Things heat up in Louisville, KY over Gay rights

'Fairness' fight is in spotlight

'Fairness' fight is in spotlight
Vote scheduled for tomorrow
By Joseph Gerth
and Sheldon S. Shafer
The Courier-Journal
By David Harpe, Special to The Courier-Journal

Louisville Metro Council members used the last public hearing on retaining the city's civil-rights law as an opportunity to promote their positions.

And almost all the talk was about protecting gays and lesbians, even though one proposed ordinance is intended to retain the entire civil-rights law — prohibiting discrimination based on race, religion, age, sex and other factors.

A council vote is expected tomorrow.

In more than two hours of discussion, both sides had witnesses testify about the effects of the protections for gays and lesbians, which proponents have called the "fairness ordinance."

Alveda King, a niece of the late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., told the council that gays and lesbians don't deserve the civil-rights protections because homosexuality is not "an immutable characteristic" like skin color or ethnicity.

"I feel it is unfortunate to put these two issues (civil rights based on sexual orientation and civil rights based on skin color) together," said King, who came from Atlanta to support ordinance opponents.

But the Rev. Al Herring of Jeffersontown, pastor of New Covenant Community Church, said the two issues are intertwined because they are both issues of justice.

"We have had the ordinance as law for several years now, and it has done what any law should do — protect people," Herring said. "It would be a travesty if we were to reverse ourselves now."

Under the law that allowed the merger of Louisville and Jefferson County governments, all their laws will expire at the end of 2007 unless re-enacted by the council.

With the council vote looming, the rhetoric is heating up — especially from opponents who have launched a radio campaign and have begun mailings.

One mailing — from Dr. Frank Simon, the conservative activist and head of the American Family Association of Kentucky — has raised the hackles of some of the recipients and some council members.

In the past two days, people all over Jefferson County have received mailings from Simon's organization with the words, "Warning: Very Vulgar, Not for Children" on the envelope.

The letter says gays take part in "unhealthy and unnatural acts" that he calls "too vulgar to mention." It does, however, include a page copied from a medical journal that describes the acts in detail.

Many council members said yesterday that they received dozens of calls from constituents on both sides of the issue.

Council President Kelly Downard, who is Roman Catholic, said he was offended by several portions of the letter, especially one part that he called "anti-Catholic."

"Remember what the homosexual priests did to the children?" the letter asks.

Simon said the letters weren't intended to be anti-Catholic.

He said the group sent about 65,000 of them to a number of targeted districts. People in both Republican and Democratic districts said they received them.

Sharon Marx, who lives in the 7th District and has a lesbian stepdaughter, said she herself was offended by the entire letter.

"It's horrible that this man thinks people are not intelligent enough to see through this, but I know some of them will believe this," Marx said.

Earlier in the day, opponents of the gay-rights ordinance had King address about 75 people at a luncheon at Baptized Pentecostal Church, 1606 W. Jefferson St.

It was organized by the Jefferson County Pro-Family Coalition. Metro Councilmen Hal Heiner, R-19th, and Doug Hawkins, R-25th, two of the council opponents of gay rights, were present.

King — a graduate of Louisville's Male High School and the daughter of civil-rights leader A.D. King, a local minister — has a long record as a rights activist herself. In her address and at a later news conference, she said that the Bible declares that homosexuality is a sin. She said homosexuals must be "born again and change" their behavior. "We do not need to pass a law saying that is OK to be gay," she said.

King is a former member of an advisory board of the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Non-violent Social Change in Atlanta. Antonio Stephens, a spokesman for the center, said in a telephone interview that she has no official position with the center and that the center has not taken a position on gay-rights legislation.

The Metro Council hearing lasted two hours last night — the first half being presentations to the council and the last half a question-and-answer period.

Those who oppose the provisions that ban discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity brought in four people from out of town to talk about the ordinance.

Besides King, they were a former lesbian who now works for the conservative group Focus on the Family, a lawyer from Cincinnati affiliated with social conservative groups and a counseling professor from Pennsylvania who said homosexuality is a choice.

Those speaking in favor of the ordinance included two women who said they have been discriminated against in their jobs because they are gay, and two people from Cincinnati who said that city lost convention business when it passed an initiative that banned civil-rights protections for gays.



Contact the reporters at

jgerth@courier-journal.com

and sshafer@courier-journal.com