A long-overdue Bent Alaska update — October 2013

We answer to a higher calling….

A. Caleb Pritt writes on the relationship between Christian faith and the GLBT community.

Alaska Hate Crimes Act: My letter in support of SB11

Hate crimes: They can happey anytime, anywhere.Today the Alaska Senate Judiciary Committee is hearing testimony on Senate Bill 11, the the Alaska Hate Crimes Act. In spite of the fact that the bill addresses hate crimes based on a number of personal characteristics, the factually incorrect “action alert” sent by Jim Minnery of Alaska Family Council to his supporters yesterday focused exclusively on sexual orientation and gender identity.

Alaska Hate Crimes Bill: Jim Minnery v. reality…again

Jim Minnery is freaking out again.

I know, it doesn’t take much. In the past year, the head of the Alaska Family Council (which works against both Alaskans and families) has taken on topics ranging from Planned Parenthood to public education to the Girl Scouts of America. But nothing seems to get his soul patch flaring like “the gay.”

His latest manufactured controversy, sent out today through his “Alaska Family Action Alert” email blast, surrounds Alaska Senate Bill 11; a piece of legislation aimed at adding sexual orientation and gender identity to our state’s existing hate crimes policy, sponsored by Democratic Senators Bettye Davis, Hollis French, and Johnny Ellis. Tomorrow afternoon, the Senate Judiciary Committee will take on the topic, so naturally Minnery is encouraging his network to flood the committee members’ inboxes and answering machines, and, as per usual, is supplying them with talking points that must have been grown in a special, air tight lab, where there was no possible exposure to that pesky pollutant we call reality.

Let’s take a look at what our state Senators have no doubt been hearing, ad nauseum, these past few days:

Claim 1: SB11 Is Unnecessary. All violent crimes are hate crimes and it’s already against the law to commit a violent attack against another person or his/her property. However, “hate crimes” take the law one step further, adding a separate penalty for the thoughts that allegedly motivated the action.

All violent crimes are hateful. But that is entirely different from each individual offense qualifying as a “hate crime,” defined – at the federal level – in the Hate Crimes Statistics Act as “crimes that manifest evidence of prejudice based on race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, or ethnicity, including where appropriate the crimes of murder, non-negligent manslaughter; forcible rape; aggravated assault, simple assault, intimidation; arson; and destruction, damage or vandalism of property.”

The plain truth is that most violent crimes are ambivalent, in respect to the victims. The “step further” that Minnery is so offended by only applied, in 2009, to just under .005% of all violent crimes in the United States, being that they were carried out in reaction to specific characteristics of the individual they were inflicted upon. Within that sliver of a percentage point, 18.5% resulted from sexual orientation bias. Meaning that people targeted people for being gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, or even straight.

Does Jim Minnery and the Alaska Family Council believe that this is an acceptable number? That we shouldn’t single out individuals that enact violent crimes against people specifically because of their gender identity or sexual  orientation? This is not a free speech issue, as he is attempting to frame it. This is an “acting violently” issue.

Or maybe he’s just feeling all soap-boxy because he already has his protection. The 19.7 percent of hate crimes in 2009 which resulted from religious bias – 1.5% higher than sexual orientation and gender identity offenses – are already protected.

(Someone wants to have their sky cake and eat it too.)

Claim 2: SB11 Would make people unequal under the law. A person who assaults a homosexual will be given a harsher penalty than if that same assault was perpetrated on, for example, an elderly person. This creates a two-tiered justice system with second-class victims. All human life should be valued the same regardless of a person’s race, religion, national origin, etc.

This goes back to the paper thin “special rights” argument that permeated the Assembly Chambers in the Loussac Library during the Summer of Hate surrounding AO-64. Minnery is essentially lobbying for a “fair tax” judicial approach; one uniform prescription for all violent crimes. But, just as stealing a can of soda from a grocery store is different from stealing a delivery truck carrying palettes of soda cans, so is the case with a random violent act versus one motivated by personal prejudice.

As explained by former Supreme Court Justice William Renquist, in the unanimous 1993 decision regarding Wisconsin v. Mitchell, penalty-enhancement hate crime laws exist because hate crimes  are ”thought to inflict greater individual and societal harm…. bias-motivated crimes are more likely to provoke retaliatory crimes, inflict distinct emotional harms on their victims, and incite community unrest.”

