Gay activists seek legislative support

 

 

FRANKFORT— Keith Brooks was sitting in Keeneland Hall one night in 2005 when his friend stumbled in, his face covered in bruises, his coat stained with blood.

His friend had been beaten up coming home from a party on Transylvania Park by some men who assumed he was gay. When Brooks heard why his friend was beaten up, he screamed, he threw things around his room, he cried so hard he shook.

Brooks didn’t think it could happen here.

“I always assumed UK had this southern hospitality, and no one cared someone was gay,” he said after a rally in Frankfort Wednesday. “It never occurred to me someone could be attacked.”

Brooks was one of more than 100 people to attend the  “Kentuckians Value Fairness” rally in the Capitol Rotunda Wednesday afternoon. The rally, which came at the end of a morning of lobbying legislators, focused on two issues: statewide fairness bills and a bill in the state Senate that would prevent “the approval of foster care, relative caregiver services, or adoption of a child by an applicant who is cohabiting with a sexual partner outside of a marriage that is legally valid in Kentucky.”

The fairness bills, Senate Bill 95 and House Bill 72, would prohibit discrimination based on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. SB 95 is currently in the Senate Judiciary Committee, and HB 72 is in the House Judiciary Committee.

Senate Bill 68, which deals with foster care, caregiver services and adoption, is currently in the Senate Judiciary Committee. It is sponsored by state Sen. Gary Tapp, R-Shelbyville.

During Wednesday’s rally, sponsored by Louisville civil rights group the Fairness Campaign, several state legislators appeared, including Rep. Kelly Flood and Sen. Kathy Stein, both Lexington Democrats.

Stein, the sponsor of the Senate fairness bill, called SB 68 a “horrid piece of legislation” that would prevent children from being placed with deserving families and strain state resources.

“We really can’t afford to let those children be pawns of those who want to use homophobia yet again to scare the citizens to pass this kind of bill,” Stein said.

David Edmunds, a policy analyst for the Family Foundation of Kentucky, said in an interview Wednesday that the bill does not specifically target gay couples, but instead focuses on all unmarried, co-habilitating couples – a large number of which have opposite-sex partners.

He also said the bill wouldn’t reduce the number of resources that are available for foster care. In fact, he said it might have the opposite effect – many of the foster care organizations working with the state are faith-based, and they would feel more free to arrange foster care with families that align with the groups’ principles.

The bill benefits children, too, he said.

“Children deserve to have the best possible home Kentucky can provide for them,” Edmunds said. “These kids have been from homes where the testimony has been (the parents) loved the kids. But the state has a higher threshold than love. It has a threshold of responsibility.”

Two speakers at Wednesday’s rally, Dora James and Ryan Dillon, talked about the high school chapter of the Gay-Straight Alliance the seniors helped start in Hartford, Ky.

Dillon, now a senior at Ohio County High School, said he was teased his freshman year to the point that one day in gym, his classmates pelted him with rocks and called him names.

Some students in the high school got together to start a Gay-Straight Alliance, and Dillon tried to decorate a bulletin board for the group inside the school. The board was later covered in Bible verses. People protested, and someone put a sign in front of the school that said “God hates fags.”

But things have cooled down at Ohio County High School, and people have become more accepting, Dillon said.

A fairness bill would make things better, he said.

“When we first started (the Gay-Straight Alliance), everyone was scared because Ohio County was all they knew,” Dillon said after the rally. “But I think a bill like this pushing for statewide fairness would give them hope.”