Subject: Kentucky Activist Honored
From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 22 Nov 1999 11:09:11 EST

Gay-rights leader gets $25,000 prize
Honor bestowed for passage of anti-bias laws

By JIM HANNAH, The Courier-Journal

After leading the successful fight for gay-rights ordinances in four parts of 
Kentucky, Maria Price has another reason to celebrate.
  Price, executive director of the Kentucky Fairness Alliance, has been named 
one of   four winners of a 1999 Stonewall Award for improving the quality of 
life for gays and lesbians in the United States. She will receive a $25,000 
prize.
  "It is crazy," said Price, a Louisville resident. "I have never seen 
anything like it. I have only known a couple of people who have gotten this 
award in the past. They are usually from a bigger city, like New York or 
Chicago. I didn't know anything about it until they called and told me I won."
  With this year's prizes, the Chicago-based Anderson Prize Foundation, a 
family-run organization established in 1991, will have given nearly $900,000 
in Stonewall Awards to 36 people in eight years. The awards are named for a 
1969 revolt by gay people in New York against police, claiming brutality.
  Recipients are selected by an anonymous panel of gay-rights leaders from 
across the country, foundation spokeswoman Paulette Barrett said.
  Barrett said the Kentucky Fairness Alliance, which lobbies lawmakers on 
issues important to gays and lesbians, is regarded as a model for 
state-rights organizations because it reaches beyond cities and into rural 
communities to create links among race, sexual orientation and economics.
  Grass-roots gay activism has helped win a series of victories this year for 
Kentucky homosexuals. Since January, four local governments have added sexual 
orientation to their anti-discrimination laws, including Jefferson County, 
which voted last month to ban such bias in employment, housing and public 
accommodations.
  There will be no award ceremony for Price. The foundation will simply send 
her a check.
  Price, 34, said the majority of the money remaining after taxes will go 
toward maintaining her family's farm in Lawrence County, Ill., which was hit 
hard by this year's drought.
  Price grew up on the farm, where she raised animals to help pay for 
college.  She said that the deterioration of the farm economy and the impact 
of that on people triggered her interest in social justice.
  Price studied theology at St. Mary of the Woods College, near Terre Haute, 
Ind., and taught the subject in Catholic high schools in Louisville until 
1992.
   She became director of the fledgling Kentucky Fairness Alliance in 1995.

###