What the Alaska Family Council works tirelessly to fail to understand is that random acts of violence are just that: random. And, because of that, they are largely isolated. How does one exact revenge randomly? Mostly, they don’t. There is no explicit direction for the anger to go. Whereas, with hate crimes, we tend to see a really, really bad snowball effect; “the Other.” The manufactured message that wires us with a need to protect ourselves from that other person with those other beliefs with that other skin tone or that other accent, and all these attributes that differ in nature from what we recognize as familiar are inherently nefarious in nature. We should not find common ground, but instead lock the door.

Unfortunately, “the Other” is how the Alaska Family Council frames virtually every debate it puts forth, and it works against a civil society rather than towards one.

Claim 3: SB11 Paves the way for religious persecution. Virtually everywhere “hate crimes” laws have passed, arrests for speech have followed. In Sweden, Canada and Great Britain “hate crimes” laws have been used to prosecute Christians speaking their disapproval of homosexual behavior, posing a serious threat to religious liberty and free speech.

So, what’s behind the bumper sticker allegation that “hate crimes” legislation universally leads to an assault on free speech? Minnery warns that the current legislation on the table will “muzzle” Christians, and cites Sweden, Canada, and Great Britain as evidence of that; invoking the ubiquitous far-right “We’re America, not Europe!” mantra.

Key differences, however, separate the condition of free speech in those countries from the US, actually agreeing with their point, but not in a way that they would necessarily endorse.

Britain is in flux; it’s constitution is based on the precedent of law; there is no backbone document akin to our founding documents. Thus, there are neither initial restrictions or protections regarding free speech and expression. The UK is fairly obviously used, by Minnery, not in substance, but in rhetoric; following the same exhaustive dialog we heard in the health care debate which framed European countries (which Canada found itself interwoven into, because of their relationship to the crown, I guess?) very much as “the Other”.

On one hand, there is America. On the other, there is everyone else. And they have the Muslims.

Canada, in contrast, has “Hate Propaganda” laws, which prohibit the expression of hatred for certain protected groups. That is a far cry from what Minnery is arguing against; the action of anger against certain protected groups, including religious groups.

In fairness, Minnery, and his ilk, have chronic problems with linking words with their consequences.

Sweden, in 2002, approved a constitutional amendment that sought to protect groups from “unfavorable speech,” winning them my personal award-of-the-century for “Ambiguous to a Fault.” In the United States, we’ve kept up a passionate argument for 235 years over what “general welfare of the public” means. And Sweden somehow thought that “unfavorable speech” would suffice, criminalizing not only actual threats of violence, but also “expressed disdain.”

Honestly, “unfavorable speech with expressed disdain” sounds like how NPR would describe the crap that comes out of Dr. Laura’s face. Not exactly a rock solid foundation for the basis of law.

The truth is that Sweden doesn’t have freedom of speech like we are afforded (at least as it pertains to this issue). Their idea of free expression is not even in the same ballpark.

Specifically, in the case of Sweden, Minnery warns readers about Pastor Ake Green, who was arrested for delivering a clearly anti-gay sermon in 2003. And if you live in Alaska and occasionally go outdoors or turn on a television, you’ve heard it before: Genesis, Deuteronomy, cancer on society, abnormal, perverse, will lead to disaster and the spread of aids, blah blah blah. It’s been carbon copied and put on display across America one hundred times over, including in Jim Minnery’s emails, Jerry Prevo’s weekly tangents, and Dan Fagan’s radio show (now only available in scarred memories). Last I checked, we haven’t made any arrests. Nor should we. The Westboro Baptist Church (I linked their Wiki page, because I’m not throwing any traffic their way if I can help it) gets to bounce around the map like deranged gummy bears with inarticulate chips on their shoulders. By the same token, our own reality deficient, eccentric characters should be afforded the same rights.

That doesn’t mean we should accept the message as credible; it’s laughable. But they should get to scream down the same vacant hallway that houses Sarah Palin’s presidential aspirations.

Back in the real world where Jim Minnery’s emails can’t hurt you, Green was acquitted by the Swedish Supreme Court, which cited Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, stressing the international right to freedom of expression (anyone want to guess what nation Europe got that idea from?).

