Strange Fruit #96: Human Rights Campaign Study Finds Louisville above Average on LGBT Equality

Strange Fruit

Louisville is looking pretty good this week! We recently got a 66% on the Human Rights Campaign's Municipal Equality Index—higher than the national average of 59%, and the highest rating of any city in Kentucky. The index looks at factors like non-discrimination laws, domestic partner benefits, openly gay elected officials, and more, and largely finds cities leading the way in the US, while states sometimes lag behind. This week we're joined by Cathryn Oakley of the HRC, who tells us more about the methodology, and how this year's study compares to previous years. In Juicy Fruit, we cover more Louisville news: WFPL health reporter Ja'Nel Johnson sits in to tell us about an encouraging story from the University of Louisville medical school. It will be the first med school in the nation to include specific instruction on treating LGBTQ patients. In other hot (and medical) topics, an employee of Norton Healthcare was fired after her racist facebook post went viral (including a share from our own Jaison Gardner, who was mentioned in the subsequent media coverage). Toni Morrison has a new novel coming out in the Spring, and last week was also the anniversary of James Baldwin's death, so we spend some time this week showing respect to these legends of Black literature and discussing the significance of their works. And finally, the Wall Street Journal's arts & entertainment blog, The Speakeasy, released its list of The 15 Best Pop Culture Moments of 2014. Some we totally got (the Oscar selfie, "Adele Dazeem," Pharrell's hat), and others we barely even registered this year (President Obama on Between Two Ferns, Katy Perry dressing as a Cheeto, something about Sharknado 2?). We didn't have time to include it all in this week's show, so the pop culture moments conversation is bonus fruit this week: https://soundcloud.com/strangefruitpod/bonus-fruit-the-wall-street-journals-15-best-pop-culture-moments-of-2014