This ballot proposition has been mentioned at DK this week in passing. I just want to call people’s attention to what appears to be the last gasp of the 40 year anti-LGBT crusade by some Anchorage evangelicals.
In 2015 Anchorage’s Assembly (city council) passed, and the then new mayor signed, a bill that added LGBT folks to the city’s anti-discrimination law after years of nasty battles with evangelical fear mongering. But then the Alaska Family Council got an initiative on this week’s Municipal election ballot.
The election this week was also the first Municipal all mail-in election, so the final totals are not in, but there are enough votes to ensure that Prop. 1 was defeated, fairly soundly. As of this afternoon the count is:
YES 36,234 47.30%
NO 40,378 52.70%
That 4000 vote margin has been pretty steady since the first numbers came in Tuesday night.
One goal of the mail-in election was to increase the number of voters and Anchorage got the highest number of voters in a Municipal election. That’s still only a dismal 35.6% of eligible voters. But that percentage is probably much higher as many people move through Anchorage and the voting records do not get culled very quickly.
Ballots had to be post-marked by April 3, so more are still likely on their way. Below is the League of Women Voters’ description of Prop. 1.
Prop 1 - Initiative Petition 2017-2Regulating Access to Facilities Such as Locker Rooms and Bathrooms On the Basis of Sex at Birth, Rather Than Gender Identity
This proposition enacts a law that, among other things, would:
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Require all multiple occupancy changing facilities and restrooms that are owned or operated by the Municipality to be designated for, and used only by, persons of the same “sex,” except: (a) for custodial or maintenance purposes, when the facility is not occupied by a member of the opposite sex; (b) to render medical assistance; (c) in the circumstance of a caretaker accompanying a disabled person for the purpose of allowing the disabled person to use the facility; (d) for minors under the age of 8,when the minor is with a person caring for the minor, and (e) for certain emergency and other situations;
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Provide that employers, public accommodations and other persons may establish and enforce sex-specific standards or polices concerning access to “in-mate facilities,”such as locker rooms, showers, changing rooms, and restrooms;
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Define “sex” as an individual’s “immutable biological condition of being male or female,” as determined by “anatomy and genetics at the time of birth”; an individual’s “original birth certificate” could be relied upon as “definitive evidence” of the individual’s sex;
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Define “multiple occupancy changing rooms and bathrooms” as facilities designed or designated to be used by more than one person at a time where persons may be “in various states of undress in the presence of other persons”; such facilities would include, but not be limited to, locker rooms, shower rooms, changing rooms and bathrooms;
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Declare a policy that persons using such facilities owned or operated by the Municipality have a right to “physical privacy” that includes the right “not to be seen in various states of undress by members of the opposite sex”; and
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Delete the requirement in current Municipal Code that entitles persons to use restrooms, locker rooms and dressing rooms that are “consistent with their gender identity”; Municipal Code provides that a person’s “gender identity” means his or her “gender-related self-identity, as expressed in appearance or behavior, regardless of the person’s assigned sex at birth,” which may be established by medical history or, among other things, evidence that the gender identity is “sincerely held, core to a person’s gender-related self-identity, and not being asserted for an improper purpose.”
Shall this proposition become law?
By the way, that new Mayor in 2015, Ethan Berkowitz, who signed the bill that added LGBT to the Anchorage Anti-Discrimination ordinance was also reelected Tuesday.