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Redmond pastor Ken Hutcherson has, without much fanfare, dropped efforts to get an initiative on the November ballot that would have rolled back anti-discrimination rules adopted by the 2006 legislature. The rules bar discrimination in jobs, housing, and contracts based on sexual orientation or transgender status.

The Seattle Times has the most detailed explanation we've seen, but even that paper's story -- in a digest of news items -- doesn't say all that much:

Hutcherson would have needed signatures from at least 224,800 registered voters by July 6 to place an initiative on the November ballot.

He said Thursday he discontinued his efforts early in the spring after Joe Fuiten, senior pastor of Cedar Park Assembly of God, asked him to instead unite in opposing a domestic-partnership bill for gay and lesbian couples. That measure ended up passing the Legislature in April.

Fuiten confirmed he asked Hutcherson to drop the initiative, saying "I didn't think we should run it. The time wasn't right. The climate wasn't right."

Whether or not it's related, Fuiten is now involved in starting a new organation called Washington Family Policy Council.

Lynnwood businessman, conservative political donor, and Christian activist Larry Sundquist is spearheading the formation of the group with help from Fuiten and several national conservative Christian activists, including Tony Perkins and James Dobson.

Sundquist told The Herald, "We don't want to position ourselves as a right-wing Christian organization.... We want to be credible and not be marginalized. And we want to be credible without thumping on our Bibles and quoting scripture."

Uh huh. We guess backing a pro-discrimination measure would not be one of the best ways to get that message across.

The Herald offers these details of the new group:

To get started, Sundquist enlisted to the Board of Directors the savvy veteran of political brawling Pastor Joe Fuiten of Bothell. Fuiten tangled a lot this year with lawmakers as president of Positive Christian Agenda; he will merge that group into the policy council.

Larry Stickney of Arlington has been hired as executive director. Stickney, who is chief aide to Snohomish County Councilman John Koster, will leave his county job next month.

Stickney knows the challenge will be great. Democrats in the Legislature pushed bills granting domestic partnerships for same-sex couples and overhauling sex education in public schools.

He looks to recalibrate the voice of Christian conservatives in time to make a difference when lawmakers arrive for next session.

"We're not ashamed to say we are going to promote the Judeo-Christian worldview," he said.

"And we're not going to be shy about it."

It's odd, however, that they've chosen a name that's almost identical to an official state agency, the "Washington State Family Policy Council" whose mission is far less restrictive.

Labels: I-963, initiative, ken hutcherson

We haven't heard much from Redmond pastor Ken Hutcherson lately about his discrimination initiative, I-963. If passed, Hutcherson's initiative would wipe out a law passed by the 2005 legislature that amends the state's civil rights laws to bar discrimination in housing, employment, and insurance because of sexual orientation or transgender status.

Despite the lack of publicity, the measure is being given a good chance in an analysis by Olympian reporter Brad Shannon of initiatives that have been introduced for possible placement on the November, 2008 ballot.

Hutcherson hasn't raised the kind of money usually required to qualify any initiative for the ballot, but an alliance of churches might still help him get his measure on the ballot, according to the report.

"Unless they are raising six figures, it's really hard to get things on the ballot.... It costs usually hundreds of thousands of dollars ... to get on the ballot," said Todd Donovan, a Western Washington University professor of political science who has authored books on the initiative process.

One potential exception is I-963, which seeks to repeal gay-rights provisions adopted by lawmakers in 2006. That law already survived Eyman?s referendum signature drive last year.

But this year's effort is led by Ken Hutcherson, the former professional football player who now serves as senior pastor at Antioch Bible Church in Kirkland; Hutcherson opposes same-sex marriage and civil rights protections for gays.

Donovan said other states have seen low-cost ballot measures succeed around the issue of gay marriage or gay rights.

"A lot of those were low-cost campaigns where they got a lot of signatures through churches," he said.

It's not mentioned in the Olympian article, but Hutcherson's recent activism on behalf of anti-gay groups in the Baltic republic of Latvia (see our posts) has probably helped to cement his alliance with some Russian-speaking churches in this area. His partner on the Latvia trips was anti-gay activist Scott Lively from Oregon. Russian-speaking immigrants in Oregon organized loud protests in Salem when the Oregon legislature considered a similar anti-discrimination measure earlier this year. The bill passed in Oregon.

