June is Pride Month and on today’s show we celebrate the legal and social advancements made for LGBTQ Wisconsinites. In 1982 Wisconsin was the first state to make it illegal to discriminate based on sexual orientation in employment and housing. 

Host Ali Muldrow is joined by Governor Tony Evers who talks about allyship from public officials, Judy Davidoff who reflects on the 2014 overturning of Wisconsin’s same-sex marriage ban (the year before the US Supreme Court’s marriage equality decision in Obergefell v. Hodges), and Steve Starkey who’s been an advocate and leader for social justice in Dane County since the 1970s. 

Governor Tony Evers is a Wisconsin native and former educator. He was first elected to the governor’s office in 2018 and was reelected in 2022. Governor Evers was the first Wisconsin governor to raise a Pride flag over the state Capitol and has continued to do so every Pride Month since he took office in 2019.

Judith Davidoff is the editor of Isthmus. She and a team of Isthmus journalists won a Gold award from the Milwaukee Press Club in 2014 for their coverage of the overturning of Wisconsin’s same-sex marriage ban. 

Steve Starkey is a longtime advocate for social justice causes in Dane County. Steve was the Founding Vice President of the Social Justice Center, and currently is the executive director of OutReach LGBT Community Center, where he has worked for 18 years. At OutReach, Steve advocates for clients who have been affected by anti-LGBT laws and who experience homophobic or transphobic culture across Wisconsin.

Image courtesy: Vicki Kenyon / WORT News.

The post Celebrating LGBTQ Rights in Wisconsin appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.