More smoke and mirrors to justify an irrational adversity to equal protection under the law from the Alaska Family Council, which again I will point out has nothing to do with working towards the betterment of Alaska or her families.

The good news is that Jim Minnery and the openly closed-minded organization that pays him a lot of money to concoct controversies “in His name!” is not ultimately responsible for making sure SB11 passes. He is only in charge of orchestrating an online and telephonic misrepresentation of Alaska.

About an hour ago, I was talking to a friend of mine – himself a full catalog of standing up against adversity – who reminded me that, at the end of the day, we are all confronted with a simple, albeit blunt, choice: Be a friend or be a dick. Either we make tough choices to stand up and fight for community, or we allow ourselves and those we care about to get screwed, bullied, and ignored; left to fend for themselves. Or we can stand up and say a lot more than “It gets better.”

We can demand that it does.

Friday, at 1:30pm, the Senate Judiciary Committee will address SB11. They’re going to hear from the Alaska Family Council. I implore you to do your part in ensuring that they also hear from the Rational Alaska Community, and I ask you to speak up in defense of our community; our Alaska.

The committee includes Senators Hollis French, Bill Wielechowski, Joe Paskvan, Lesil McGuire, and John Coghill.

Clicky clicky. And kindly pass the word.

After the election is not the time….

by Caleb Pritt

Tuesday in Chicago, a good man, Gery Chico conceded his bid for Mayor of Chicago to Rahm Emanuel. I applaud Mr. Emanuel on his victory, but as far as policy goes….Gery Chico had the right vision, plan, and experience to really turn Chicago around and make it a first class city again. The loss of the Summer Olympic Games, the rising unemployment and crime rate in Chicago only go to show you that Chicago is not the mighty metropolis it once was….but it can be. I give credit to Ed Koch and later Mike Bloomberg for the way they have turned New York City around, when they were Mayor. But in Chicago, today, a little over 50% of the eligible voters have voted.

In Wisconsin, Indiana, and Ohio, reactionary Republican Governors and their legislative leadership have sought to break….literally bury the organized union effort. There are protests in their second week in Madison, Wisconsin while the Democratic Party members of the State Legislature in those three states have fled across state lines to prevent quorum. In those states, in Wisconsin 51.7%, in Indiana 37.8%, and in Ohio 44.3% of the eligible voters voted in key elections across those states’ elections. Potential Governors (Tom Barrett in Wisconsin, Jill Long Thompson in Indiana, and Ted Strickland) who all had pro-union records were left on the sidelines.

At home here in Alaska, there is growing frustration with the way Sean Parnell as Governor has refused Federal money for the Health Care Consortium and the fact that he favors giving more business tax breaks, while thousands of Alaskans struggle with mounting energy prices because there is still no movement on building the Natural Gas pipeline. There’s also considerable frustration with some of the other policies of Governor Parnell. Mind you, Democrats Ethan Berkowitz (the eventual Democratic nominee for Governor), as well as Hollis French & Bob Poe had wonderful policy plans for energy, the economy, and many Alaska issue. 43.2% of eligible Alaska voters cast ballots in the 2010 General Election. Alaska could have had a forward thinking Governor who would prepare Alaska for the next phase of it’s statehood. There are many problems facing my state I chose as home and cutting budgets, pampering the big businesses, and sticking the proverbial head in the sand will not solve those problems. Alaska needs another Egan, Hickel, or Hammond as Governor. Instead they are getting a Governor whose focus is on supporting the business interests who supported his campaign, rather than the people who he was elected to govern. But as the late and great Molly Ivins said, “You dance with the ones who brung you.” And the big business interests “brung” Sean Parnell to the big dance as Governor!

On average 41.6% of the eligible voters in the United States bothered to turn out and vote.

As a political operative, I know that those who host a coffee party to meet a candidate, go to a campaign headquarters and do data entry, knock on doors passing out literature on a candidate, and actually take voters to the polls or take absentee ballots to those unable to go is a far less percentage.

