Sunday, 6 October 2013 – 5:19 PM
| Comments Off on A long-overdue Bent Alaska update — October 2013
Bent Alaska’s blog will continue in hiatus indefinitely; but the Bent Alaska Facebook Group on Facebook is thriving — join us! A long-overdue update from Bent Alaska’s editor.
This guest post by Marsha Buck gives the contact information for testifying against Wayne Anthony Ross’ appointment as Attorney General, and includes her own testimony as an example. For more on Wayne Anthony Ross, see Public input needed on WAR and Palin’s AG pick called gays “degenerates.”
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If you were not able to testify during the Senate hearing, you have another opportunity to testify on the confirmation of Wayne Anthony Ross as Attorney General of Alaska today, Friday, April 10 at 5 p.m. when the House Judiciary Committee will take public testimony, in Room 120 of the Capitol, by teleconference (1-888-295-4546), or by going to your local Legislative Information Office. I hope many of you will be able to testify.
During the Senate hearing on Wednesday, 31 people provided testimony, 14 in support of Mr. Ross and 17 in opposition. Six people testifying in opposition spoke about his record of discrimination against gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender Alaskans and many more voices need to be heard on this topic. Our greatest allies in opposition to Mr. Ross’ confirmation appear to be members of the Native community, many of whom spoke forcefully against the appointment because of his record on subsistence and his divisiveness.
If you cannot testify on Friday, please call or email members of the House Judiciary, or send a Public Opinion Message, and express your concerns about Mr. Ross and his statement in the state Bar Association newsletter in which he referred to GLBT Alaskans as “degenerates” and spoke of being gay as a “perversion.”
The entire Legislature will be voting on the confirmation of Wayne Anthony Ross on Thursday, April 16th. Please contact all legislators, including your own senator and representative, and state your opinion about the confirmation of Mr. Ross as Attorney General. The Public Opinion Message (POM) system is an excellent way to communicate with legislators briefly and easily.
Thank you for your activism in support of civil equality for ALL Alaskans!
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Senate Judiciary Hearing Testimony
Wayne Anthony Ross Nomination for Attorney General
April 8, 2009
My name is Marsha Buck and I live in Juneau. I am here representing Alaskans Together for Equality, Inc. which is a new statewide organization to advance the civil equality of all Alaskans with a focus on gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender equality.
I would like to testify in opposition to the appointment of Wayne Anthony Ross as Attorney General for Alaska. Mr. Ross’ record of negative comments about gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Alaskans would appear to make him biased against the citizens Alaskans Together for Equality represents and therefore make it difficult for us to imagine how he could uphold our constitutional rights fairly and without discrimination.
We need an Attorney General who respects ALL Alaskans equally, including gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and intersex Alaskans. I would, therefore, ask that you oppose Mr. Ross’ nomination.
Thank you,
Marsha Buck
Board President, Alaskans Together for Equality, Inc.
UPDATE: The Vermont Legislature did override the governor’s veto a few days after the Iowa ruling, and marriage is now legal for same-sex couples in 4 states. Vermont is the first state to legalize gay marriage without a court order.
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Iowa’s Supreme Court legalized gay marriage today in a unanimous decision that makes Iowa the third state — and the first in the nation’s heartland — to allow same-sex couples to wed.
“We are firmly convinced the exclusion of gay and lesbian people from the institution of civil marriage does not substantially further any important governmental objective,” wrote Justice Cady.
In a joint statement, Iowa’s Senate and House leaders wrote, “When all is said and done, we believe the only lasting question about today’s events will be why it took us so long. It is a tough question to answer because treating everyone fairly is really a matter of Iowa common sense and Iowa common decency.”
Marriage licenses will be available to gay and lesbian couples in about three weeks.
Meanwhile, the Vermont House passed a gay marriage bill 95-52 yesterday, but needed 99 votes to override the governor’s promised veto. The Senate approved it by a veto-proof majority last week. The governor has five days to veto the bill, and then it returns to the House for a final override attempt.
