The New York Times today has a great profile of Vicco, Kentucky, and its first openly gay mayor, a hairdresser named Johnny Cummings. Vicco is the teeninesy Appalachian town that just passed an anti-discrimination ordinance that covers sexual minorities. From the NYT:
Because the mayor votes only to break a tie, Mr. Cummings mostly just listened to the discussion. Yes, it was a little shocking to hear an old friend change his vote on grounds of religion. But it was also gratifying, even crystallizing, to hear another commissioner say simply: Everyone should be treated fairly.
Claude Branson Jr., 56, a retired coal miner who sits on the Commission — and the only commissioner, he proudly notes, with a mullet haircut — said recently that Mr. Cummings’s presence had not played as much of a factor in the vote as had “the whole broad perspective of the world.”
“We want everyone to be treated fair and just,” he explained.
That’s the word for progressives in Kentucky these days — “fair.” The director of Kentucky’s Fairness Coalition, Christ Hartmann, writes to say that they’re “trying to keep Kentucky the civil rights leader of the South. Fingers crossed!” After the jump, a full list of the Kentucky towns where coalition members are working on a “fairness ordinance” like the one Vicco passed.
(Blue dot in a red sea? Send news, pics, etc.)
Fairness Coalition members are working in these Kentucky towns:
- Berea
- Richmond
- Bowling Green
- Bardstown
- Elizabethtown
- Shelbyville
- Danville
- Owensboro
- Morehead
- Hazard
- Frankfort
Let us know if you see news from there.
Laura Conaway