LEXINGTON, Ky. — Lexington remains a top city for members of the LGBTQ community for rights and services according to the Human Rights Campaign.
The Human Rights Campaign ranked Lexington 13th out of 506 cities for LGBTQ rights and fairness. It’s the fourth year the city has scored in the top 2.5% of the nation. Since 2021, Lexington has outranked any city in Kentucky and continues to receive a perfect score of 100 from the Human Rights Campaign.
“Each year we work with Human Rights Campaign who puts together their municipal equality index score or MEI and what they do is evaluate our policies, ordinances, things we can do on the local level,” said Craig Cammack, who is the community outreach liason for Mayor Linda Gorton’s office.
Lexington scored 106 for its laws, policies, services and programs for members of the LGBTQ community. Cammack says Fayette County has been an example for Kentucky since 1999, when it became the first county to pass a fairness ordinance for housing and employment.
“Recently we passed domestic partner benefits for our employees, and we also passed a ban on youth conversion therapy,” Cammack said.
AVOL Kentucky offers free HIV and Sexually Transmitted Infections testing. It was founded over 40 years ago by the members of Lexington’s gay community. Executive Director Jon Parker said he considers it an honor to live in a city where leaders recognize the importance of being accepting.
Jon Parker executive director of AVOL Kentucky says it’s an honor to live in an accepting city. AVOL offers free HIV/STI testing and serves many in the Gay community. (Spectrum News 1/Austin Schick)
“As an organization that serves a lot of people who are LGBTQ+ we really appreciate that and we appreciate their leadership and willingness to say this is an important component of our community,” Parker said.
Parker said housing is one of the biggest issues facing members in the LGBTQ community. He commends city leaders for sustaining the fairness ordinance for over two decades but says there’s always room to improve.
“There’s a lot of discrimination that sometimes can go unseen and I think agencies like AVOL or organizations like the Fair Housing Council are diligently looking for ways to resolve these issues,” Parker said.
Cammack says being an accepting and welcoming community is good for everyone.
“It’s good for attracting visitors and for attracting businesses because they want to be in places where their employees or they themselves feel comfortable,” Cammack said.
The highest score a city can get is 122, however 100 is considered a perfect score.
Louisville and Covington both scored 100.
