by Mel Green

It’s election day in the Municipality of Anchorage. For advocates of equal protection from discrimination for LGBT people, it’s the day we’ve all been working toward. If you are an Anchorage voter, please vote YES on Proposition 5.

If I were to characterize the mood this morning among Prop 5 supporters, it would be that we here are simultaneously wildly hopeful and “cautiously optimistic.”  It’s been a long road and months of hard work from One Anchorage organizers, volunteers, and supporters, and it seems to be fleshing out: the most recent polling is good.

But as is ever the case, the polling that really counts is the vote count itself. And so One Anchorage volunteers are still working hard to get out the vote.  May we all succeed.

Prop 5 opponents are also trying to get out the vote.  An administrator of Jim Minnery’s Protect Your Rights – Vote NO on 5 Facebook page posted this morning:

Attention Young People or First Time Voters – YOU CAN REGISTER AND VOTE AT THE SAME LOCATION TODAY !! It is super easy. Take a few minutes TODAY and stop by a polling station, register to vote ( all you need is your AK driver’s license ) and cast a NO Vote on Prop. 5. We really need you to vote. Tell at least 3 of your friends how easy it is.

Click on the MyNeighborhood link below to find your polling place. Once in MyNeighborhood type in your address, then use the Political pull down menu. A map with your polling place location, street address, and Assembly representatives will be displayed.

http://neighborhood.muni.org/

The problem is, of course, that to be eligible to vote in today’s election, a voter must have registered at least 30 days ago, per the Municipality of Anchorage’s voter registration information page — as a Yes on 5 supporter quickly pointed out, only to be scolded off by a Prop 5 opponent wielding the word “pervert.”  (Click through on the picture above for a PDF of the full conversation as of this writing.)

It’s unknown why Jim Minnery or some other page administrator posted the misinformation about same-day registration/voting, but it led one Yes on 5 supporter to comment,

I can’t figure out if this particular falsehood is:
a) bad research/understanding of policy
b) intended to mislead voters into trying to circumvent city policy, or
c) an insider suggestion, that if you go to the right place, their might be a way to vote even though your are ineligible…

Whatever the case may be, this falsehood goes hand in hand with other falsehoods that have been promulgated by Jim Minnery and his “Protect Our Rights” operation over the course of the campaign, such as:

• the claim that passage of Proposition 5 will lead to people being jailed for discriminating (they will only be jailed if they are found guilty by a court of law of impeding Anchorage Equal Rights Commission in the course of their duties; see Anchorage Municipal Code (AMC) 5.80.020);
• the claim that owners of gay bars only hire gay people (just check out Mad Myrna’s: at least half its employees are non-LGBT);
• the claim that employers will be forced to hire LGBT people if they are unqualified (including if they do not abide by their employer’s dress codes);
• the claim that religious organizations will be forced to hire any LGBT employees at all.

And of course we in Anchorage have all become all-too-familiar with Minnery’s and his campaign’s offensive and defamatory caricatures of transgender people in No on 5 commercials (all collected in this post from the national LGBTQA blog The New Civil Rights Movement.)

It’s clear in any case that emotions among many Proposition 5 opponents are running high and, apparently, scared.  An employee of a Guardian Security, a local private security agency, reportedly called Mad Myrna’s, Anchorage’s largest gay bar, last night saying that all the agency’s people were being detailed to conservative area churches: some No on 5 people have apparently convinced themselves that the GLBT community will riot against them if Proposition 5 doesn’t pass. As Daphne DoAll LaChores, one of the divas of Mad Myrna’s Friday Night Divas, posted,

Are we having a GAY RIOT tomorrow? (as,I am not sure what heels to wear?)…. Where do they get this stuff?????

I don’t know where they get that stuff, Daphne. But if there is one instance where the use of the term homophobia — “Fear of or contempt for lesbians and gay men” — is appropriate, surely this is it.

The actual plan that Proposition 5 supporters, LGBTQ and non-LGBTQ alike, are being encouraged to follow this evening — regardless of the outcome of the vote — is this:

• Take their“I voted” stickers to Snow City Café, and get 50 cents off their coffee. (Thanks, Snow City!)
• Hang out at Snow City from 6:30 to 8:00 PM, then
• Join the One Anchorage campaign at the Election Central — the Dena’ina Center — from 8:00 to  11:00 PM, and then,
• Convene at Mad Myrna’s for celebration, or commiseration.  (But we have very high hopes it will be the former.)

I hope to see you there. I’ll be livetweeting throughout the evening’s events @bentalaska, also taking lots of pictures, and also probably staying up through the wee hours to blog about it here.  Stay tuned.

Until then, if you are a registered Muncipality of Anchorage voter, get out to the polls and vote YES ON 5.

Photo credit: One Anchorage — Yes on 5 volunteers waving signs on election morning at Northern Lights & Seward Highway, 3 Apr 2012. Photo courtesy Anchorage Won’t Discriminate.