Labels: I-963, initiative, ken hutcherson, latvia, politics, Washington

Crosscut, David Brewster's new online newspaper for the Northwest run largely by Seattle Weekly alumni, has -- and this is remarkable -- used the word "gay" in a headline today, "Young gay-rights opponents get vocal in Oregon". That's news in itself, but more interesting is the story under the headline.

Those young gay-rights opponents were mostly from Russian-language (Russophone) churches in Oregon. They provide a link that helps explain the reasons for the recent visits to Riga, Latvia by Redmond's Ken Hutcherson and Oregon haulocaust revisionist Scott Lively. [See our previous posts on the visit and Latvia.]

The Oregonian reported on the Russophone anti-gay rally:

Twice in the past two weeks, hundreds of Russian-speaking Christians from Portland and Salem flocked to the state Capitol to protest efforts to bolster gay rights. They arrived by the busload, jamming hearing rooms, singing hymns under the rotunda and providing testimony.

The protests were organized in only a few days by Russian-speakers calling themselves The Voice of Oregon Youth. They pulled it off by using laptops, e-mail and phone calls to the tight network of Russian and Ukrainian churches in the area. Legislators estimated about 1,000 people showed up for a public hearing April 9, with 662 signing up to testify.

"We just went for it, no stopping," said Anna Zaichenko, 19, of Salem, a rally organizer. "I saw how passionate a lot of people became."

In February, months before the protests in Salem, Lively celebrated the activism of the Russophone youth, according to Willamette Week:

In front of about 30 people gathered recently in a Salem church sanctuary to celebrate the reunion of the Oregon Citizens Alliance, Scott Lively found cause for optimism about the rebirth of the anti-gay group.

Lively's reason to believe the OCA could return from dormancy to its glory days of the early 1990s, when it claimed to have more than 3,400 members and earned national notice for getting anti-gay measures on the state ballot, are immigrants from the former Soviet Union who haven't yet been indoctrinated by American culture.

[WWeek traced OCA history in 1998.]

While they were in Latvia, Lively and Hutcherson were guests of Alexei Ledyaev, a Russophone preacher in Riga. Lively showed a video at the February OCA-revival meeting that featured Ledyaev, according to Willamette Week:

The 45-minute video, which repeatedly refers to homosexuals as "terrorists," shows how conservative Latvians successfully stopped gays from marching [*] in their capital, Riga. (European news reports show anti-gay demonstrators throwing feces on the gays.)

The video also features Alexei Ledyaev -- a Kazakhstan-born Baptist pastor and leader of the New Generation Church, whose satellite broadcasts claim an audience of more than 200 million people -- leading large crowds in chants of "In the name of Jesus Christ, we curse the name of homosexuality!"

As OCA members cheered the video and chanted, "Amen," I tried not to laugh out loud at the one-sided images, which portrayed gay men as leather-clad deviants, whipping and licking one another in public.

Lively told the OCA-revival crowd in February, "There is a fairly sizable Russian population in Portland who is not poisoned to the OCA. That's a good place to start. They weren't poisoned by the sexual revolution."

Hutcherson had already started to draw Russophone churches in the Seattle area into his orbit, appealing for their help with his pro-discrimination Initiative 963.

Crosscut links to an LA Times story that focuses on the large and largely anti-gay Russophone emigre population in Sacramento.

Many credit the Slavic Christian immigrant community with filling a void left by the traditional American church and providing reinforcements in the ongoing culture wars over what should define family, acceptable sexual relationships and marriage.

"Russian Christians bring a fresh faith and uncorrupted family values to this country. They are a shining model for the rest of us in terms of faith, family, work ethic, patriotism and community," said Randy Thomasson, president of the Campaign for Children and Families.

Gay civil rights activists, meanwhile, accuse the demonstrators of hateful and aggressive tactics that they say sometimes lean dangerously toward violence.

