“Discrimination means any direct or indirect act or practice of exclusion, distinction, restriction, segregation, limitation, refusal or denial or any other act or practice of differentiation or preference in the treatment of a person because of race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex, marital status or physical or mental disability, or the aiding, abetting, inciting, coercing or compelling thereof.”

Sexual orientation would be added to the list of protected classes.

I've made the ordinance available for download here

Let say you have a great tenant. They are quite, pay their rent on time, never have any complaints, willing to take care of little things around the property without asking to be reimbursed or bothering you with it. Then one day, you see your tenant going door to door handing out literature to the neighborhood. Curious, you ask him what he is doing and come to find out he's a Seventh Day Adventist. Like a lot of “good” Christians you believe that Seventh Day Adventists are evil and you don't want to rent to their kind. Now, the law in this case gives the tenant some recourse, because it would be hard for the landlord to prove that the eviction wasn't due to the tenant's religion. However, given the same circumstance, and instead of handing out religious material, you witness your same sex tenants kissing in a non “roommate” sort of way saying good bye. Well you don't want to rent to their kind and the law does nothing to stop you. You can evict them. If one of them works for you, you can fire them even though they did nothing inappropriate on the job. If you're a credit officer and you see the same thing, you can throw the application in the trash without concern. If anyone questions your decision all you have to say is that you don't make loans, hire, promote, rent to, sell to “that” kind. Even if they may be a part of some other “protected” class, it doesn't matter because you are free to treat ANYONE as you please based on their sexual orientation, even if they are heterosexual.

In my mind, though, the situation brings up a few questions that I feel should be answered before I can fully throw my support into the ring of the gays. As I'm an unknown here let me first state categorically that I love gays. I think gay people are fantastic. I live near San Francisco and before that I was an actor at UAA. I think it's fair to say that I am around at any given time a fairly significant amount of gay people and, as a straight male, this does not bother me. (I actually get a bit offended if gay men -don't- check me out, to be perfectly honest.) You want yer government-sanctioned gay marriage? I am aaall over that. I think that y'all should be as free to throw yourselves madly into a 10-year, monogamous relationship of candlelight dinners and sponge baths before ending it abruptly when someone comes back to find their partner blowing the pool boy as all hetero couples are.

That aside.

I honestly fail to see how sexual preference even comes up in regards to job hiring or getting a loan. While I'm finding it rather humorous to imagine the reasoning that would be used by anyone denying a homosexual person a line of credit (”No offense Jim, but while we're okay with giving the biker gang down the street home loans, you are just too *gayyyy*”) I'm finding it equally humorous imagining how that information would even be revealed. “Name?” “Big gay Al.” “Sex?” “All the time, from hot, sweaty men!” “Gender?” “I thought I just told you…?” “Never mind.” I mean I don't exactly feel the need to talk to random strangers, especially not ones who I'm relying on to think I am not-insane, about how much I *love* to do it with girls. Even the ones I'm pretty sure are themselves straight. They don't care and they shouldn't. It's none of their business. I could see the logic for *keeping* the job (it gets awkward when your cubicle buddy won't shut up about trying to bond over the cute member of the opposite sex that keeps passing by but when you have to tell that person you don't even share a viewpoint on what gender is attractive, that could lead to trouble–not the fault of the gay person, understand, that's totally the straight person's problem in that case but unfortunately the gay person's more likely to get fired. Which, is, ridiculous. Yes. But it's a different argument.) Or if, I dunno, some gay people get evicted because the straight bigots nearby got tired of the constant orgiastic homosexual sex going on next door (Though if it was straight sex and I was that neighbor I would still be tempted to stir up a fuss out of sheer jealous spite). However as far as I can tell the ordinance only covers hiring and acceptance practices, not what comes later. Discrimination on the grounds of sexual preference is different from discrimination on the basis of race, gender, or disability because in order to be turned down for a job because you're gay the employer would first have to actually know you're gay. Though, I suppose he could suspect, in which case “your application was denied on the grounds of suspected gayness” would become a legal and accepted reason for not getting a job. This both amuses and frightens me. Moving on.

As stated previously, all enacting this law effectively does is tell employers that they have to lie about their bigotry and come up with any plausible excuse to cover it up. Considering how tight the job market, and housing market, is these days, opportunities to do this are legion. Assuming that this law is enacted and Gay G. McGay from Gayerton, (a suburb of Ketchican) prances in with the full crossdressing getup on, somehow aces the interview despite this, (another highly amusing visual) and scores well on all the tests… it doesn't matter. These days, an employer will have at least a dozen if not more applications on his desk that will be likely to have similar or better qualifications than whoever my fictional stereotype has. And even if he doesn't, he can just lie and say that he does, and Mr. stereotype has absolutely no legal recourse.

I think it's insane that people are so up in arms about what sexual orientation other people, or indeed they themselves, are. In my mind, people should care a lot less and be a lot more comfortable with themselves and each other, and just let people do their own thing as long as it's not bothering anybody. However, I fail to see what enacting this law will actually accomplish in terms of real world impact on homosexuals in the working class or trying to break into said class. It gives the activists something to crow about, sure, ego boosts are wonderful, but I think y'all need a little more help than that.

The majority does not generally make good decisions for the minority. That's why this decision wasn't set to a public vote, but instead to a panel of educated and objective officials who can make decisions impartially for the whole.

You also neglect that the Assembly members who voted for the ordinance were also representing their constituents. In order for the mayor to be justified in vetoing the vote of those representatives, the bar should be higher than he doesn't think it is needed.

Even if you could convince me that the Mayor should do whatever the majority wanted (which you can't) it would have to be more than 2500 out of 180,000 registered voters (1.4%). Prevo has that many cult members. This is a very vocal minority that is not representative at all of the majority of Anchorage citizens. They are driven by religious zealotry, not equality for everyone. They are driven by hatred and intolerance and for the Mayor of Anchorage to side with them is more than just disappointing, it's disgusting and shameful.

As for the question of whether outside agitators were bussed in for the testimony at the assembly, that is a known fact that Ossiander acknowledged and still allowed them to sign up after the original hearing date.

I'm waiting for the Municipal Clerks Office to email a copy of the Mayor's Oath of Office. I'm sure they were busy with other more important things than emailing me a copy of something that should be publicly available on their website. But when I see it, we can talk about the actual oath that the Mayor took to see if he acted accordingly in vetoing the ordinance.