Fear, Hate and Loathing in Anchorage, Alaska

After listening to a few hundred people 'testify' before the Anchorage Assembly regarding an ordinance that would extend the current anti-discrimination law to include members of the LGBT community, I've got enough material to compile a typical statement made by the red-shirted xtians who stood up at the microphone. The following is not a transcript, it is simply my impression. The images on the side come from pictures posted on this blog entry at Mudflats.

"My name is Redd Shurt and I've lived in Alaska for a while. I'm here to let you Assembly people know that God loves everybody and I love everybody, really I do, and I don't hate anyone. All my brothers and sisters in Khrist feel exactly the same way! In fact I know a lot of homo-sekshuals and I have gay friends, a lot of 'em. But there's a natchural way to live and an unnatchural way and if you all pass this here ord'nance 64, we'll be forced to condone, support and promote the unnatchural way which is the same as sin because it says so, right here in the Bible: [insert favorite chapter and verse from the Old Testament here]. Alaska will turn into Sodom and Gomorrah and be destroyed. Gays will be recruiting other people and spreading disease and prancing around telling us decent, God-fearing folks what we can and can't do in our own city. So do the right thing and vote NO on 64.

"I don't judge anybody because that's up to God, but I love God and I don't approve of those gay people's sin! Can I get an amen? Think of the children when they go to school or church or daycare or... to the bathroom! What happens when they run into men dressed up like women in a public restroom and get scared and confused! Or what if their Sunday school teacher was a lesbian, trying to infect them with some of that queerness -- that would be turrible bad! I have a right to raise my children as I see fit, far away from sick, immoral deviants. Gay people should just stay in the closet where they belong, but this ord'nance makes it okay for them to come out and that makes me disgusted and angry. Remember, I vote and I'm watching you! In fact, let the people vote on 64, otherwise you are taking away my rights to have a voice in this matter and it's clear that people who feel like I do are in the majority and the majority should rule!

"What about my rights? If I don't want to hire somebody you can't make a law that sez I have to. If God doesn't like what I do then I get to answer to God, not to some law you make up. I won't be able to turn down a homo-sekshual with bad credit who wants to rent an apartment without getting sued! The lawyers will get rich but us Khristshuns will go broke and that is very bad for our city, our state and our country. Even the US Military kicks gay people out and everyone knows that there's no proof at all that you have to be gay because I shure haven't read anything scientific to prove it but right here on the Internet it says gays can be cured so that means it's a choice and behavior can be changed. But if you wanna be gay then suck it up and take what comes with that and don't be asking me to give you any special rights. Besides, I shouldn't have to pay because of a choice you make!"

What the Red Shirts Really Said

Last night's public testimony from the red-shirted ABT people (Anchorage Baptist Temple, the church led by Jerry Prevo) boils down to this:

The LGBT community is not okay because God said so, according to the Prevochristians™.  They are extremely agitated at the thought that the Anchorage Assembly might pass an ordinance saying that gays actually are okay in the eyes of the law.

The Prevochristians™ won't say this out loud, but they are afraid this might mean that they are not exclusively okay. According to Prevo, there is only one kind of okay.  People who believe as he does are it.  So people who don't believe as he does can't be okay, can they?

The red shirts claim that their rights will be taken away if sexual orientation is added as a protected class along with other identifiers like race, color, creed, national origin, sex, religion, age, disability, and marital status.  The only "right" they would lose, it seems to me, is the right to discriminate against a lesbian or gay or transgender person—which seems just fine to me.  If they ever had that right in the first place it was because they assumed too much.

Pastor Prevo has developed a litany of reasons why gay people are not okay, and red shirt after red shirt stepped up to the microphone last night and read out the reasons.

1. Being gay is a choice, a lifestyle, a behavior.  (Even if this were true, going to ABT and believing what Prevo says is also a choice.) 
2. Since gayness can be cured it is okay to ostracize, ridicule, reject and otherwise discriminate against gays who don't seek treatment. (Sorry, being gay is not a physical or mental disease.)
   
3. God condemns homosexuality as a sin.  (Whose god?)
4. Gays have an agenda! (And Jerry Prevo does not?)
5. Gays try to convert you into being gay too!  (Ahem.  Who is trying to convert who?)
   

It is immensely sad and quite unsettling to me that in order to grow a church, certain religious leaders opt to create a box in which to keep their congregations.

It's very hard to see what is outside the box when you are inside it. The box protects you and shields you, but it also blinds you and breaks your connection to the rest of the world. I don't have a problem with people being in a box as long as they know they are in a box, and as long as they accept that being in that box isn't the only right way to live.

More to Come But First:

I've been watching the video feed of the public discussion on the Anchorage, AK ordinance that would add a class of protected persons to their anti-discrimination laws. The law in Anchorage already protects people no matter their race and gender, among other descriptors. The ordinance (#64) seeks to add protections for those who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (aka LGBT).

The proponents for the ordinance are presenting studies that discrimination against this group is real, and in their testimony they are bearing witness, through personal accounts, of the bigotry, hatred, and ostracizing they or close friends have experienced... in Anchorage.

The opponents of the ordinance are inspired to speak out, to fight against the ordinance, largely by a few pastors of Anchorage churches. Their testimony includes exhortations to God, statistics about the deviance and foulness and disease of gay folks (which seem to be largely unsupported), history lessons going back to the Old Testament, and pleas to the Assembly to refrain from usurping their own rights. Rights? Rights to label others? Rights to discriminate against others? Rights to engage with others only as long as those others recognize their sin and agree to be re-programmed so they are no longer gay?

The opponents are of one voice when they say that lesbians and gays have an illness that comes about from their personal choice. If only, they wail, these deviants, these sick people would accept their help to stop being "not okay" so they could rejoin the Christian™ community!

Frankly, I am appalled. Appalled by the overt hypocrisy in the Reverend Jerry Prevo (and other pastor's) crowd. (See Immoral Minority for a copy of what this right Reverend has sent to his "congregation." See Bent Alaska for a history of the struggle to codify protections for the LGBT community.) I am appalled that a sect... a religious sect really thinks it should be able to enforce its particular beliefs on an entire city. I am appalled that so many individuals, all wearing red shirts, can get up and publicly display their bigotry, their disdain for tolerance, their disgust of fellow human beings. The right Reverend, I think, will have an awful lot to answer for, should he make it to those "pearly gates."

Anyway, more to come on this. There is another open session tonight where additional "testimony" will be taken. Please visit Mudflats for information on how to listen/watch tonight's session. Also please visit Alaska Commons for a comprehensive view of the ordinance and its meaning.

Palin bin Plagiarizin

Geoffrey Dunn noticed something odd about Sarah Palin's speech last Wednesday, the one where she gushed over Michael Reagan and told him to continue to be bold.  In the linked story Dunn cites eleven instances where Sarah's words, even though they were garbled and chopped and then strung back together in her inimitable fashion, clearly originated from an article written by Newt Gingrich and Craig Shirley some four years ago.

"Screw political correctness," pronounced Sarah.  Indeed.  That must mean, also, too, screw honesty and screw ethics and screw the effort it takes to think your own thoughts and write your own speeches. 

By the way, I'm pretty sure it was Rush Limbaugh (may the universe forgive him) who started the whole "screw being PC" movement at least twenty years ago. Does Sarah have an original thought in her head, I wonder?

I also wonder how the Sarasites feel about their idol's words today, knowing that she ripped them off. C4P had reprinted much of Palin's Reagan-introduction-in-Anchorage and praised it in glowing terms.  I won't hold my breath waiting for them to berate the guv'ner for cheating and stealing.