The New Hampshire legislature is also expected to approve a same-sex marriage bill next week, and the democratic governor supports it.
Iowa is the 4th state to gain marriage equality. Massachusetts and Connecticut allow same-sex marriage, and California briefly allowed gay marriages before a voter initiative narrowly overturned it. The California court will issue a ruling on the voter ban by June 5.
On Wednesday, Sweden became the 7th nation in the world to legalize gay marriage.
Monday, 30 March 2009 – 1:37 PM
| Comments Off on Equality Works Everywhere
Tiffany McClain is in the perfect position to write a gay rights column: she is the LGBT Coordinator for the ACLU of Alaska, the organizer of Equality Works, and on the board of Alaskans Together. Tiffany recently wrote a guest post on her experience at the Creating Change conference, and I am pleased to welcome her as a regular contributor to Bent Alaska.
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Equality Works in Florida Too: LGBT Rights Activists Victorious in Gainesville
by Tiffany McClain
Over the past year, conservative groups have been trying to strip Gainesville’s LGBT citizens of protection from discrimination. They’ve been whipping up opposition with fear-inducing lies, including demonizing attacks representing transgender people as sexual predators. For weeks leading up to the vote, all the news was dire, but we finally found reason to hope on March 24th when the citizens of Gainesville stood up against prejudice and handily defeated the initiative by a vote of 58% to 42%.
As most of us well know, when activists, legislators, or court officials take positive steps to end discrimination against LGBT people, we often end up fighting efforts to impede our progress. The Prop 8 debacle in California is the most recent example of this, but we need only look back to the 2007 advisory vote to roll back the Alaska Supreme Court’s ruling on domestic partnership benefits as an example of the tug-of-war that has come to characterize the national movement for LGBT civil rights. With this in mind, we have been keeping an eye on Gainesville for lessons on how to overcome obstacles as we continue on the path of protecting LGBT Alaskans from discrimination and harassment.
So what can we learn from the Gainesville victory?
We can learn that as much as the fear-mongering might hurt and offend us, it doesn’t necessarily translate into votes against equality.
We can learn that while we might do what we can to avoid being dragged into an ugly—and inherently unfair—battle for votes, we shouldn’t assume we’ve lost until every ballot is counted.
We can learn that as much as we have come to depend on judges and lawmakers to recognize the rights that the Constitution promises us, and as much as we might hate to legitimize the idea that anyone’s civil rights should be determined by a popular vote, our losses are never inevitable.
Win or lose, a fight for civil rights is always worth it.
Support efforts to advance and protect the rights of LGBT Alaskans:
www.equalityworks.org Working to protecting Anchorage citizens from discrimination and harassment
www.akclu.org Dedicated to the cause of civil liberties for all Alaskans
Friday, 27 March 2009 – 11:54 PM
| Comments Off on National Progress on LGBT Rights
America is experiencing a burst of progress on LGBT rights:
The United States finally signed the U.N. declaration to decriminalize homosexuality worldwide,
voters in Gainseville Florida beat back a repeal attempt of the city’s LGBT non-discrimination policy,
the Vermont Senate and the New Hampshire House each passed a same-sex marriage bill,
a banned Gay-Straight Alliance club was reinstated by court order,
an out lesbian attorney was appointed general counsel for the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (the director is a gay man)
and another lesbian attorney (who is legally married to her wife and is an ordained Episcopal priest) was appointed Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims.
This is just the beginning. For a full round-up of current efforts to improve the lives of LGBT Americans, see Keori’s list on Pam’s House Blend.
Here are a few national LGBT events and resources that crossed my screen recently:
40 Years of Pride – June 28, 2009 marks the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, internationaly recognized as the beginning of the modern gay rights movement.
Faces of Us – Send a picture to this LGBT photo project so they can add Alaska to the list of participating states.
