A long-overdue Bent Alaska update — October 2013

Yes, Anchorage, there WILL be an Election Central this year!

You know I have been lucky to live and work in many states in the political process. But Alaska is unique in the fact that when elections occur, Alaskans of all political persuasions gather with the candidates themselves, supporters, the media, and everyone watches the votes come in. It’s a chance to witness democracy at its finest. This is the gathering known as Election Central.

So I was disturbed when I heard that Mayor Dan “The one we should Ban” Sullivan had not approved funding for the traditional Election Central.

Maybe he wants everyone to adjourn to a certain pub he is part-owner of downtown, so he can make a profit during the evening?

Maybe because he has personally attempted to defeat three members of the Anchorage Assembly with his own candidates, he may have jitters and doesn’t want to face the press as well as three emboldened and perturbed re-elected members of the Assembly, if the votes pile up against his choices.

Maybe he really is a fiscal conservative and feels any displays of democracy are too frivolous?

Who knows… but that’s why I sprang into action. I contacted a local member of our community, Douglas Locke — the owner of Kodiak Bar & Grill, who graciously donated the use of the A Street Event Hall and refreshments. The facility was a Centergy Office, Congregationalist Church, and most recently the Steinway Piano Studio.

It is located between 6th and 7th streets at 637 A Street. See map.

There’s plenty of parking, the facility is ADA-certified, and you can’t miss it with the orange awnings. There will be press, candidates, and a wonderful example of how democracy still works in this nation.

I have no idea at the writing of this post who will win on Tuesday. I don’t care if you are liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican, Coffee or Tea… just go vote. And after the polls close, come join your fellow Alaskans at the party.

To make a pun on Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus, let me close by saying, Yes Anchorage, there will be an Election Central this year!!!

See the Facebook event page for more information.

Anchorage election: Assembly and school board candidates to vote for

Anchorage voters going to the polls Tuesday will see pro-equality assembly members up for re-election in 4 districts, a supportive challenger, and 2 good school board candidates on the ballot, running against a slate of anti-gay candidates endorsed by Mayor Sullivan. Here are Bent Alaska’s recommendations.

k.d. lang & Lily Tomlin in Anchorage & Fairbanks 2011-12 concert season

OMG! k.d. lang is coming to Anchorage! Swoon.

Two lesbian icons are on the calendar for the Anchorage Concert Association’s ’11-12 season: k.d.lang opens the season with two concerts in September, and Lily Tomlin performs her one woman comedy show on the last night of March 2012.

The season also includes Broadway shows and an impressive array of music. Subscription tickets are on sale now, and individual tickets for k.d. lang will be on sale in June.

Update: Both k.d. lang and Lily Tomlin are also performing one show each in Fairbanks for the Fairbanks Concert Association’s 2011-2012 season! k.d. croons on Thursday September 15, and Lily will make you laugh on Friday, March 30.

k.d. lang

Friday – Saturday, September 16-17, 2011
7:30pm
Atwood Concert Hall

Four time Grammy Award winner k.d. lang is bringing her perfect pitch to Anchorage. lang launched her career with a blend of country-rock styling and a playful punk-like attitude, but it’s her voice that makes her stand out. 20 years after she burst onto the music scene that flawless, smooth-as-silk voice, continues to impress audiences and critics alike throughout the entertainment world. Don’t miss what promises to be enthralling performance that will touch your soul.

Lily Tomlin

Saturday, March 31, 2012
7:30pm
Atwood Concert Hall

The incomparable Lily Tomlin brings many of her classic characters to life in a one-woman show. One of America’s foremost comediennes, Tomlin continues to venture across an ever-widening range of media starring in television, theater, motion pictures, and even animation. Throughout her extraordinary entertainment career, Tomlin has received numerous awards, including six Emmys, a Tony, a Grammy and winner of the prestigious Mark Twain Prize for Humor in 2003. She continues to be at forefront of American comedy even after more than 30 years in the business.

**

I don’t know if Lily Tomlin has been to Alaska before, but k.d. lang has: parts of her movie Salmonberries were filmed here (it takes place in Kotzebue), and I posted the love song Barefoot on Valentine’s Day last year. Watch it again.

April’s Trash Drag Spectacle in the Valley

Aprils Follies, the Mat-Su Valley spring drag extravaganza, is back by popular demand, this time with two shows: 6 and 9 pm on Saturday, April 2.

“A jammed-packed night of singing, dancing, and live entertainment from performers around Alaska and beyond, including mini fashion shows sponsored by Mila’s Gowns and Alterations and The Younique Boutique. The line up for the night is EPIC, with MC’s April Rains, Daphne DoAll LaChores, and Kristara!”

This is a fundraiser for the West Lakes Fire Fighters, and other charities that will be chosen by the audience.

