the majority of Anchorage will be as well.
I HAVE to believe that we've grown as a city since then. |
