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LGBT Turn Out at Democratic Convention

By Frank Morris

http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/kcur/local-kcur-751141.mp3

Denver, CO – Gays, Lesbians and transgendered people are represented like never before at this year's Democratic National Convention. That includes a strong showing from the Kansas and Missouri delegations. KCUR's Frank Morris reports from Denver.

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A lot of people here feel like they're taking part in something historic. There's the nominating of the first African American main stream political party candidate for president, and nearly nominating a woman, for the first time. This convention has also attracted the largest number of openly gay delegates in history almost 300 of them, with nine from Missouri. Sam Hodge is one of them. He's from Blue Springs. He says this election holds hopeful signs for everybody.

Sam Hodge: I think the lesson from this election is that there is nothing in anybody's background, poor or rich, white or black, gay or straight, prod or catholic, there are no issues that are going to be divisive enough to overrule the American spirit.

Hodge says he expects to see an openly gay major party presidential nominee in his lifetime.

 

I’ve been at KCUR almost 30 years, working partly for NPR and splitting my time between local and national reporting. I work to bring extra attention to people in the Midwest, my home state of Kansas and of course Kansas City. What I love about this job is having a license to talk to interesting people and then crafting radio stories around their voices. It’s a big responsibility to uphold the truth of those stories while condensing them for lots of other people listening to the radio, and I take it seriously. Email me at frank@kcur.org or find me on Twitter @FrankNewsman.
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