joined conservative legal groups in urging the California Supreme Court to delay finalizing its ruling to legalize same-sex marriage
approximately 22,000 Alaskans spent around $2.5 million to see a married gay man and to cheer him wildly.
[My tiny Canon Powershot SD550 was totally overwhelmed by the noise level at Sullivan Arena and didn't catch many of the decibels flying around.]
Perhaps these 22,000 were among those 71,631 people who voted against Prop. 2, the 1998 Constitutional Amendment to ban same sex marriages. Perhaps some of these people voted for the ban. Or perhaps they didn't vote at all.
The Amendment passed 152,965 yes to 71,631 no. It wasn't even close. But that was ten years ago. The evidence that sexuality is basically genetic and not a choice has grown, but this isn't something that lends itself to . this clear proof. Logically, to me at least, it makes no sense for so many people to 'choose' desires that result in their being so strongly condemned by society. And why would people who could 'choose' their sexuality commit suicide because their choice was condemned? Wouldn't it be easier to just choose a different desire if they could?
Given the wildly enthusiastic response of the Elton John audience last night, I suspect that today the vote would not be so lopsided. It might not even pass. Especially if the people who went to the concert campaigned against the amendment with 1/10th of the enthusiasm they showed at the concerts. And if they all contributed half what they paid for the tickets to see a man whose married to another man perform.
BTW, $2 from every ticket was earmarked for the Elton John AIDS Foundation, so that would be around $44,000 that Alaskans contributed.
Calculations:
The exact figures really don't matter as long as we are reasonably close. Calculations for the number of people who attended the concert were based on reported seating capacity of the arenas for the three sold out concerts (2 in Anchorage, one in Fairbanks)
and an estimate of how much they paid given the prices. For this I calculated one figure based on there being as many 'cheap' seats as expensive ones. Then I figured it again with 70% of the seats being expensive and 30% being cheap. Then I split the difference.
The Sullivan Arena's Seating Capacity
- Table seating: 1500
- Concerts: 8,751
- Basketball: 7,987
- Hockey: 6,290
- Boxing or wrestling: 8,935 for
- 5' crowd barrier available
Fairbanks (for Hockey)
Name of Home Arena: Carlson Center
Capacity: 4600 or so Dimensions: 200x100
The largest meeting and exhibition facility is the Carlson Center, which features a 35,000-square-foot arena and several meeting rooms, for a combined total of 50,000 square feet of space that can accommodate more than 1,200 meeting participants, 200 trade show exhibits, or 4,000 people for a concert or sports event.
While I suspect the first website is mo
re accurate, and concerts should have a larger seating capacity than hockey (as in the Sullivan Arena), I'll be very conservative here and round it to 4500 between the two different sources.Bent Alaska tells us the prices were:
$56.50 to $116.50 in Anchorage
$75 and $115 in Fairbanks
The image of Talis Colberg in the video comes from the State Website.
Hello, all you folks.
ReplyDeleteGene and I had quite a few mixed feelings about Elton john's performance in Anchorage. This is a city that repealed the one and only civil rights protection for gay/lesbian people in the early 90s. This is a city where a member of the Rasmuson Foundation (family) holds anti-gay sentiments and no one lifts a finger to expose it to the public or correct her prejudice. This is a community that largely neglects attacks against GLBT people and yet appropriately responds to anti-native, anti-Jewish, anti-black expression and thinks they treating all equally. This is a city and state that would still vote to discriminate in its constitution against the ability of gay folks to form legal family and where gay and lesbian people can still lose jobs, service in the military and be treated as less than human.
And still Elton John performs there. I wish he would have rethought where that $2 goes. I wish he would have directed it to the effort to keep California's recent Supreme Court ruling intact. They will need help to preserve what fair-minded Americans need to protect.
I hope he still does it, in fact, so Alaskans CAN make that contribution to something so dear to so many of us that we have left our homes and sometimes country, in order to live free and legal lives with the people we love.
Anchorage should not give itself a pat on the back for having a fun night out. They should reserve that for themselves when they again fight the all too readily justified prejudice that still exists, so strongly, so widely, in the town I grew up in and know so well.
Blessings on you all, but one night does not make it all different. Not at all.