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!"

Red Is the Color of ...

Given today's terribly sad news about an aged right-wing, white supremicist shooting and killing a security guard at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC, and given the recent horrific news about another right-wing anti-abortion extremist killing Dr. Tiller at his church last weekend, and given the awful speech by extreme right-wing idealogues who mouthed off against Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, I suppose I should be thankful that none of the LGBT citizens who appeared at last night's Anchorage hearing were harmed while I watched.

Staying up well past my bedtime last night I viewed as much of the hearing as I could (via the Internet) on Anchorage, Alaska's proposed ordinance to add LGBT persons to their anti-discrimination law.  Was anyone else disturbed by the nearly uniform wearing of red shirts by all those who testified in opposition to the ordinance?  Had I been sitting on the board hearing the testimony, I would have been upset that a simple session for citizen comments would be usurped by what appeared to be a calculated, organized movement.  People from well outside Anchorage spoke against the ordinance... no doubt people from Sarah Palin's own home congregation.

I wrote down several themes, from both proponents and opponents.  What I finally sorted out for myself today boils down to this:  those who oppose making explicit a LGBT person's rights are afraid.  Here is what they have been led to fear:

• They will no longer be able to freely discriminate against members of the LGBT community.
• In addition, they will no longer be able to assert their dominance as the major religion, forcing their ideas and beliefs on others.

I consider myself to be a spiritual person, but not a religious person.  If I were gay and marching in a parade, I would not want so-called Christians yelling at me, reviling me, telling me that Jesus could save me from my illness, and insisting that I am damned if I don't listen to them.  Yet I would never chastise them for holding those beliefs.

I do not care what my neighbors believe when it comes to religious precepts.  What I would care about is if my neighbors took it upon themselves to set me straight according to their religious beliefs by haranguing and harassing me.  (I do wish Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons would stop knocking on my door, trying to enlist me in their belief systems.)

Our country does have freedom of religion.  It also has, or should have, freedom from religion.  Extreme fundamentalists and proselytizers have the option to kick out their gay son or daughter from their own house.  They have the option to refuse entry to a transgender person from their house of worship.  They have every right to turn away a gay couple who asks to be married in their church.  But each of us also has the right to be respected when we ask evangelists of whatever flavor to leave our front porches or get out of our faces at women's health clinics or on the streets.  Each of us should have the right to be hired and perform our jobs with excellence regardless of our religious or personal beliefs, regardless of our gender or sexual orientation, and regardless of our race.  Each of us should have the right to rent an apartment as long as we have the finances to do so and no history of trashing places.

There were a couple very egregious things I heard from the "red shirt" crowd last night.  One was that 'teh gay' was a behavior, a choice, and therefore was not worthy of an extension of civil rights.  To that I say, your choice of religious beliefs is also a choice.  Why should one segment of society be told to change their "choices" while your choices remain unassailed?  What makes your "choices" any better than anyone else's?  (Let it be known that I do not subscribe to the view that 'teh gay' is a matter of choice.)  The other was that laws should not be made to grant benefits to minorities when the majority was against it.  When it comes to civil rights, it is our responsibility to make sure that minorities are protected from majorities. That is what civil rights is all about!  One speaker even revealed his fear that by affirming the civil rights of LGBT persons the ordinance would essentially be enforcing a religion of tolerance on all.  How fallacious.

If you run a business, you are no longer an individual.  You report to the state, the state licenses you to run the business, you have to follow business rules.  That goes whether you are silk-screening T-shirts in a garage somewhere or renting apartments that you own.  As an individual, if you do not want to invite a lesbian to your backyard barbeque, fine.  As a business who places advertisements for workers, you need to hire based on qualifications and not your own personal againstments.

I am not a "Christian," but I honestly don't think Jesus would mind hanging out with LGBT folks at all.  And I hope that the body in Anchorage responsible for deciding on this ordinance keeps in mind that the state is supposed to keep itself separate from the church.

Red is the color of passion, war, power, wanting attention...

"Better dead than red"
"Red herring"
"Was my face red"
"Redcoats"
"The devil wears red"
"STOP"
"Anger"
"Lust"
"Intensity"
"Danger"

Amazing Distractions

George W. Bush commutes Scooter Libby's sentence. No jail time. What luck! It happened over a weekend, while the news was all over this developing story in London about car bombs and burning airports and Mercedes and doctors from foreign countries. These events are being touted as attacks but it is hard to find any damage.

Noone has been charged with anything yet in these "attacks." And the car bombs were not really bombs, they were "potentially viable explosive devices." One car was towed to a storage lot for bad parking, and only afterwards was it said to contain dangerous materials. The first car sat shrouded under a blue tarp before being loaded into a van and taken to a secret laboratory.

Like many anti-terror activities before today, this scare in England seems to be just that -- another boondoggle to frighten people and take their attention away from something else.

Why is 9/11 So Important?

The talking heads on TV, witness Homeland Security head Chertoff, still point to 9/11/2001 as a seminal event... a day that changed everything. This has been the mantra since that day. This event, and the accused perpetrators (never mind that those supposedly responsible have morphed from Osama bin Ladin to Saudi nationals to Saddam Hussein) are the reason we now have lost habeus corpus, the reason we are now enmeshed in a civil war in Iraq, the reason we are still losing soldiers in Afghanistan, the reason our gas prices are high, the reason we cannot expect the Executive branch of our government to follow the law....

I confess to holding a few assumptions. (1) The current administration is lying and has been lying about nearly everything. (2) Questioning the "official line" about what happened on (and who caused) 9/11 is verboten.

Actually, point 2 is indisputable. If you don't believe me, just try to raise a question, out loud, about how Tower 7 fell... or any other anomaly that day. Like how in the hell our national defense system failed us so badly that no planes were scrambled to confront the airplanes that turned off their transponders. Or why the members of the 9/11 commission just failed to include testimony from Norman Minetta that raised definite questions about just which orders Cheney wanted to stand as a plane approached the Pentagon.

Point 1 is obvious to anyone who learns about the world outside of Fox News [sic] channel. The lies are endless. Not only are they proven lies, they go unchallenged by the "MSM" ... who apparently have better things to do than source their stories and seek the truth.

The root of all current evil is 9/11. Once we shine the light on what really happened (and what DIDN'T happen) on that day, the remainder of our current issues and their solutions ... will come into focus.

That's why 9/11 is so important. If we leave those stones unturned, we are only trying to plug the hole in the dike when what we really need to address is why the seas have breached the dikes in the first place.