Alaska’s state government has quietly changed a policy banning discrimination against LGBTQ+ people, making it perfectly legal to deny queer people housing, loans, and government accommodations. A new report by ProPublica and the Anchorage Daily News uncovers the gory details of this recent policy change.
The story starts in 2020, when Alaska banned employment discrimination against LBGTQ+ people, following a Supreme Court ruling that it was illegal to discriminate against people in the workplace because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. In 2021, Alaska extended this protection to cases involving housing, government practices, finance and public accommodation.
Then in 2022, the state–without bothering to even put out a press release–reversed this decision, declaring on their website that it was now only illegal to discriminate against LGBTQ+ people “in some instances.’ “Only employment-related complaints would now be accepted,” the report notes, “and investigators dropped any non-employment LGBTQ civil rights cases they had been working on.”
The report explains that
An investigation by the Anchorage Daily News and ProPublica found the decision had been requested by a conservative Christian group and was made the week of the Republican primary for governor, in which Gov. Mike Dunleavy was criticized for not being conservative enough. The [Alaska State Commission for Human Rights] made the change on the advice of Attorney General Treg Taylor and announced it publicly via its Twitter feed — which currently has 31 followers — on Election Day.
There was no press conference, no press release, just a tweet and a post on Facebook, during a news cycle swamped with other political news.
The story, worth reading in its entirely, reveals what a complete right-wing clusterfuck Alaskan politics is. Here’s one fun detail:
Taylor is Dunleavy’s third attorney general appointee. The governor’s first choice, Kevin Clarkson, resigned in August 2020 when the Daily News and ProPublica reported he sent hundreds of unwanted texts to a colleague. Dunleavy’s next nominee to lead the Alaska Department of Law, Ed Sniffen, resigned as the newsrooms were preparing an article about a woman who had accused him of sexual misconduct that occurred in 1991. (Based on those accusations, the state charged Sniffen with three felony counts of sexual abuse of a minor. He has pleaded not guilty and is awaiting trial.)
Also, the head of Alaska’s human rights commission is a man who
once filed an equal opportunity employment complaint claiming he had been passed over for a job in the U.S. Army because he is a man. He has in the past year posted tweets questioning the validity of transgender identity.
The ProPublica/Daily News report tells a convoluted story, but it’s a revealing one, with many details as infuriating as these. What a fucking mess.
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This is disgusting.
If that were the case the vast majority of jobs in the U.S. Army would be filled by women.
These people are quickly driving me to my breaking point
I already burnt out a lot of frustration at this one: AK still isn’t as bad as some of the southern states and still has state constitutional protections for abortion.
But one of the towns vetoed equal protections with the lilylivered “but state policy protects lgbt+ from discrimination right?” not terribly long ago, and like… this is why we wanted those, dang it.
Also, the governor literally put as one of his goals making AK the most pro-life state in the union (despite ye olde state constitution) and the censure for the state rep who was like “well, if the abused kids die then isn’t it a plus because we don’t have to pay welfare for them later?” was kind of pathetic, tbh. Like cool, everyone not him voted to censure, but his feelings don’t seem hurt so…
AK is not okay right now, and I’ve got so many ties to folks who are there.
Anyways, hoping it stays less ridiculous than Florida, because I would like to still be able to go home someday. Current state of AK? Still not okay.
But apparently the important “sexual morality” is to discriminate against queer and/or trans people. Ugh.
We were so close to recalling this guy before Covid hit. So close. And then COVID kicked getting the legs out from under people’s ability to gather signatures for the final round to get it on the ballot.
And everyone forgot how sucky his first year was and re-elected him. And his new first year once again is “Whoohoo time to try to be DeSantis but Taller”
Just forgot his stupid loyalty pledge demand and his kneecapping the university and ferry systems and ignoring inconvenient moral values like not appointing sex offenders in order to posture against “Oh Noes The Immorality of the Left”.
Least favorite AK governor.
Not necessarily least favorite AK politician, because State Rep Eastman of “dead kids are cheaper kids” infamy and the current Anchorage Mayor of “maybe closing the homeless shelter and bussing the homeless people to the bear campground with the bears would work” are trying very hard to stay in the running for “most terrible civil servant”.
It’s so frustrating watching things from the outside.