Tagged: chris hartman

  A Reuters article published this week puts Fairness President Chris Hartman and True Colors Ministry's Maurice "Bojangles" Blanchard "at loggerheads"—but the two men in question disagree.

Our fearless hosts, Jaison and Kaila, are in Atlanta this week for the National Conference on LGBT Equality: Creating Change. So instead of a full show this week, here's part two of the conversation we started last week, with Fairness Campaign Director Chris Hartman. Last week, we talked about Vicco. This week we broaden the scope a bit, and talk about fairness gains across the Commonwealth, and the country.

Vicco, Ky., brought national attention to the state this week by becoming the smallest town in the United States to pass a fairness law. Like many of you (we're guessing), we'd never even heard of Vicco until the news broke. So we invited Fairness Campaign director Chris Hartman to join us this week and tell us more. 

"It's about three and a half hours east," Chris explains, "and several hundred feet up."

Hartman and others from the Fairness Coalition worked directly with Vicco leaders on the law. He said folks in Vicco are what we might call "non-traditional allies" who may not fit our idea of what LGBTQ-rights supporters are.

"But that may just be because we all have some inappropriate stereotypes about what rural Americans are like, about what Appalachian folks are like, and about what people who live in coal country are like," Hartman said.