"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has."

This adage is worth remembering each time the Kentucky General Assembly is gaveled into session and this year was no exception. Through the exceptional work of Fairness staff, leaders and volunteers, voices for equality and justice were heard each day in Frankfort. Special thanks goes to Mike Slaton, Darnell Johnson, Christina Gilgor, Misty York, Wes Wright, Dorene Stein, Mark England, Terry Mickler, Carol Kraemer, Carla Wallace and many others for their leadership and dedication to being at the Capitol talking with legislators about issues of importance to the Fairness community and our allies.

This session saw the re-introduction of a statewide Fairness bill that was sponsored in the Senate by senators Harper-Angel, Neal, Scorsone, Shaughnessy and in the House by representatives Burch, Marzian, Meeks, Palumbo, Stein, Wayne and Westrom. This visionary group is actively working to make the Commonwealth a better place for all Kentuckians by guaranteeing legal protections from discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

In addition, Representatives Marzian, Owens and Stein, along with Sen. Harper Angel, sponsored legislation that would ensure patient’s visitation rights by granting every adult patient authority to designate any individual to be considered as an immediate family member by a health care facility. With the introduction of these progressive bills, we have the opportunity to talk with legislators about our lives, our families and why passage of these bills will bring positive change to Kentucky.

With your calls and emails the Fairness community and Fairness-friendly legislators were successful in defeating a bill that would have prohibited universities and other public entities from offering domestic partner health care benefits. On March 20, the House Health and Welfare Committee voted 9 to 6 to reject Senate Bill 112 - the Healthcare Discrimination Bill. In casting his vote against the bill, Rep. David Watkins of Henderson chided bill sponsor Sen. Vernie McGaha of Russell Springs saying, "I am tired of the same petty issues coming before us when we’ve got major issues to address." (You can watch the events at www.kentuckyfairness.org.)

Enormous thanks and appreciation goes to Representatives Tom Burch, Joni Jenkins, Mary Lou Marzian, Reginald Meeks, Darryl Owens, Ruth Ann Palumbo, Kathy Stein, David Watkins and Susan Westrom who voted against this mean-spirited bill. Please call the legislative message line in Frankfort at 1-800-372-7181 and leave a thank you message!

Following the vote, legislative coordinator Carla Wallace noted, "This victory is testament to all the great work of Fairness citizen lobbyists, the support of Fairness staff, the backing up our supportive legislators, the help from our justice allies, and all the years of growing the Fairness power through public education, an inclusive justice vision and commitment to people-to-people organizing. This victory is significant testament to the power of perseverance, believing in justice, and in one another. Keep up the good work! Another world is possible!"

Roots of Fairness

For the past two and a half years I have been researching the social-political history of the local and regional lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender rights movement. This research is a kind of social-movement case study that situates one local grassroots organization – the Fairness Campaign – within a regional and national framework and examines its roots in earlier movements, the LGBT organizations that preceded and gave rise to it, and its approach to movement-building.

I’m spending time in archives looking at old newspapers and documents (UofL’s Williams-Nichols Gay History Collection donated by David Williams is really quite amazing!), but I am also doing oral history interviews with many current and former LGBT activists.

This project jumps off from my work on the southern civil rights movement and the women’s and peace movements of the 1960s-80s to look at the next generation of social justice movements as the 21st century dawned. I locate the southern African American freedom struggle as a kind of blueprint—a starting point for other movements to follow—making it what singer and cultural historian Bernice Reagon (of Sweet Honey in the Rock) calls the "borning movement" of the 1960s and beyond.

For example, I have found a lot of overlap in the biographies of who peopled these unfolding generations of social justice movements in Louisville. Many Fairness folks worked with and drew inspiration from civil rights activist Anne Braden, for instance. In the 1970s and 80s, Anne mentored young activists by teaching them skills as well as ideology. In doing so, she reinforced the centrality of fighting racism to a younger generation of women such as Carla Wallace and Pam McMichael who later became co-founders of Fairness.

To use a very concrete example of that generational progression, the figure most instrumental in starting what appears to have been the city’s first gay rights organization, the Louisville Gay Liberation Front (GLF), in 1970, was Lynn Pfuhl, a young white woman whose first political act had been, at the age of 17, to join the youthful downtown sit-ins to desegregate department stores in 1961. Pfuhl was one of only two whites who sat in. She joined because, as she told me, "I had been raised never to cross a picket line," by parents and grandparents who were socialists and communists for whom equality and justice were fiercely held values.

Pfuhl learned plenty of organizing skills from her activism in civil rights and anti-war campaigns, and she brought them to bear on gay rights in 1970, launching locally what became one of a handful of Gay Liberation Fronts across the nation after they first took hold in New York soon after Stonewall. Formed to challenge the denial of a marriage license to two lesbians, the GLF here undertook many other forms of activism in an amazingly short time, including a gay studies course in UofL’s evening noncredit program (which Pfuhl taught). The class became a gathering spot to discuss sexual identity and defy the rampant invisibility around them. The group also opened a residential "Gay Lib House" on Bonnycastle Avenue, from which they operated the city’s first gay hotline.

 By Cate Fosl