There are plenty of preachers and other discrimination activists out there who hope to tie their own agendas to the energy of the young emigres. Hutcherson and Lively helped endear themselves by making sure that discrimination is a two-way street through their visits to Latvia.

* [A Latvian court recently ruled that it was illegal for the Riga city council to deny a parade permit in 2006 to the organizers of a gay pride event.]

Labels: I-963, ken hutcherson, latvia, oregon, politics, religion, Washington

An eastern European republic might seem like a strange place to lobby for a state ballot initiative in Washington, but Redmond's Pastor Ken Hutcherson has found an eager audience (and, presumably, donors) for his anti-gay message in local churches that cater to immigrants from former Soviet republics.

The Redmond pastor has built on that local support by appealing to the homeland churches of those immigrants. Earlier this month, he traveled for a second time in a few months to the Latvia to attend a meeting there of church officials attracted to his anti-gay message.

Hutcherson's message rings true to right-wing immigrants from the Russian-speaking Slavic republics of northeastern Europe according to a radio host and newspaper who spoke at a Kent church.

"I consider myself more American than those who were born in this country who are destroying it," said Wade Kusak, host of a Russian-language radio show in Sacramento and publisher of newspapers there and in Seattle.

It's no coincidence, he said, that states with growing evangelical Slavic communities are the most liberal, full of people "trying to destroy our families."

That's why God "made an injection" of Slavic evangelicals. "In those places where the disease is progressing, God made a divine penicillin."

Shapovalov [the pastor of a Kent church] said Kusak has spoken to his congregants on how to conduct themselves at political demonstrations.

In Kusak's home base of Sacramento, which has the nation's largest conservative evangelical Slavic community, church members have picketed gay-pride events and packed legislative meetings, often far outnumbering other protesters, according to the Los Angeles Times.

UK Gay News provides a translation of a Russian-language report on Hutcherson's trip from the the Latvian website NewGeneration.lv.

The Latvian site reports, "The US guests did not need introduction -- their human rights and anti-gay movement activities [are] widely widely known in Latvia."

Hutcherson was in the Latvian capitol of Riga this month to attend a conference organized by Janis Vanags, Archbishop of the Latvian Evangelical Lutheran Church. According to UK Gay News, representatives of "all main denominations of Latvia" attended the conference along with Hutcherson and several prominent Latvian politicians.

"It is a huge honour for me to be in such a company," NewGeneration reported Mr. Hutcherson as telling the conference.

"I will try to be useful in resolving the problems which we all care about. Homosexual pressure is experienced today by many countries. Where the danger was not identified timely and the destructing forces of homosexuality were not evaluated timely, we see how homosexuality is spreading widely and becoming legal," Hutcherson said.

It's not clear if it's related directly to the conference, but shortly afterwards, an anti-gay activist group in Latvia that calls itself "No Pride" sent a letter to British Prime Minister Tony Blair. The open letter asks that Blair stop muzzle London's mayor who has expressed supported gay activists in Latvia.

No Pride writes

Each nation's citizens have a right to choice a way their country develops and it is unacceptable that civil servants of the United Kingdom interfere with the Latvia's internal affairs. We consider unacceptable London Mayor Ken Livingstone's alongside organisation ILGA Europe actions supporting and escalating the conflict in the Latvian society between traditional values and supporters of homosexuals' rights, by stating their support for Riga Pride 2007.

The language of the letter echos the speech that Hutcherson gave to the discrimination conference:

"There many countries on the world today where same-sex marriages are legalised," Hutcherson warned the conference, "where same-sex adoption in possible, where education of a new generation is based on sexual diversity and family transformation. We need to talk today about the fact that the people simple overlook how homosexuality step by step forcefully taking space."

The Stranger's Slog has printed dispatches (here and here) from the preacher who says he was a hit on local TV stations, but maybe not so much with the US Embassy:

It went extermely [sic] well with American embassy?they aren't very happy right now, because I had to lay it out, they are not representing American values well.

It also went well with the Parliament, the Ministry of Interior, and Minister of Integration.

Labels: I-963, initiative, ken hutcherson

The Rev. Ken Hutcherson now has a number for his initiative "related to discrimination." It will be Initiative 963.