My cousin, Charlotte Pritt, was the first woman ever nominated for Governor of West Virginia. She was a State Senator and former member of the House of Delegates. She entered politics because as a school teacher she saw too many children who came to school hungry and she asked prophetically, “What do you do when the kids are too hungry to want to learn?” Her campaign for Governor was more than a mere exercise in breaking barriers for women. She supported collective bargaining rights, opposed a grocery and gasoline tax, and was an advocate for responsible conservation that works with business while opposing mountain top removal in mining. 46.6% of eligible West Virginia voters turned out to vote in 1996. She faced a former Governor who was assisted by a conservative State Senator who supported a smear campaign against her. The UMW got a holiday declared but many miners took a personal day rather than voting for the daughter of a coal miner, thinking in Democratic West Virginia she had it won. She narrowly lost and that conservative State Senator went onto later become Governor himself and now a U.S. Senator. As a result West Virginia has seen mountain top removal rise and social programs for those less fortunate decrease. We have seen greedy politicians lusting for power attempt to usurp the authority of the State Constitution and the aforementioned State Senator who went on, stopped at nothing to crush my cousin and later her brother, who also ran for statewide office, as well as anyone who opposed him. As Governor, his daughter received an illegal degree, a great U.S. Congressman was assaulted and turned out for reelection on false charges of misconduct, and it took a near revolt in the State Legislature to stop the Huey Long-like power grab of this individual. And yes Big Business thrives and the people suffer.

Protests, energy, email campaigns are all well and good but they are misplaced energy AFTER THE ELECTION. After the election is not the time to get involved. After the ballots are counted and the election is certified is not the time to get involved. Facebook statuses, letters to the editor, the occasional protest, all that is wasted if you do not do the homework beforehand.

As a political operative, I am on the frontlines. Do you realize many of us who work on campaigns get paid very little, but work long hours. We have little of a social life because we devote our lives (if we are good and worth our salt) to the politician and their campaign. We sacrifice sleep, good nutrition, health, and wealth to make the clanky gears of democracy turn. We endure losses of relationships, non-understanding family and friends, and miss concerts, movies, and various other social events. We struggle to convince people to come in to assist us. We endure the insults of the uninformed and the mind numbing, soul-wrenching pomposity of the ignorant. We become literal slaves to make freedom work. We are the reason….the front line shock troops that are the first on the field of battle as it were, and when the election is over….very few remember us or the sacrifices we made.

And I have been a candidate and for them, the sacrifice is greater. You sacrifice not just your social relations and your family and absence of being with loved ones, but you sacrifice your privacy and your dignity. You find yourself cramped in a room calling contributor after contributor because you are forced to do so to find enough donations (fuel) to keep your campaign going. You add to that the need to do endless news interviews, travel time to various events, listen to person after person, study the issues, try not to slip up in what you say while having to cope. You have little sleep and you wake up in a panic mode asking, “Is it worth it?” or more frightfully, “How will I raise enough money? What if I lose?” And you think of not just your family & friends, but your extended family, your campaign staff, and worry about disappointing them. You do so many things in so little time and suffer a harsh press, encouraged sometimes by harsher bloggers, who take rumors and half-truths and build them to a crescendo game of “gotcha”, not to mention the contributors or supporters who feel scorned if you don’t give them enough attention. You don’t thrive often, but rather survive, and often the one with the best plans doesn’t win because society and elections has become more predicated on who raises enough money vs. who raises the most valid solutions to the problems facing government.

Often I hear politics and politicians are corrupt. Well government and politics are indicative of the people they govern. If we have an abusive relationship with our elected officials, it’s because we are allowing them to abuse us. We as citizens possess a power than men & women in Libya, Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain, all across Africa and Asia and all around the world give their lives for….the power to vote.

In Iraq, our men and women in uniform are sacrificing their body and blood to give people the right to vote. In Afghanistan it’s the same as well.

We in America have no excuse. We have had the right to vote since 1789 if you are a white man, 1865 (or 1963 depending on your definition of the right) if you are an African-American, 1921 if you are female. No matter your skin tone, your orientation, your religion, your beliefs….you have an inherent right and a power to speak and be a part of the process. By taking a quick moment we can with the power of a pen render the powers of mighty armies useless. We can control our budgetary demands if we vote. We can end and decide what we want truly, if we but vote. We don’t need Tea Parties or Coffee Parties.

Somewhere tonight there are people like Kevin & Daniel and other friends of mine who have drowned their sorrow in a beer or two. The next few weeks will be hard as they help to disassemble a once thriving campaign office, then pack up, try to decide what they will do for their lives, and then the silence. The silence and sense of loss that comes at the end of a campaign. The sense that while their cause was right and their aim was true, they fell short of the goal, and they will as I have often and other friends before me have beforehand ask, was it worth it?