Day of Silence – The National Day of Silence, celebrated this year on April 17, brings attention to anti-LGBT name-calling, bullying and harassment in schools.
Ten percent of America is gay. That’s 1 in 10. Chances are that’s someone you know or someone you come in contact with every day. Why should they be given different rights just because of their sexual orientation? They shouldn’t. Gay marriage should be legal in all 50 states.
The government shouldn’t tell people how to live their lives. Right now, only two states allow gay marriage: Connecticut and Massachusetts. For a short time California allowed gay marriage, but then the people overturned the decision and it is no longer allowed. The problem is, only a small percentage of our country’s population live in those states. What about the millions of others who are gay and love each other? Many people say they should just get a domestic partnership (which is similar in some ways to marriage, except for the 1,138 other rights that married couples have), but still 19 states don’t allow that either. As George Sand, a famous French novelist once said, “There is one happiness in life, to love and to be loved.” Should the laws choose who can and can’t have that happiness based on their sexual preference? People should choose whom to love; we don’t need the government to intervene.
Gay marriage is similar to interracial marriage. People used to say interracial marriage was wrong because it wasn’t “normal” and it was a tradition for couples to get married that were of the same race. But eventually they realized that it was unconstitutional for making individuality illegal. There isn’t much difference with gay marriage. Banning it is unconstitutional. As Charles Evans Hughes, the former Secretary of State, once wrote, “When we lose the right to be different, we lose the right to be free.”
All in all, there is no plausible reason to ban gay marriage. Just because you think it’s gross, or that your friends don’t like it, doesn’t give us the right to tell people who to love or how to live their lives. This country has freedom of religion, so we shouldn’t make law because our religion says it’s wrong.
As a nation, we should come together and make it legal for gay couples to get married. In the Pledge of Allegiance, it doesn’t say with liberty for the straight people, liberty for the white people, or liberty for men. It just says with liberty and justice for all.
Wednesday, 11 February 2009 – 4:20 PM
| Comments Off on Fairbanks NSB school board vs. PTA president on gender identity
In a first for Alaska, the Fairbanks North Star Borough School District is set to add gender identity to its non-discrimination and anti-harassment policies — over the objections of the PTA president of the school that asked for advice on the policy.
Wednesday, 11 February 2009 – 3:21 PM
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William Saltonstall, a former Massachusetts state senator who died last month at the age of 81, was an outspoken ally of LGBT equality, in part because of his daughter and grandson who live in Palmer.
Saltonstall was a staunch Republican who served in the legislature from 1966 to 1978. He became an advocate for LGBT rights in the last decade of his life.
In 2000, he began speaking out against opponents of gay adoption and same-sex marriage. He wrote letters, donated money and lobbied for marriage equality. In 2006, Saltonstall changed his party affiliation to democrat. “I’ve been active in the gay rights movement, because my daughter is gay – she lives in Alaska – and the party has not been favorable to people like her,” he told the Boston Globe.
Abigail, her partner Chris and their three children live in Palmer and own Half Moon Creek art gallery in Anchorage.
Monday, 9 February 2009 – 3:59 PM
| Comments Off on Freedom to Marry Week
The annual Freedom to Marry Week is February 8-14, 2009. We are asked to tell three people what it’s like for us or our loved ones to be LGBT, and what it means to be treated as less than equal for being gay. Why? Because people who know about our lives are more likely to support our civil rights.
Who will you tell?
Meanwhile, check out this touching Fidelity video with the “Don’t Divorce Us” photos. I saw a picture of Alaska in there – is this someone we know?
Wednesday, 4 February 2009 – 5:46 PM
| Comments Off on Knocked Down, Get Up: Inspiration from Creating Change
Tiffany McClain attended the Creating Change conference last week in Denver. In this guest post, she describes the diversity of activists, the inspiring setting, and the lessons she brought home for Alaska’s LGBT civil rights movement.
