Jerry Prevo's 38th Year as a Theocrat

Humanity is afforded a strange duality.

I’ve been one of a small group of folks here in Anchorage that has told Jerry Prevo, of the Anchorage Baptist Temple, to go sit in the corner.

I had never heard of the man until my (then fiance, now) wife and I attended a barbeque last spring which was a informative/social event centered on the topic of a city ordinance, which later would be revered as the controversial Ordinance 64, that extended equal protection under the law to include sexual orientation. We met a lot of amazing people that day in which we are still in close contact with.

As I’ve written before on this blog, I wasn’t particularly caught off guard by this ordinance. It seemed pretty clear that equality was a common sense concept, and this was obviously something that had just slipped through the cracks up until this point. Heather and I made sure to save the date so that we could voice our approval of patching up an archaic sleight of legislature.

When the day came to pass and we went down to the Loussac Library to attend the Assembly meeting, we were introduced to a shadowy operation, quite in the same vein as blunt force trauma to the head, by the name of the Anchorage Baptist Temple, lead by Jerry Prevo. They preached the gospel according to nuts, and stated bluntly on that occasion, among others, that homosexuality was an abomination, a perversion, you name it; it was pin the tail on the bigoted talking point.

Most of the people who regularly view this blog know exactly what became the result of those assembly meetings. Hours of scripture citations, judgments, misunderstandings, alongside the gross negligence that would tip a scale and mislead a city to believe that Leviticus, Revelations, and Deuteronomy outweigh Community.

It sickens me. I’m a straight, white man. I won’t apologize for it, as I did nothing to incur that status. But all of these other people who also were, as a majority, white heterosexuals, who showed up with hateful and mass produced signs (which we should have seen as a precursor to the health care debate) made me ashamed of myself; my color, my orientation, my being. I walked away from each Assembly meeting devastated, because the LGBT who were brave enough to come to stand up for their rights (which didn’t exist) and speak in front of a hostile crowd, and who didn’t even know if they would make it out alive – and I don’t mean to use hyperbole, the first meeting sounded like a riot was forming outside, and there were arrests – was heartbreaking for me. I had made a lot of friends over those days in the assembly chambers; friendships that I hope to report decades from now as the lasting and most fulfilling. I felt so goddamned ashamed that I couldn’t stand up and tell these bigots to shut up, go home, read a book, and get over their hate.

I’ve been reviewing the video tape of Jerry Prevo’s 38th Pastoral Anniversary. It’s been sitting on my computer for a couple weeks now. I started to look over it; to edit it. I literally ended up withdrawing from life for a week. If you are a regular to this blog and noticed that nothing new has been posted, it’s because, put blunty, shit added up.

It hurts to watch Jerry Prevo. Gryphen from the Immoral Minority asked if I wanted to come see the 38th Anniversary live; he did an amazing and brave post about it on his blog. I couldn’t imagine walking into that “church”. Alaska Commons is not an anonymous blog (probably an oversight, in retrospect) and ABT has made their disapproval of me very well known. We’ve had to go unlisted, and have had a few public issues. Even one earlier this evening, at Fred Myer, where a man locked eyes with me and stood in my way, demanding an apology.

Weird times.

I want to thank a few people. Like I said, I literally withdrew from the world this past week. I got scared. I saw the footage from the 38th Pastoral Anniversary of Jerry Prevo and I saw how some of the public who recognized my wife and me from the media surrounding the True Diversity Dinner, and I became very fearful, to the point where I holed up inside my home office and tried not to come out.

The people involved in the meeting which Heather and I attended on Friday, who are planning the next steps we can take as a community after this ugly summer, are an inspiration, and I want to publicly take the time to thank them. I won’t name names, but everyone who was there knows who they are.

Thank you.

As for the footage of the ABT 38th Pastoral Anniversary, there’s a hell of a lot of crazy. And I will get through all of it. For now, here’s a piece I put together combining the struggle for AO64 and a whole lot of crazy from the Anchorage Baptist Temple. Spread it around.

And, by the way, for the few of you out there who were fighting for equality back in the ’70s and ’90s, we’ve been doing some research. Bumper stickers are on the way.