Sims v The Red States

The Rev Sims vs Rev Hutcherson title fight went down last night and although we couldn't attend there's enough written material about it to keep us reading through the weekend and into next week. It would be cool if the Stranger guys could throw up a video or at least a transcript of it somewhere... Anyway, it sounds like Hutcherson brought a posse with him by bus so the crowd wasn't as one-sided as the venue, the organizers and the subject of debate would suggest. We're happy to hear there were no physical assualts.

For those not paying attention, but for some reason reading this, The Stranger organized a debate that was held last night between city council membercounty executive (duh) Ron Sims and Ken Hutcherson our resident (or, rather, the east side's resident) christian fundamental type. "Is the gay rights movement the new civil rights movement?" was the topic, with Sims answering in the affirmative and Hutcherson saying no. Both are black men with experience in the world of racial discrimination. Neither are gay men with experience in the world of... uh, what's the word here? Not "sexual discrimination" and "sexual preference discrimination" doesn't really ring true as an actual phrase... "Gay discrimination?" Whatever, you catch our drift.

Here are a few accounts of the evening: Seattle P-I, KUOW, The Stranger (better link TK hopefully), Blather Watch, Horsesass.org's prematch thread with lots o' comments, and Seattle LJ community. We can't dig up anything from east of the lake so please help out if you have a link for something like that.

From the Blather Watch accounting:

And so it went with Hutcherson trotting out his time-tested sound bites and one liners like "I've met many ex-gays, but I've never met an ex-black." Or "When I die, he says I want to meet God and hear him say, 'You've done well- not, 'you're well done.'"

Then it was over and Ron Sims had won. Why do we say that? Because it he was righteous and eloquent and passionate and we agree with him. No minds were changed tonight. Everyone got what they wanted, except Hutch, perhaps, who wanted to win some souls to Christ.

Stranger reporter, Erica C. Barnett was in the audience and put it better than we could, "It was like they were yelling at each other in different languages."