Ketchikan Borough mayor vows to veto anti-First Amendment ordinance

By
Suzanne Downing
-
19

Ketchikan, Alaska (KINY) – Despite the Ketchikan Gateway Borough Assembly adopting an anti-discrimination resolution on a 6-1 vote, Borough Mayor Rodney Dial said he plans to veto it. 

Assembly Members Amanda Pierce and Sven Westergard requested the Assembly consider the resolution supporting action by the Alaska Legislature to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity or expression.

A number of citizens testified in favor of the resolution.

Assembly member Susan Lee Pickrell voted no, and member Alan Bailey passed on the vote (did not vote).

Dial cited the First Amendment and possible forcing of Christian-owned businesses to act outside of their faith.

“I simply can’t have any part of this because of my faith,” Dial said.

Read the rest of this story at KINYradio.com.

19 COMMENTS

  1. I assume Rodney Dial’s faith is Christianity. I am appalled that he would use his Christian faith to rationalize his bigotry. Christianity is the great, relatively modern (only 1900 or so years old), humanistic religion that emphasizes caring for and loving ones neighbors. If he’s talking about the primitive lawmaking of the Old Testament, with its emphasis on human sacrifice, strict adherence to rigid rituals, and other retributive obligations incumbent on the faithful, well, then that’s a different story.
    What’ll it be Mr. Dial? Christian forgiveness and tolerance or old school retribution? You can’t have it both ways. Show us who you really are.

  4. Seems like some think, if you can’t convince anyone to think the way you do, maybe you can force them to. The leftist philosophy, tactic, etc., is to get together a bunch of leftist politicians in ‘representative of the people’ roles, dream up an “ordnance”/law and use the power of your political connections to force that “law” onto the populace. If this is so important to the left, put it on the ballot and citizens will all have a say.
    I congratulate Mayor Dial for standing by his convictions as a representative of the people. I say ________(take your pick) to the council/assembly that wants to force their leftist will on Alaskans. Enough anti-discrimination laws are already on the books to fill a dump truck. Enforcing those should be the priority. New ones aren’t needed, especially new ones that are nothing more than additional “wokeness”. Redundancy, for an unjustifiable reason. Unneeded, uncalled for and a waste of taxpayer badly needed funds.
    Are you watching this, Ketchikan Gateway Borough citizens? Better speak up and vote.

    • The governmental form of our country, state, and local communities is a republic. As a republic, the representatives of Ketchikan’s citizens properly and overwhelmingly supported legislation to ban LGBTQ discrimination. Based on the vote, the assembly should be able to easily overrule the mayor’s unfortunate veto that as he himself stated was based simply, “on his faith.” A politician’s religious faith should never be the basis of secular law.

      If the citizens of Ketchikan disapprove of the measure, they can vote the assembly members who voted for the ordinance out.

      You claim that there are already too many anti-discrimination laws on the books. Is there a LGBTQ anti-discrimination law on the books in the State of Alaska, or in the City of Ketchikan? As a side note, where did Jesus ever support discrimination of minorities? Dial is not supporting Christ’s ideals, but his own biases.

      • A ‘politician’s religious faith‘ is protected by the constitution. Dial has every right to veto.

      • You’re discriminating against Mayor Dial’s religious views. You cannot impose Secularism onto everyone and demand they vote against their conscience according to your Secularist ideology. Mayor Dial has the authority to veto ordinances which violate the Constitution to which he swore an oath to defend. And yes, Jesus does discriminate against unrepentent sinners. Jesus speaks for Himself in His revealed Word: For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men (Romans 1:18). God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves (Romans 1:24). God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature (Romans 1:24). Likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet (Romans 1:27). As they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient (Romans 1:28). Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them (Romans 1:32).

    • Let me get this straight. “Leftists” (I shall refer to them as “Progressives” in the interest of clarity and in contention to your intentional use of a denigrating and slanted term meant to unfairly influence others into distrust and suspicion) are responsible for all things wrong, bad, evil, _______(feel free to fill in the blank with the insult of your choosing) but these philosophical and tactical practices –and much, MUCH worse,–are NEVER implemented by Repubs? Got it.

  5. Bravo Mayor Dial for going against the tide of mob rule. I agree with Ben Colder above, that this ordinance is unnecessary. It seems we rush to fix something in this country, without really thinking it through. Doing so over and over results in so many bandaids and ‘fixes’ that we cannot breathe.

  7. People should not be able to refuse service to gay people. It is un-American to discriminate against someone based on their race, gender, or sexual orientation.

    • How about the old signs in almost every establishment
      “We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone” ….no good?

      I was refused service yesterday, no mask. My kid took it from the car

  9. We rightly discriminate against sexually immoral and inappropriate behavior all the time – adultery, incest, polygamy, pedophilia, rape, bestiality, and, yes, homosexual behavior, which is sexually immoral, unnatural, and unhealthy. Contrary to “The Laws of Nature and Nature’s God,” as the Founders put it, homosexual acts use the human body in ways utterly contrary to the way in which the human body is designed. Accompanied by multiple pathologies and diseases, including HIV, AIDS, homosexual practice shortens the lifespan of those who engage in it by eight to twenty years.
    This is behavior no rational society should ever condone, endorse, subsidize, or enshrine. We’ve waged all-out war against cigarette smoking because it cuts six to seven years off the lives of smokers. We should care no less about those who are destroying themselves through non-normative sexual behavior.
    We should discriminate against this kind of behavior not because we hate people but because we love them. We do not want to see them destroyed by their sexual choices, and we don’t want to see others destroyed through the diseases that are transmitted to them in unnatural sexual acts.

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