Monday marked 10 years since the Municipality of Anchorage extended civil rights protections to include gender identity and sexual orientation.
The signing of an ordinance on Sept. 29, 2015 was the culmination of an effort decades in the making that persisted despite repeated mayoral vetoes and pushback.
That history stretches back to the municipality’s earliest days.
‘All hell broke loose’
When the Municipality of Anchorage formed 50 years ago, part of the government charter called for the establishment of an equal rights commission. An ordinance tasked that commission with preventing discrimination on the basis of, among other things, sexual preference.
Current Anchorage Ombudsman Darrel Hess said it wasn’t very controversial with Assembly members, and passed unanimously.
“It had flown under the radar,” said Hess, who previously served as an equal rights commissioner. “So the next day, when the newspaper started talking about the Assembly passing the homosexual ordinance, all hell broke loose.”
Hess, who was closeted at the time, said the timing of Anchorage’s commission came during a historical turning point in the fight for equal rights for LGBTQ people nationwide.
“The American Psychiatric Association had only recently removed homosexuality as a mental illness,” Hess said. “And [the] Stonewall [riots] had only happened in 1969. The first Pride marches were in 1970. It was pretty revolutionary for the members of the Assembly, the majority of the Assembly, at the time, to pass this ordinance with sexual preference included.”
It didn’t last.
Hess said conservative leaders, including prominent religious figures, came out in opposition to the commission. Some argued it infringed on business owners’ rights, while Hess said others opposed it for moral issues.
“I started hearing Jerry Prevo and other ministers say, ‘I love the sodomites, but I hate the sodomy,’” Hess said. “And I remember thinking, ‘If that's how you treat people you love, how do you treat people you hate?’”
Then-Mayor George Sullivan vetoed the ordinance. He would go on to veto four more attempts from the Assembly to establish a commission that protected sexual preference.
“It has been and remains my conviction that the people of Anchorage should not be forced to associate with sexual deviates,” Sullivan wrote in one of his veto messages.
Hess said he and other members of the gay community took it personally.
“Here's the mayor I voted for saying I was a deviant and basically saying that people in the community should be able to discriminate against me and others,” Hess said. “You know, not provide us housing or public accommodations or a loan, or whatever. That we were fair game to be discriminated against.”
Eventually, on the sixth try, 14 months after the municipality was formed, the Assembly passed an ordinance establishing an equal rights commission, preventing discrimination on the basis of race, sex, religion, national origin, marital status, age or physical handicap — but not sexual preference.
It happened to pass on Hess’s 24th birthday: Nov. 9, 1976.
“I remember thinking it wasn't the birthday present I wanted, but I could understand why it was done,” Hess said.
‘They know they have agency’
The fight to enshrine LGBTQ protections didn’t end then. There were numerous attempts to provide civil protections for the community, including an ordinance in the early 90s that passed the Assembly, but was vetoed by Mayor Tom Fink. The Assembly passed a similar ordinance in 2009, under acting Mayor Matt Claman, but it was vetoed by incoming Mayor Dan Sullivan -- George Sullivan’s son.
Current Assembly member Felix Rivera was part of a campaign to put the issue to voters in 2012.
“I would help call volunteers, get them to come sign up,” Rivera said. “It was like one of the easiest campaigns I've ever worked on to get people to come volunteer. It was extraordinary.”
Rivera said opposition to the effort came out in full force, with opponents drawing political cartoons describing the city’s transgender community as monsters. From a watch party at Anchorage gay club Mad Myrna’s, Rivera and other supporters saw the ballot proposition defeated by about a 10-point margin.
“I was just crying,” Rivera said. “I couldn't contain the emotions, because we had all spent so much time and energy and put our souls into this and to see it just go down in flames. It was completely unexpected for me.”
Then, three years later, another attempt.
This time, it was Assembly members Patrick Flynn, a liberal, and Bill Evans, a conservative, who proposed the ordinance to protect the civil rights of Anchorage’s LGBTQ community.
“The irony of, you know, two straight white guys working on this was not lost on me,” Flynn said.
Flynn recalled early debate with Evans over who the ordinance should protect. He said Evans had initially proposed excluding transgender people from the protections.
“It was my opinion, the trans community was the most vulnerable amongst the group, and I thought it would be unwise to leave them out,” Flynn said. “And to his credit, he acceded to that thinking, and did include it in his first draft. So I think that was the hardest part. People just not having familiarity with an aspect of the community and being uncomfortable with it.”
After weeks of public testimony, including an organized opposition that bussed in people from outside of Anchorage to testify against it, the ordinance passed the Assembly, and Anchorage codified civil rights protections on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.
Rivera, who would go on to become one of the Assembly’s first two openly gay members two years later, said the codification of those rights sent a signal to the city’s LGBTQ community.
“They know that if their landlord, if their employer, if some financial institution decides to discriminate against them, they know they have recourse,” Rivera said. “They know they have agency. And before, that didn't exist, we had no ability to protect ourselves.”
‘A stroke of a pen’
Advocates say the fight isn’t over. Current Anchorage Equal Rights Commission Executive Director Jennifer Booz said the rights enshrined in Anchorage’s law don’t extend federally.
“Because of executive orders, federal government offices are interpreting gender to mean male or female, and have instructed the Department of Justice and the Equal Opportunity Commission to cease enforcing those protections right now,” Booz said.
She said even the state has ruled that LGBTQ protections only extend to employment and not to things like housing.
“The foresight to include that, to codify that in our municipal code is really important, because as politics swings back and forth and ebbs and flows, we can hold on to that and continue to do those investigations at our level,” Booz said.
Hess said the 10-year anniversary of LGBTQ rights being protected in Anchorage stands as a benchmark worth celebrating. But he said it’s also a call for residents to continue to fight for the community they want to live in. He said he was gifted one of the pens used to sign the ordinance by then-Assembly chair Dick Traini, and he hangs it in his office as a reminder.
“Those rights were given by the stroke of a pen, and a stroke of a pen can take them away,” Hess said. “So we have to be vigilant, not just the gay community, but everybody.”