After the election is not the time. Griping never solves problems and neither does misplaced energy. There’s one solution and that’s the register to vote and utilize in municipal (citywide), county, state, and national elections. Then and only then do we fulfill the right to call ourselves citizens. Otherwise to abdicate that right is really your way of saying I don’t want to be an American citizen.

Our nation and our state(s) are at a crossroads. We can choose a destiny that we choose or we can sit idly by and gripe and complain as our precious freedoms erode away. The choice is ours, each of us, and I pray to God it’s not too late!

All photos except that of Sean Parnell and Charlotte Pritt by Melissa S. (Mel) Green. Sean Parnell photo is public domain through Wikimedia Commons.  Click through on photos for further information.

Young is getting old for Alaska!

– by Caleb Pritt

Don Young is a good person to meet and to visit with. I would love the opportunity to go fishing with him sometime if he ever offered, though I doubt he would. But Young is getting Old for Alaska.

Now before you think this is an attempt by a young man to use Don Young’s thirty-eight years in Congress against him, it’s not. It’s the fact that his votes are so out of line with Alaska and Alaska’s best interest, something he likes to say he represents. Don Young has reverted more and more to voting the Republican Party line, rather than voting for Alaska’s line, for the future.

Today, Don Young joined a band of reactionary Republicans in voting to repeal the Healthcare Reform that ALREADY passed the House before. This was a moment where a senior “indpendent-minded” Republican could have said, “We need to focus on the issues before us, not what is behind us.” Instead, Don Young chose the party politics of Washington, D.C. over Alaska’s best interest. He says the bill was unconstitutional, yet why didn’t he do anything when it was decided the first time? Theres plenty of parlimentary tricks he could have employed. Even at that, he could have split the provisions of the bill and voted against the Individual Mandates and yet still voted for providing health care to those with preexisting conditions. He could have added a rider to provide more funding for rural and for native health care efforts. Instead, Don Young disappointed Alaska and turned his back on Alaska by playing the Washington, D.C. game.

Awhile back, there was a move to alleviate the American taxpayer of the tax-dollar draining provision known as Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, a provision that has wasted hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars. Don Young claims he’s a friend and advocate for taxpayers but rather than using that as justification to remove DADT, he voted against repeal. In fact, Lisa Murkowski could look past her partisan label and partisan leanings to do the right thing, but Don Young who talks Alaska when running for re-election every two years, par for the course votes Washington, D.C. politics once safely back in office.

Don Young has built up a mystique of invincibility to some of the political prognisticators and the press. But my question as a constitutent of the Congressman is who do you represent: Alaska or the Republican Party? This past November, a plurality of Alaska voters said no to partisan politics and yes to those who place Alaska first in the U.S. Senate. In fact, 2/3rd’s did this if you combine Murkowski & McAdam’s votes over the very partisan Miller. So the question must be asked, is Alaska not getting too old to deal with Young?

Congressman, you can’t go forward by going back. Alaska has always moved forward. I suggest it’s time to start doing that again or come home and let another Alaskan go forward with Alaska, not back with party politics!

Please let us take time… this time

by Caleb Pritt

It’s been 8 years and a month since a plane went down in driving snow in Minnesota snuffing out the life of one of the greater progressive pioneers to ever serve this nation. In the ensuing days as we, collectively as a community, coped with the loss of this man, his wife, his daughter, and others on the plane, the Memorial Service which began so majestically and melodically ended in a blaze of partisan political rhetoric. Eight days later, a popular former Vice President of the United States was defeated in a bid to replace this man in the U.S. Senate by a political manipulator. I of course am talking about the death of U.S. Senator Paul Wellstone, his wife & daughter, and the quixotic Senate campaign between Walter F. Mondale & Norm Coleman. But what was lost, what has been forgotten in those days is the memory of a former coach, of a man who fought hard but fought with dignity & honor, and a man who dedicated his life to public service. What was lost were the other people on the plane who also had the light of their lives snuffed out. The partisan rhetoric grew to such a crescendo because of the memorial service turning political that there are plausible theories out now, how George W. Bush supposedly ordered the assasination of Paul Wellstone. The irony in the story is that Wellstone was on his way to the funeral of another man who had served Minnestoa admirably in the State Senate, when the accident happened.

