When I’m in the presence of some massive piece of engineering – the Exxon Valdez, a Peterbilt 18-wheeler with no brakes screaming down a hill, the Statue of Liberty – sometimes all I can do is stare, mouth agape, at something too big to be. It seems in defiance of some immutable law of nature. Something so large cannot be a product of human hands. And if it is, there must be some kind of higher purpose for its existence. It must serve some higher truth. A stone monument to freedom or victory, a nuclear submarine built for total war, a telescope for scanning the stars in search of life – I can square all these circles with some work.

But a cruise ship pulled up to the Juneau docks, towering 20 decks over the pilings, exists on a scale that’s almost incomprehensible. It’s tied to the docks with lines splaying like a spider’s web, each one the width of a cottonwood tree. The ship, a product of the Norwegian Cruise Line, is hospital-white, decorated with a colossal mural of whales, dolphins, and manta rays towards the bow. It floats, forebodingly, in the waters of the Gastineau Channel like a great Biblical beast, something from the book of Job.

It creates this great parallel – on one side, Mount Roberts rears up into the evening mist, blanketed with conifers. On the other, the Norwegian Bliss sits like a calved glacier. The natural world poses in bleak opposition to a product of the Meyer Werft shipyard. And in between the two? A thin strip of asphalt and buildings, devoted to separating a stream of tourists – vomited from the Bliss’s starboard side – from as much of their money as possible.

“I’ve got to get a picture of this totem pole for my mom!” a raincoat-bedecked woman remarks, disembarking the ship and staring in wide-eyed wonder. You live here for your whole life and grow accustomed to growing up in a place still sort of in touch with its natural and human history, until someone comes along and dislodges you from your learned apathy. God bless this woman – the totem pole is cool as hell. Even the name – Norwegian Bliss – denotes some kind of otherworldly euphoria, gleaned from a voyage up through the rainy Southeast.

In the legislative world, on Monday afternoon while the Norwegian Bliss was mooring, the Senate Labor and Commerce Committee heard a presentation and public testimony for Senate Bill 108. Senator Scott Kawasaki’s (D – Fairbanks) bill, a Senate companion to Representative Jennie Armstrong’s (D – Anchorage) House Bill 99, aims to add gender identity and sexual orientation as protected classes. The legislation, if passed, would prevent individuals from being discriminated against on the basis of these attributes, with regards to housing, public accommodations, and lending.

Meanwhile, a third scheduled public testimony opportunity on Monday morning for House Bill 105, Governor Mike Dunleavy’s (R – Alaska) oft-maligned parental rights bill, was cancelled. Despite being on the legislative calendar until the morning of the House Education Committee meeting, the committee voted to close testimony without hearing any. Considering the overwhelming bushwhacking HB 105 has gotten over the past two sessions of public testimony, this was probably the right decision – or at least a strategic one.

A number of the same organizations and individuals that had used their social media clout and general notoriety to organize public testimony against the bill, repeated the process in reverse over the last few days. Planned Parenthood of Alaska, for instance, made sure to alert their Twitter followers that, even though a third round of public testimony for HB 105 had been cancelled, they could still call in support of SB 108 and HB 99.

And indeed, public testimony for SB 108 was overwhelmingly in favor of the bill, with many members of the Alaska LGBT community calling in to voice their support. “Queer joy” was mentioned by testifiers more than once, defined as a sort of amorphous euphoria resulting from making friends and seeing others in the LGBT community thrive – in one testifier’s case, it came from “hosting a virtual intergenerational LGBTQ+ tea party.” One caller referred to themself as a “queer success story,” living and dressing independently as an adult with tattoos and piercings.

HB 99’s Tuesday hearing took a somewhat different tact in the House Community and Regional Affairs Committee – the second committee Armstrong’s bill needed to pass before moving to the House Judiciary Committee. Following some technical difficulties, Representatives Kevin McCabe (R – Big Lake) and Tom McKay (R – Anchorage) subjected the bill to some fairly intense scrutiny, with McCabe discussing an amendment that would limit the bill’s protections exclusively to employment.

Additionally, McCabe questioned whether we should extend the bill’s protections to political expression as well. “If I drive up to look at a home, and I have a Gadsden flag, or a Confederate flag in my truck, would you accept an amendment that put political expression in there as well as gender identity or expression?” McCabe questioned.

In response, Armstrong explained that she introduced HB 99 because she identified as LGBTQ, and hadn’t heard many stories of people being persecuted for their political expression.

“I have heard many stories of people [facing persecution] for being LGBTQ,” Armstrong explained, tying a lack of statutes protecting gender expression and identity to Alaskan outmigration and LGBT servicemembers feeling persecuted.

The real point of contention between McCabe and Armstrong was whether a new protected class was actually being added, with Armstrong arguing that the definition of “sex,” an already protected class, was being changed to incorporate gender expression and identity.

In the end, after another half hour of debate over political expression, the bill passed out of committee by a 4-2 vote, with McCabe and McKay voting against it.

If you have any kind of stomach for political theater, or at the very least, a desire to see some legislative arguments reach their fever pitch, this bill’s next hearing in the House Judiciary Committee should prove to be nothing less than explosive.