Remember that number, decline if you're asked to sign 963.

Although the number is assigned, the initiative text is not yet available from the secretary of state's site. You should be able to read it shortly by following the link above.

Labels: equal rights, gay news, I-963, initiative, ken hutcherson, politics, Washington

Prayer Warrior, horse-breeder, quickly washed-out football player, and discrimination activist Ken Hutchinson, who is awaiting review by the Secretary of State's office of his new discrimination initiative, admits to the Seattle Times writer Janet I. Tu that he has a "tremendous ego."

"That's why I played pro football," he said. "I'm taking that same ego and energy that benefited me in football and now putting it in for the glory of God to do his will and his work."

In that regard, his ambitions are bigger than ever. He talks of organizing an international summit: "I am building a force around the world."

And he's starting by trying to build pro-discrimination coalitions with Slavic immigrant churches in the Puget Sound area. Tu takes a look at one of them, in Kent, for today's fawning piece in the Times.

Hutcherson now hopes the alliance will result in signatures for an initiative he filed last week seeking to repeal a state law, passed a year ago, that adds sexual orientation to a state law banning discrimination based on race, gender, religion and other categories.

"We've got a lot of churches to reach," said Hutcherson, who must gather at least 224,800 valid signatures by July 6 to put the initiative on the fall ballot.

"We want to get the Slavic churches, the Russian-speaking churches, the Korean churches, Philippine, Chinese, white, cross-cultural. ... If we're going to win this fight on protecting traditional marriage, we're going to need all churches to work together."

But even if he doesn't eventually get the signatures, Hutcherson is generating plenty of publicity for his ministry at a church in Redmond that holds Sunday services in a public high-school. And he does seem to enjoy that publicity.

Ken Schramm, a fellow who apparently passes for something other than a right wing conservative within Fisher Broadcasting's local media constellation, last week awarded Hutcherson a Schramm bobble-head doll boobie prize called "The Schrammie" that seems to be a regular feature of one of Schramm's programs. Said the Schramm:

It takes a special kind of person to openly advocate for discrimination.

In this instance, it takes a man of stilted thinking; a man of narrow-minded focus, not to mention bigoted determination.

Indeed, in this case it takes...a man of God.

So would Rev. Ken Hutcherson please, step away from the pulpit and come on down.

Last week found the senior pastor at Antioch Bible Church trudging to Olympia to file an initiative that would repeal a state law banning discrimination against gays and lesbians.

It's been a while since we heard or saw one of his commentaries, but Schramm seems downright reasonable in this one instance:

The otherwise personable Rev. Hutcherson is on a crusade to smite those who seek nothing more than fair and equal treatment under the law.

So, for rising to his self-imposed challenge by sinking to an ecclesiastical low; for his disdain of the human condition and his spiteful desire to steal civil rights under the guise of God, take a bow Rev. Hutcherson, 'cause this "Schrammie's" for you.

Of course, he got plenty of emails from good Christians who attempted to explain to him why the man Schramm called "holier-than-thou self-proclaimed tool of God's avenging hand" really is just that. (But who didn't seem to explain why on earth that -- even if it's the case -- should be the basis for a state's laws.)

The reason we're not up on the current state of Mr. Schramm's thinking is this: The closest we ever get to KOMO, KVI, or any of Fisher's radio outlets is the wonderful Blatherwatch blog where Michael Hood is a kind of Perez Hilton of local talk radio (except, or course, that Blatherwatch uses funny and often insightful words instead of silly pictures -- which makes him not at all like Perez).

But even BlatherWatch had to mention Hutcherson clarifying an earlier note about what Ken Hutcherson does in his spare time.

We said Rev. Ken Hutcherson who raises race horses. We were wrong. He wrote to say: "I do not own race horses, they are cutting horses, quarter horses, for roping and cutting out cattle from the herd." The mega-churched ex-Seahawk preacher began his referendum signature drive to undo civil rights legislation for gays on Monday.

Hmm. "Cutting out cattle from the herd." We're not surprised he'd be enjoy that kind of thing.

