ACLU of Kentucky

Reprinted from the Herald Leader.

The nation has begun commemorating a series of 50th anniversary milestones from the civil rights movement.
Looking back, it is hard to imagine an America where citizens could be denied a job, a home or service in a restaurant or hotel because of their race, sex, ethnicity, religion or disability. But that was acceptable until anti-discrimination laws were passed in the mid-1960s.

Those laws didn't just happen. People were beaten, jailed and even killed while fighting for them — and it wasn't just the people who suffered discrimination. Things didn't change until enough other people found the courage to speak out.

I offer this history lesson because Kentucky's civil rights law remains incomplete. In most of this state, citizens can still be denied a job, a rental home or service in public accommodations based on their sexual orientation or gender identity.

Read the full Herald Leader column here .

Reprinted from the Lexington Herald-Leader

Op-Ed written by Jason Howard, Berea

 When the abolitionist minister John G. Fee founded Berea in 1854, he named it after a biblical town where the people "received the word with all readiness of mind." Equality became the community's watchword the following year when Berea College was founded as the first Southern university to welcome women and African-Americans.
Today, nearly 160 years later, the residents of Fee's town are debating whether to embrace another word, one that speaks to the very essence of their heritage — fairness.

Fairness is a word familiar to all Bereans and Kentuckians, a value we were raised to emulate, a quality that is supposed to mark how we treat others in both our business and personal relations. With that legacy, some have argued, a fairness ordinance extending protections to gay and transgender people is unnecessary, as basic human respect and acceptance is a given.

Jason Howard, essayist and co-author of Something's Rising: Appalachians Fighting Mountaintop Removal, lives in Berea.


Read more: http://www.kentucky.com/2011/06/14/1774275/fairness-is-key-part-of-bereas.html#ixzz1PFn4k8fO

Learn how to take action:  Bereans for Fairness