UPDATE: Read some reaction and see some stats mentioned in this column in today's blog post.

My phone rang Monday just before Mayor Dan Sullivan announced his veto of the city’s equal rights ordinance protecting gay people from discrimination. A friend of mine, a lesbian 15 years or so older than I am, was nearly in tears over what she knew was coming.

She and her partner are professionals with kids and have been involved in the community for a long time. They were talking about moving. To them, the veto was a giant rejection, a message from the city that they aren’t welcome here.

I sympathized as I listened to her, but I disagreed. To me, Sullivan’s decision isn’t evidence Anchorage has any particular point of view. Instead, it says one thing: a lot of old people run this city.

Watching this debate unfold has made me and many friends my age scratch our heads. The fight over this ordinance feels sprung from some kind of '70s documentary. We live in a world where the majority of Fortune 500 companies offer domestic partner benefits and Portia and Ellen are on the cover of People. A 30-something reporter I know who covers the Assembly told me months ago he thought the ordinance would pass unanimously.

“It can’t be a big deal, right?” he asked.

But to a certain set, this is still a big deal. And in that way, the Assembly’s trepidation, the mayor’s wrong-headed veto, and even the cultural split over extending equal rights protections to gay and lesbian people can be seen as much about generational differences as it is about ideology.

Let’s start with City Hall. The residents who went to the ballot box this spring delivered the leadership of our city into the practiced hands of what I like to call the AAARP, or the Anchorage Association of Almost Retired People, a broad class of public servants just a few short years away from qualifying for Medicare and taking their winters in Arizona.

Mayoral chief of staff Larry Crawford may be the best example. He actually worked for Sullivan’s father, George Sullivan, who was elected before I was born. There are a good number of others in the new administration who have spent the majority of their public lives in the years before the Internet.

Which brings me to my political mullet theory. You know how some people keep wearing their hair the same general style they did in high school, even when it is wildly out of fashion? The same thing kind of happens in politics. The crew running the city and most of the Assembly come from an era where being gay was something people whispered about. It got you beat up and put in jail in some places. In politics, it was dynamite. Some of them put on a progressive face. But old-school political anxieties, like mullets, die hard.

Statistics show we’re poised for a change. A group of young professionals will soon fill jobs vacated by boomers. They don’t have the hang-ups of the previous generation. Numerous studies show that the majority of people 30 and younger are generally comfortable with gays. Take a recent study by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life that showed that a majority of Americans support civil unions. Support was broadest among people under 50, and diminished the older people were. The only group that did not support it? People over 65.

The activists who showed up with their Sunday school classes to filibuster the Assembly might take issue with me. But the most vocal anti-gay pastors — the Anchorage Baptist Temple’s Jerry Prevo and Shiloh Baptist’s Alonzo Patterson— are greying around the temples. It’s also worth noting that though they are loud, they don’t represent a majority. Alaska is still one of the least religious states in the country, according to another Pew study, which also says young evangelicals are more tolerant than older generations.

After the veto announcement, I went to City Hall, where about 50 protesters had gathered on the sidewalk. It was dominated by 20-somethings with homemade signs. I saw a woman I knew who’s the same age as my friend with the kids. She looked so sad. I knew the day’s loss didn’t carry the same meaning for me. Our city is not perfect, but it’s much more comfortable for my generation, which is why fewer of us stay in the closet. And maybe why more people like me didn’t call up Sullivan’s office.

Tuesday morning I laughed when I discovered that Sullivan’s veto made The New York Times because it’s so quaint in a nation where equal rights laws protecting gays are commonplace. The story said he “vetoed a ban against discrimination based on sexual orientation, saying it was unclear that such discrimination existed.”

The guy sat through months of hearings where people lined up to call gay people vile and dangerous, but he’s unconvinced those attitudes might bleed into the workplace or the marketplace? Maybe that’s generational, too. Boomers understand discrimination through the experience of the civil rights movement. Maybe he was looking for something more overt than insults hurled in the Assembly chamber.

How about this: my partner and I can be together for 40 years. Own a house. Have kids. But I can't be covered on her health insurance. If she dies before me, I won’t be entitled to her pension. I can’t join the military, no matter how qualified I am, because of who I live with. What would you call that?

The playing field for gay people isn’t level. And if there were a way for us to complain about discrimination, some probably would. But that isn’t the point. The point is making the statement that our city believes in fair treatment for everyone. I don’t know whether Sullivan supports that idea.

I am convinced this city and this country will eventually protect gay people from discrimination. What’s unfortunate in Anchorage is that we may have to wait a few years for a generation of leaders to start drawing their pensions, move somewhere sunny with a pool, and take their old prejudices with them.