Will Shelbyville Accept Fairness?

Probably not.  But this is just the first round. The only question is how long the homophobes and freakazoids and wingnuts will hold out. Because their days in power are numbered.

From the Courier:

With the support of the Fairness Coalition, Shelbyville residents plan to approach their city council Thursday evening to propose adoption of an anti-discrimination ordinance offering gay-rights protections.

The effort at 6:30 p.m. at Shelbyville City Hall will be the first in a series of anticipated similar grassroots proposals taking place in other cities across Kentucky in the next few weeks, the coalition said.



Chris Hartman, spokesman for the Fairness Coalition Steering Committee, said efforts to adopt gay-rights protections are continuing in Berea and Richmond and are expected to start soon in Bowling Green, Elizabethtown, Morehead and possibly several other cities.



So far, only Covington, Lexington, and Louisville have enacted local so-called fairness ordinances in Kentucky that prohibit discrimination in employment, housing, and public accommodations based on actual or perceived sexual orientation and gender identity/expression.


Statewide anti-discrimination fairness laws have been proposed in the Kentucky General Assembly for more than a decade without debate, prompting local communities to seek to expand protections. Fairness bills will be introduced once again in both the 2013 Kentucky House and Senate, the coalition said.


The Fairness Coalition consists of members and allies of the American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky, the Fairness Campaign, the Kentucky Commission on Human Rights, Kentucky Fairness Alliance and Lexington Fairness, working together to advance equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Kentuckians.

 Shelbyville is the county seat of Shelby County, an agricultural county rapidly developing as a bedroom suburb of Louisville. It has a growing gay community as well as a large Hispanic community, but both the city council and fiscal court are majority republican and dominated by bigots.

The group presenting the proposed Fairness Ordinance to the city council tonight is the Shelby County chapter of Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, the primary social and economic justice organization in the state.