LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Jan. 26, 1999, marked a monumental decision in Kentucky. On that day, the Louisville Board of Alderman narrowly passed the city’s first iteration of a Fairness Ordnance, banning discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation. The victory for the city’s LGBTQ residents came after several failed votes throughout the 90s.
Twenty-five years later the people who helped pass the ordinance gathered at the Speed Cinema to reflect on this milestone through a living slideshow.
More than a dozen people shared a photograph and memory of their time working with the Fairness Campaign. It included Dawn Wilson.
Wilson’s photo is from the early 2000s, and features herself and two others carrying a banner during a protest. Wilson said it was a demonstration against the city’s police chief, who has recently made hateful comments.
“He just basically wanted to take it back to the fifties and where they can be able to beat people whatever we wanted to do. And we stood up to him," Wilson said. “When we took that picture, I never thought anything about it. You know, it was just, I didn't think of it as history, I just think this is the proper thing to do.”
Wilson joined the Fairness Campaign in the late 90s and fought for transgender rights. She continues that mission still today.
“We started this, we have fought for this, but sooner or later we're going to have to step back and you have to step up,” Wilson said. “When you do the right thing, you sleep a lot better at night.”
This anniversary comes as several bills in the Kentucky legislature, that could have impacted the LGBTQ+ community, failed to pass ahead of the Governor’s veto period. Essentially securing their defeat.
Chris Hartman, the Fairness Campaign’s current executive director, said one of them, HB 47, would have allowed people to sue that disagree with these ordinances.
“While we've still got a big fight ahead, and I don't want to imply that things are suddenly better and that it's getting easier, but I think that people's voices are starting to be heard,” Hartman said.
Both Hartman and Wilson believe there is still much work to do in the fight for equality.
Following Louisville’s lead in 1999, the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Council passed a Fairness Ordnance later that year. As did the town of Henderson, though its ordinance was soon repealed. Henderson would once again pass a discrimination ban 20 years later in 2019.
A Fairness Ordnance vote failed in Bowing Green in 1999, the city remains without one on the books.
Since 1999, 24 Kentucky communities have passed a Fairness Ordnance. The latest being the northern Kentucky town of Elsmere, which passed it in 2022.