Speaking out against sexual descrimination in Anchorage and the story of my daughter.

I have only one child.

She is a beautiful intelligent young women of 22 years old.

And she is gay.

I began t notice that she did not play with dolls or want to wear dresses when she was just a toddler, and as the years passed I picked up on other signs that she was just not that into boys.

Still she did not come out to me until she was about sixteen years old, and only after I assured her repeatedly that I loved her unconditionally and would NEVER stop loving her.

When she finally did tell me it came out in a gush and after we talked and hugged she spent the whole day smiling and acting as if a giant weight had been lifted off of her. I was very happy that I was able to help release my daughter from under that tremendous burden.

But for the longest time I remained the only one she would tell.

One day she confided in a friend of hers from the church she attended in Georgia. (I am divorced and my daughter spent much of her time living in Atlanta, Georgia with her conservative Christian mother.)

The friend told her father, who then told the youth pastor who confronted my little girl and told her that she was not allowed to be involved in the youth ministry anymore. She was essentially kicked out and no longer allowed to spend time with her friends, whose parents were instructed to keep their children away from my daughter as if she had some horrible disease that they might catch from her.

My daughter, who rarely cries, called me on the phone sobbing so badly that I could not at first make out what had happened. It took me an hour to calm her down and to tell her that what had happened to her was NOT her fault. It was the fault of small minded superstitious assholes who are so ignorant that they don't understand the first thing about biology and sexuality.

You see they felt that the Bible gave them the right, nay the responsibility, to discriminate against my daughter. She was not like them, and therefore she was not good enough to be invited to go to church functions, or play with church friends, or be taught about the love of Jesus Christ on church grounds. (Ironic isn't it?)

The ministers had so poisoned the minds of the people at their church that almost every single one of them, including my daughter's own mother, turned their back on my baby.

So I brought her back here to Alaska. To a place where nobody would dare make her feel like she was a bad person or disrespect her And if they did I would be here to make them sorry.

My daughter got her GED, went to work for the PAC, and had a great time. She blossomed into an amazing young woman right before my eyes and everybody who met her seemed to just love her. I received more compliments about my daughter than I ever have for anything that I have done personally. And that was just fine with me.

My daughter has been working and traveling all over the United States for the past few years and I have not seen much of her lately, but she is coming to stay with me for an extended period of time starting this Friday.

So today's assembly is very important because my daughter may decide to stay here in Anchorage for awhile. And the idea that somebody may decide that she cannot stay in their rental property, or that they will not allow her to work for them, simply because of who and how she loves is absolutely unacceptable to me. And it should be unacceptable to anybody who cares about equality and privacy.

I will be there tonight at the Loussac Library, around 5:00 to listen to the testimony and to show my support. I had thought I would also testify but it looks like I will barely get there in time for the start of the testifying so I will probably instead simply listen carefully and blog about it tomorrow.

However I encourage ALL of you to come if you can and show Anchorage that we are an open minded community that accepts people of all colors, religions, and sexual preference.

Oh and wear the color blue so that we can show our unity for the LGBT community.

(By the way I have my daughter's full permission to share her story with you. I would NEVER have betrayed her trust but she felt it may help others to understand the struggles that young gay people face in our society. Like I said, she is an amazing young woman.)