Like Kat, author of yesterday’s testimony, Mike is a young adult who spoke in favor of the ordinance. Bent Alaska is happy to report that many Anchorage youth support LGBT equal rights. — Editor

* * *

As a fantastic orator, Mark Hamilton, once said, “Responsibility means that if you have the ability to respond, then you have the responsibility to speak.” I will take a moment to remind all present of the words in our great Constitution, “That all persons have the natural right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” and are equal and entitled to equal rights, opportunities, and “protection under the law.”

The essence of this matter is not what one religion or what one advocacy group feels, but whether We, as Alaskans, can allow inequality to persevere. Denial of the rights of an entire minority is beyond morally reprehensible. It is something I cannot, in good conscience, sit idly by and watch happen in my city.

I want to make it clear: I do not seek to force or push my opinion on others, merely to be free from their persecution against myself, against my brothers and sisters, against our children, and yours.

The protection of a minority from the tyranny of a majority is one issue each and every Alaskan ought to be proud of. I won’t ask you for Liberty; I will scream for it, from the mountaintops, from city hall, from the steps of your courtrooms.

I will fight for Liberty because I know better than most that Freedom is not Free, and because it is the American thing to do. I urge you to vote “yes.”

I would like to end with a quote from one of my first letters to the Editor of the ADN, as it is still pertinent today:

The religious right would like to resort to ad-hominem attacks on us and other illogical counters to our arguments. Well, frankly all this religious hoopla has no place in a secular argument; it doesn’t matter what your Bible says in a debate over how the laws of our country (or city) ought to be. What matters is right and wrong, and that their oppressive policies and limitations on our God-given freedoms are wrong.