“A MUST SEE VALLEY TRASH ALASKAN EVENT!!”

Aprils Follies: “A Valley Trash Drag Spectacle”
Time: Saturday, April 2 · 6-8pm and 9-11pm (doors open at 5:30pm and 8:30pm)
Location: The Rock Cafe (the old Mile 49 Cafe)
Parks and Pittman, mile 49 at the BJ Center
Meadow Lakes, AK
Tickets: $15 at the door

The first Aprils Follies in the Valley was in 2009. Read April’s adventures On The Way to the Follies.

Choose Respect: LGBTs march against domestic violence and sexual assault on March 31

The Choose Respect Rainbow Group in Fairbanks is joining in to march against domestic violence and sexual assault in Fairbanks on March 31, one of forty communities statewide that are holding Choose Respect marches as part of the Governor’s Choose Respect campaign.

What’s special about the Rainbow Group?  They want to their presence to bring awareness that domestic violence can affect ANYONE, including members of the GLBT community. To that end, Fairbanks marchers will have rainbow sashes that say “We Choose Respect.” If you want a sash, message kara7@hotmail.com so organizers can make sure there are enough. (If anyone wants to coordinate a groups in Anchorage or Juneau, let her know!)

• Date/time: Thursday, March 31, 2011, at noon
• Locations:
  Fairbanks: Golden Heart Plaza (map)
  Anchorage: from the Delaney Park Strip (9th and F) to Town Square Park
  Juneau: from the Capitol Steps to Marine Park
• Further info: See Facebook events page for the Rainbow Group, or the Governor’s Choose Respect page through which you can also find locations for Choose Respect events in other communities throughout Alaska.

Last month Tiffany McClain wrote an article at the Pride Foundation website about domestic and sexual violence between members of the same sex:

Did you know that domestic violence happens in same-sex relationships at about the same rate as in straight relationships?

Have you ever considered how homophobia and the lack of legal protection from discrimination might discourage an LGBTQ victim of domestic violence from getting help for fear of being “outed” or did you know that the most common type of male-to-male rape is the rape of a man who is perceived to be gay by a heterosexual man?

She went on to describe how the Alaska Network on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault (ANDVSA) in 2008, with a grant from the Pride Foundation, developed a curriculum to help Alaskan direct service workers provide effective care to LGBTQ survivors of domestic violence.

ANDVSA’s pamphlet Outing LGBTQ Intimate Partner Violence details some of the ways that domestic violence plays itself out in our relationships.  Read the pamphlet: become aware. And if you recognize any of the problems listed in the pamphlet in your life, please get help.

And join marchers tomorrow as they call for all Alaskans, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity, to CHOOSE RESPECT.

Carrie Newcomer: An ally Before and After

Folksinger and straight ally Carrie Newcomer performs three concerts in Alaska this week, March 24–27, 2011, for her Before and After tour: Seldovia on Thursday, Anchorage on Saturday, and Palmer on Sunday. She was in Sitka last week.

Alaska Hate Crimes Bill stalled: Action needed

SB 11, the Alaska Hate Crimes Act, passed the Alaska Senate Judiciary Committee on February 25, and was referred to Senate Finance. Nearly two weeks later, where’s it at? The answer: it’s nowhere. It’s stalled, and Senate Finance hasn’t even scheduled it for a hearing. But with the legislative session ending on April 17, there’s little time to lose to get action on this bill.

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.

Chuck O’Connell 1942–2011

The Anchorage LGBT community joins other friends and family members in mourning the loss of our friend and ally Chuck O’Connell, who died unexpectedly early last Thursday morning.

Valentine’s weekend in Anchorage: Sunday brunch benefits Out North & ICOAA

Out North recently lost a major funding grant, and needs your help to continue fulfilling its mission of Art for Everyone, No Exceptions.

One way to help is by enjoying a splendid Valentine’s weekend afternoon this Sunday at Mad Myrna’s!  This event benefits both Out North & the Imperial Court of All Alaska.

Joani LaChoy’ Sweetheart’s Champagne and Cabaret Brunch

Please join Joani LaChoy as she presents her annual Sweetheart’s Champagne and Cabaret Brunch.

• Benefit for Out North Contemporary Art House and The Imperial Court of All Alaska.
• Date/time: Sunday, February 13 at 2 PM.
• Location: Mad Myrna’s, 530 E. 5th Ave, Anchorage, AK (see map)
• Cost of admission: $35.00
• Info: Live and Silent auction, fantastic entertainment, and of course – a gourmet champagne brunch!
• Further information: See Facebook event page.

Please help support Out North – attend shows, buy season tickets, or donate directly.

Keep track of upcoming events with Bent Alaska’s LGBT Events Calendar.