BlatherWatch adds parenthetically (and probably all too hopefully):

If he doesn't succeed in getting it on the ballot and getting it passed, that'll prove once and for all that God is on the gays' side, and the good reverend will just go away, right?

After reading, in Slog, a reprint of Hutcherson's Prayer Warrior announcement touting yet another in an endless stream of media appearances, Northwest Progressive Institute detected a certain misunderstanding of the whole initiative process.

They kindly schooled the preacher in the technicalities, before concluding,

The real difficulty is getting enough signatures. It's hard to distort what this is about -- legalizing discrimination -- and most Washingtonians aren't interested in condoning bigotry. A signature drive that lacks a ton of money needs superb organization and coordination to make the ballot. At this juncture Hutcherson doesn't appear to have either, and that's good news. We'll be watching closely to see if he gets any help from someone who knows what they're doing.

Labels: equal rights, gay news, I-963, initiative, ken hutcherson, local bites, politics, Washington

Discrimination activist and Eastside preacher Ken Hutcherson on Friday filed his expected pro-discrimination initiative with the Secretary of State. It has not yet been given a number, but is expected to be virtually identical to a version that he filed in November.

Hutcherson filed the new initiative under his name using an Olympia PO Box, Antioch Church telephone numbers, and the email address HutchforTraditionalMarriage@hotmail.com. In November, 2006, he pre-filed an initiative "Related to amending the laws against discrimination." Last year's filing allows for quicker review of the current version. The text of the 2006 initiative is available here, in pdf format.

Hutcherson, a one-time NFL football player who is pastor of a large Redmond church that meets in a school building, achieved a spot of fame in 2005 by protesting Microsoft's then-quiet support for the anti-discrimination law that finally passed last year. Hutcherson managed to get Microsoft to temporarily withdraw its support for the law in 2005, but it was a short victory. After an outcry from employees, the Redmond company reaffirmed its support for the law and backed its passage last year.

After the anti-discrimination law passed last year, Hutcherson announced that he would lead a boycott of Microsoft because of that stance, but little was heard about the boycott beyond an initial flurry of press releases from Hutcherson's church.

Hutcherson's November filing was what liberal blogger David Goldstein called a "warning shot" that had this extra advantage:

By refiling the identical initiative on Jan. 2, with the initiative language already approved, Hutcherson gets a few extra days in 2007 to gather signatures, and four extra weeks this month [Dec. 2006] to organize his anti-fag army. Hutcherson is many things, but stupid is not one of them.

That initiative was, in turn, virtually identical to Tim Eyman's Initiative which failed to qualify for the ballot last year. It "This measure removes references to "sexual orientation" or "sexual preference" including heterosexuality, homosexuality, bisexuality, gender expression, identity, appearance and behavior from the state's law against discrimination in employment, housing, and public accommodations."

Goldstein wasn't impressed by last year's Equal Rights Washington (ERW) spinoff that was set up to battle Eyman's initiative.

It will take far more than a smug (and white) group of Seattle libs launching a web site and handing out flyers to derail Hutcherson. It will take money -- a lot of it. It will take a prolonged statewide media campaign featuring a bipartisan roster of Washington's political, business, and cultural leaders. And it will take serious outreach into Hutcherson's religious base of support, speaking with pastors, other religious leaders, and their congregations about, for example, Jesus' teachings on discrimination, forgiveness, and the judging of others.

Goldstein's smug Seattle-lib dismissal of last year's efforts by the awkwardly named "Washington Won't Discriminate" (which becomes "WWD" and therefore sounds vaguely Cheneyesqe) fails to recognize that WWD was born of two groups, both ERW and the "Religious Coalition for Equality". The Coalition's "Faith Statement in Support of Antidiscrimination" and outreach to religious leaders throughout the state did just what Goldstein says they should have done.

WWD was disbanded after Eyman's initiative failed to qualify, but the campaign certainly seemed to understand the need for media outreach and for the money needed to make that happen. Would their campaign have worked or would they have dismissed as "a smug (and white) group of Seattle libs"? Since the campaign never really got under way, it's impossible to tell. Unfortunately, we'll have another chance this year to find out.

Labels: equal rights, gay news, I-963, initiative, ken hutcherson, politics, Washington