This year marks the 25th anniversary of Louisville’s pioneering fairness ordinance, which was the first in Kentucky to provide protections for LGBTQ+ individuals in housing, employment, and public accommodations.
While LGBTQ+ advocates in Bowling Green had hoped their city would soon implement similar protections, progress has stalled. However, this may change depending on the results of the upcoming mayoral election. The challenger to the incumbent mayor has been a long-time proponent of fairness, advocating for such measures since 1999.
At Bowling Green’s first Pride festival in 2017, Patti Minter led a march to City Hall to support a local fairness ordinance. Standing outside City Hall, Minter declared, “Today, we’re here to celebrate the journey from Stonewall to City Hall,” highlighting her grassroots effort to extend civil rights protections to the LGBTQ+ community.
Minter’s advocacy began 25 years ago with a letter to the Bowling Green Human Rights Commission in 1999, urging local leaders to follow Louisville’s example. “So it’s past time that Bowling Green passes a fairness ordinance to ensure everyone here has equal rights and basic human dignity,” Minter stated in a recent interview with WKU Public Radio.
Since Louisville’s initiative, 24 cities and one county in Kentucky have adopted similar ordinances, but Bowling Green, the state’s third-largest city, has not. Mayor Todd Alcott has suggested that addressing this issue may not be a priority, stating, “For me, we’re trying to solve a problem we really just don’t have.”
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