I found some old recordings of the televised public hearings for Kansas City's gay rights ordinance 20 years ago.

You gotta' love the glasses!

Committee hearings are televised on the local cable channel and more than 12 hours of public testimony given by hundreds of supporters and opponents at three committee meetings were broadcast repeatedly over the course of several weeks. It ended up being a major media campaign that we could never have purchased and that has undoubtedly helped contribute to KC's tolerant nature.

As co-founder and co-director of the Human Rights Project (HRP), which was formed to introduce and support this legislation, this was one of the most exciting years of my life. That effort is intertwined with my campaign in 1991 as the first openly gay candidate for city council.

Although I didn't win that race, the information gleaned from the results ultimately helped to prove there is a tangible and powerful LGBT community here that now influences all local elections. Tim VanZandt benefited from demographic analysis we performed and was elected the first openly gay state representative in Missouri in 1994.

It also helped ensure that the newly elected 13-member council had enough political cover to ultimately pass a gay- and lesbian-inclusive civil rights ordinance in 1993. I suppose one could say the vote was unanimous among the eight council members in attendance, though four members were absent and one voted to allow the vote and then left before it actually took place.

(More current videos by me can be found on my blog.)