Constant Hate: Assemblyman targeted again with vile, homophobic email

Once again, Vice Chair of the Anchorage Assembly Christopher Constant was subjected to hate, which came in the form of an email sent to his Municipal email account by an Anchorage resident late Monday night.

Constant captioned the email he shared to his Twitter account: "Literally, the level of debate coming from the far right in Anchorage." The tweet went viral by Alaska standards, where it was retweeted 52 times and liked more than 270 times.

In the email, an Anchorage resident who is Facebook friends with Eagle River Assembly person Jamie Allard, who you may recall called all transgender people "mentally ill" last year, referred to Felix Rivera as Constant's "gay lover" and encouraged Constant to give him a "kiss goodbye." He wrote that while Anchorage may [accept] his "gay pathetic ass," he could only live with lesbians while the "queers have to go."

Mr. Constant says that he does not have a partner and that Rivera is his colleague on the Assembly.

Constant said that while he often receives hateful emails from Anchorage residents, this particular email was "pretty top-level."

Comments made in response to Constant's tweet were largely supportive, with many thanking him for continuing to serve in the face of such hate, while another suggested Weel's email was a juvenile attempt to intimidate him.

Midtown Representative Felix Rivera has also been a recipient of homophobic hatred, especially after the Assemblyman was targeted for recall last year. After soundly defeating the recall, Rivera called the recall effort "a homophobic attempt to take out an Assembly member."

Constant was previously called a profane word by anti-mask activist Paul Kendall during a September 29, 2021, meeting of the Anchorage Assembly that was hearing public testimony about a proposed citywide mask mandate. When Kendall took the microphone, he said to Constant, "I thought you were just a cocksucker, but you're a coward."

Some in the Assembly chambers cheered Kendall's hateful remarks. He was then escorted from the room and later charged with trespassing. At the end of the meeting, Constant, who supported the mask mandate, said that he had "been called worse by better."

"The part that in fact shocked me to silence was when roughly 200 people cheered zealously," Constant said at the next evening's Assembly meeting, adding that it was a moment that "zinged" him and took his breath away.

Kendall died roughly a month later from COVID-19.

At a special meeting of the Anchorage Assembly last month, Girdwood resident Erik Lambertsen, who, after having spoken numerous times that evening, directed what Constant said was a limp wrist gesture at him.

"It's the gentleman's right to make his comments, but I want the record to reflect that he just made a very homophobic gesture across the dais at me," Constant said.

Lambertsen first responded that he "doubted" that was the case at all and claimed that there was no "evidence" to back up Constant's claim, even though the gesture had just been televised across the municipality and was preceded by the phrase "hissy fit."

Lambertsen has been insistent that the gesture was not intended to be homophobic.

For his part, Constant said that he posted Weel's email not to be mean but because he thought the email was "so over the top, it had to see the light of day."

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