Pastor, county executive to debate gay rights' parallel to civil rights

The Rev. Ken Hutcherson grew up in the segregated South, the illegitimate child of a poor Alabama family whose members rode in the back of the bus and drank from blacks-only water fountains.

King County Executive Ron Sims was raised in conservative Eastern Washington, marching alongside his parents for racial equality and enduring the kind of discrimination he has called searing.

Tonight at Town Hall Seattle, the two will confront each other over the issue of gay rights and whether the gay-rights movement parallels the civil-rights era of the 1960s that helped shape their lives.

Sponsored by the weekly alternative newspaper The Stranger, tonight's debate comes amid an effort to recall gay-rights legislation narrowly passed by the Legislature last month.

The measure added sexual orientation to a list of classifications such as race, sex and religion that are protected from discrimination in areas such as housing and employment.

Hutcherson, pastor of Antioch Bible Church in Redmond, testified against the bill, gaining national prominence on the issue last year when he threatened to boycott Microsoft if it didn't withdraw support for the measure.

Sims, a longtime supporter of gay-rights issues, encouraged a lawsuit against him and King County in 2004 that brought the gay-marriage question into the state's courts.

"We've interviewed both men several times," said Josh Feit, The Stranger's news editor. "They are dueling quotes smashed onto a page. We thought we'd bring them together to duke it out."

Wier Harman, executive director of Town Hall, was more reserved. "We've framed this not only in terms of gay rights, but the relationship of the gay-rights movement to the civil-rights movement. That in itself has proven a polarizing dimension to this debate."

Issues such as gay rights and specifically gay marriage have created division in the black community, especially in black churches.

Hutcherson, who made his mark on the football field before a knee injury ended his career with the Seattle Seahawks, has taken the position that there is no comparison between gay rights and civil rights.

He is fond of saying that he's never known an ex-black person but has many ex-gays in his multicultural congregation of 3,500.

"The problem we have is this: Gays don't want tolerance anymore, they want 100 percent acceptance," he said in a recent interview about the gay-rights legislation. "That's not going to happen."

For Sims, a longtime public servant, images of prejudice and discrimination from his childhood in Spokane inform his position on equal treatment.

As a minister ordained by the National Baptist Church, he is prohibited by church policy from conducting gay marriages, but he has been outspoken in his advocacy of gay causes.

"I think when people are in love with each other, they should be able to enjoy the great benefits of marriage," he has said. If not, "What are you saying — that there is something wrong with them?"

Lornet Turnbull: 206-464-2420 or lturnbull@seattletimes.com