Fair Mare

I was honored by an invitation from iDate of the Week Jody Cofer (far right) to say a few words at the Kentucky Fairness Alliance reception in Murray this past Saturday. Jody works for Murray State University as the program specialist for Undergraduate Research and Scholarly Activity. And he's on the Alliance board, which works to ensure that our gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered (GLBT) friends receive the same fair treatment as we boring straight folk are supposed to receive. New board chair Travis Myles is on my right and JPMorgan Chase VP Don Wenzel, who also spoke, is on my left. All sorts of cute people were there: ...including in the photo above MSU Provost Dr. Gary Brockway and Bill France. Jody invited me to talk about my role on the Paducah Human Rights Commission. We'd recently sent an official thank you proclamation to Governor Beshear for reinstating a ban (originally signed by Governor Patton and rudely revoked by Governor Fletcher) against discrimination based on sexual orientation in state employee hiring. Jody actually did most of the work with that, but I appreciate his giving me a shout out. He also suggested I talk about what fairness means to me professionally and personally. Professionally, of course, I talked about iList Paducah and our desire for the site to reflect and celebrate our entire community, even when we receive the occasional cranky email. And personally, I noted that my husband Bruce Brockenborough and I passionately believe that none of us deserves more rights than anyone else. In our book, that extends to any two people lucky enough to find each other, fall in love and get hitched up. Marriage rocks, and it's not right — or fair — that we can do it, but our gay and lesbian friends cannot. While I was hoping for wild and thunderous applause at that, I am thankful for the polite clapping I did receive. Hopefully I didn't set the fairness folks back a giant step since sweet, sweet Jody was so nice to invite me to speak. I dunno. Fair is fair. I just think that should extend to everything.

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