Two and a half years ago, an hour or so after I had left the headquarters of the Arkansas Democratic Party in downtown Little Rock, an obsessed and mentally disturbed individual charged into the office, barged into the Chairman’s office, and brutally shot & killed a man I had gotten to know, respected, and whom I respectfully called, “My Chairman.” Then the killer went on a crazy high speed chase that ended up in his life ending in a hail of bullets. I, like so many people, numbly sat in the pew at Pulaski Heights Methodist Church in Little Rock, Arkansas days later as we listened to stories, remembered, and then buried Bill Gwatney. Chairman Gwatney was a good man, truly. A man who had compassion for seeing that those who were not considered part of the “in crowd” still got to have a seat at the table and take part in the proceedings. Chairman Gwatney was fair and he was a man of integrity. Yet it disturbed me how the talk in the media turned towards the politics of the moment.

Now, a day and a half after the events in Tuscon, Arizona, I have to say this is not about Sarah Palin, this is not about the Tea Party or Liberals, this is not about gun control, this is not about a new currency, this is not about security for Members of Congress. This is about eighteen people who have had their lives unalterably changed forever. This is about a nine year old girl, elected to her school’s student council, who was taken from us and never given the chance to fulfill her life. This is about an older man, who apparently gave his life shielding his wife. This is about a guy who was engaged to be married and spent his life helping those who were not part of the “in crowd.” This is about a man who had just come from Mass and taught us that just because he was a Federal Judge didn’t mean he couldn’t work with a member of another branch of government, his Congresswoman, to alleviate the overcrowding and backlogging of cases in the Federal Courts. This is about two women who while retired still gave back to their community to the extent one was featured in a local newspaper article just a month ago about how she was taking a lifetime of knowledge and mentoring others.

I am troubled by how we have dived immediately into the politics of this event. THIS IS NOT THE TIME FOR POLITICS. There is a time and place for everything and now is not, nor should it even be considered, appropriate or allowable by the media to talk about liberal v. conservative, tea v. coffee parties, or Sarah Palin v. whomever. This is a time for the victims, the survivors, and the heroes. This is a time for the people of this moment.

This time first, in my opinion, is for Christina Green, Dorwin Stoddard, Phyllis Schneck, Dorothy Murray, John Stoll, and Gabe Zimmerman. This is a time to honor them and thank their families and thank God for the joy, the life experiences, the essence that each of them brought to this earth and then to life. Then this is the time to encourage and do all we can to pray for the speedy and safe recoveries of twelve other people that include U.S. Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. Pray for the doctors and the nurses and the medical personnel as well as their families for the coming days, weeks, months, and yes years of recovery from this moment. Let us honor the heroes who took down and sudued this madman. Let’s spend a week or two commending them for going into the fire… the line of fire to prevent further death and injury.

Once we have exhausted those areas, and I mean fully done justice for those people, then if we have the energy or the stamina left, then we can argue about the influence of Sarah Palin, the Tea Party, and Ideological Fights.

And the assassin… I say no attention should be given to this attention-seeking drug user. I am a compassionate person. I believe we all make mistakes… but there’s a line we all cross from troubled to enabling a madman. Do not focus on his drug use, his antics in class, or his inability to enter the U.S. Army. In fact, do not focus on him at all.

Let us take time… take time to reflect, be thankful for those around us, and take time to honor those no longer among us. Politics can come later. But this is not the time for politics.

The noise begins

It’s no big surprise that Jerry Prevo of the Anchorage Baptist Temple plans to battle AO-64, the Anchorage equal rights ordinance. Prevo was also a vocal opponent in the earlier attempts to establish equal rights in Anchorage in the mid-1970s and in 1992-1993.

Mel’s anti-WAR letter: “cavalier” attitude on domestic violence and abuse

I’m a writer-blogger, not a political blogger — though I did try it out a little last fall after Palin became a vice-presidential candidate. But it proved too emotionally exhausting for me, & other Alaska progressive bloggers were doing it better. Sometimes, though, you gotta take a stand on something. So here’s the letter that I just finished sending out to Alaska legislators. Every. Single. One. Of. Them. It’s about my opposition to confirming Wayne Anthony Ross as Alaska Attorney General.

We’re Just Like You, Except We’re Not: Blogging LGBT Alaska