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A Broad Definition of What It Means To Be an Activist
Sponsored by the National Lesbian & Gay Task Force, the annual Creating Change conference is 5 days of inspiration, nuts-and-bolts training, and a little entertainment for campaigners, grassroots organizers, service-providers, faith leaders, community center workers, teachers, and artists who are dedicated to advancing the rights and quality of life for LGBT people in our country.
I attended a workshop with someone who serves LGBT youth with wilderness-based therapy, people who directed the LGBT center at their local universities, a young woman who is training the children of lesbian and gay parents to be advocates for LGBT families, another who honed her organizing skills by moving from state-to-state working on campaigns to fight anti-gay marriage initiatives, and queer youth of color who are fighting gentrification in New York City. During our closing brunch, we were entertained by The Kinsey Sicks, a drag a capella group that blends comedy and political commentary in their performances.
The diversity of individuals at the conference was a reminder that the future of the LGBT movement will be the collective success of people with different skills, talents, and passions. Not just the lobbyists and vote-counters but the teachers, not just the grassroots organizers but the artists, not just the people who see marriage as the ultimate goal of the LGBT movement, but those fighting the displacement of poor and working-class families from their neighborhoods. Creating Change is an opportunity for us to learn with and from each other, and to take these lessons back to our communities and places of work.
Living the Change We’re Working For
What was inspiring about attending Creating Change was not only the opportunity to train and brainstorm with other activists, but also the world that the Taskforce created for almost a week: a world where gender neutral bathrooms were located on every public floor of the hotel, where every downtown restaurant and even the Denver airport greeted LGBT people with welcome signs, where queer people of different races, ages, classes, abilities, gender identities and religions found common purpose and were comfortable enough to challenge each others’ prejudices. The organizers of Creating Change inspired conference-goers to continue advocating for change in our communities by showing us what change feels like.
“Get Knocked Down 7 Times, Get Up 8”*
If I were to sum up the theme of this year’s Creating Change conference in one word, I would say “resilience.” There were a lot of activists from California still grappling with what could have gone wrong with the Prop 8 initiative and trying to heal from the weeks of unfair back-biting and blaming that followed the election. But the disappointments of these last few months have not discouraged them from continuing the fight and working on the next strategy to advance the rights of LGBT people in California and across the country.
I sometimes hear LGBT Alaskans cite past defeats and the power of conservatism as a reason not to push for civil rights in our state. At Creating Change, I was reminded that very few LGBT communities and activists tasted victory before they tasted defeat. (And some defeats can be victories: 52% to 48% in CA is not a landslide. That’s a lot of people who believe that gays and lesbians should be able to get legally married!) My point is, if we want to live in a community as welcoming as Denver or Seattle, we have to be willing to build it ourselves—even if it means risking defeat along the way.
* Quote from Rea Carey, Executive Director of the National Lesbian & Gay Task Force
The very real consequences of DADT repeal; seeking survivor benefits for same-sex partner of Alaska shooting victim; waiting on SCOTUS decision about whether it will hear Prop 8 case; and other recent LGBTQ news selected by Sara Boesser in Juneau, Alaska.
In this month’s “Ask Lambda Legal” column, Lambda Legal answers a question about the federal government’s longstanding ban against donations of blood from men who have sex with men (MSM).
Alaska Pride Conference 2012 kicks off on October 5 with a First Friday showing at Tref.Punkt Studio of Love is Love, a photographic exhibit of LGBT couples from across the state.
United for marriage: Light the way to justice. The U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments this Tuesday and Wednesday, March 26–27, in two cases about freedom to marry. Please join us on Tuesday, March 26, at the federal courthouse in Anchorage (7th & C) in a circle united for equality.
Pariah, a critically acclaimed film about a 17-year-old African-American woman embracing her lesbian identity, will screen at UAA on Friday, November 2, and will be followed by a discussion on acceptance in honor of Mya Dale. The event is free and open to the public.
