Twenty-five years ago, at the height of the AIDS crisis, the city council took one of the most controversial steps in Kansas City’s history. It added “sexual orientation” to the local Civil Rights Ordinance, barring discrimination against lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and people with HIV/AIDS.

Katheryn Shields, a council member then and now, sits down with longtime activists Jon D. Barnett, Lea Hopkins, and Kay Madden for a discussion of the three-year fight to adopt the measure and the social divide it exposed—a rift still felt today. Joining them is filmmaker Austin Williams, who shares footage of his upcoming documentary, The Ordinance Project, about the lead-up to and passage of the revised ordinance in June 1993.

Co-presented by the Gay and Lesbian Archive of Mid-America, Out Here Now: Kansas City LGBT Film Festival and the Kansas City Human Rights Commission Task Force on Gay and Lesbian Issues.