The prospect of a gay rights ordinance passing under the watch of a supportive city administration are narrowing as Anchorage Assembly Chairwoman Debbie Ossiander said this morning she will continue to allow testimony from anyone who wants to speak on the issue.
The deadline to pass an ordinance under the support of Acting Mayor Matt Claman, a Democrat, is Tuesday.
If it passes the Assembly on Wednesday or after, Mayor-elect Dan Sullivan, a Republican, will get the issue.
Sullivan, reached this morning, said he's waiting to see the language in the final ordinance before he weighs in with his opinion. Others, including Ossiander, say he is generally opposed.
"I know he is not supportive. I can't categorically state what he's going to do, but I know this is not something that he believes is needed," she said this morning.
City law says whoever is mayor has seven days to veto such ordinances. Sullivan takes office on July 1, seven days after Wednesday.
Nearly 550 people have signed up to testify on the ordinance, which would add "sexual orientation" to the list of classes protected from discrimination. Classes already protected include race, ethnicity, age, sex, marital status, and others.
The Assembly has heard three days of testimony on the matter but still has 200 more people signed up to speak for up to three minutes each. It has been one of the most time-consuming periods of public testimony in Assembly history.
The most the Assembly has been able to get through in one day was 100 people.
The Christianista's brought busload after busload, and van load after van load, of people from the Valley to stack the deck in their favor. Because THEY DID NOT HAVE ENOUGH SUPPORT HERE IN ANCHORAGE TO STOP THIS ORDINANCE!
And because Debbie Ossiander, the Chairperson of the Assembly, decided to allow hundreds of people from the Valley to have the opportunity to argue against an ordinance THAT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THEM the people of Anchorage may still have to suffer discrimination until the next time somebody is brave enough to try and introduce an ordinance to protect people from being spied on in their own bedrooms. How does THAT seem fair to anyone!
This ordinance is still going to pass. Believe me.
The only question is, will Dan Sullivan bow to his head to Jerry Prevo and his cult and veto it, or will he stand up for the oppressed people of the city that he will soon swear to serve, and let it stand?
Is Dan Sullivan a puppet of the Right Wing Fundamentalists? Or does he in fact possess a pair of balls and the will to use them?
The 'balls" are in your court Mayor-elect Sullivan, let's see what you are made of.
We will be watching.
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Well, the fact is, the right extremists NEVER have enough people to pass anything - look at California with its Prop 8! They always have to bus-in people from the outside - even from out-of-state.
ReplyDeleteThe only way to stop this from happening ever again would be to require everyone wanting to speak at those types of forums to show proof of residency in the pertinent city/town/state.
I think it's time for Debbie Ossiander to be replaced. She is allowing people with no interest, I.E. non-residents, to bog down discussion to the detriment of the people of Anchorage. Is her agenda to delay this until Sullivan is sworn in? If so, you need to get rid of her. All of your elected officials need to know that if they pull this kind of stuff they'll suffer the consequences: they'll be voted out of office. And you won't vote them back in.
ReplyDeleteIf you're not willing to do this, then you'll be $crewed over every time.
I'm having big problems with web site. Keeps popping off and saying no internet connection. Aborting.
ReplyDeleteI have heard the cmplaints about trouble with this site but have still not been able to locate the difficulty.
ReplyDeleteI am posting this comment using IE and it seems to be working, except that I notice there is no spell check.
Very much my take on Ossiander's part in this too. Wrote about it earlier today.. Debbie Ossiander & the Christianist Filibuster.
ReplyDeleteI hope those creepy "Christians" do not win. I can tell you from what happened here in CA that it is a disheartening, horrible feeling. It's still just so unbelievable to me. The people against gay rights are just an ignorant mass of people and all they do is spread misery.
ReplyDeleteI watched most of Tuesday and Wednesday's testimonies on the livestream link.
ReplyDeleteWhile I don't know the Anchorage area at all, never been there--I DO know enough to know that Madison WI is certainly not in the area! Yet, one of the redshirts was from Madison? HOW does that make any sense? WTF!?!
Issues with this site:
Gryphen, I had been using IE, and was having probs here, more often than not lately. Got Firefox installed on this laptop now, and it seems to be fine now?
I still cannot cut/paste onto this site. This problem started maybe two weeks ago (maybe a bit more...) I use Firefox
ReplyDeleteI use Firefox, used to have problems posting. It's fine now, can't quite remember what I had to do... accept cookies? Some config change was required.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I hear that IE 8 causes trouble.
It may be that you have your automatic page refresher set way to high. This page reloads about every two seconds. (My Mac is ok with it, but I can see other machines having difficulties.)
ReplyDelete