WICHITA, Kansas - Thursday night, the Orpheum Theater will screen the movie Milk, which earned Sean Penn an Academy Award. He portrayed Harvey Milk, the city councilman slain in San Francisco after becoming a poster for gay rights. What may surprise some, is the role Wichita played in the movie.
It was the late 70's and gay Americans were facing their biggest challenge, a former pitch woman made famous by Florida oranges.
Anita Bryant and her Save Our Children organization had just worked to overturn a Cvil Rights ordinance in Miami-Dade County, which prevented discrimination against gays. Her next target would be Wichita, Kansas.
"If homosexuals were allowed their civil rights, then so would prostitutes, thieves, or anyone else," Bryant said back in 1977.
Wichita had just passed an ordinance in 1977 similar to the one in Miami. It would be an ordinance Bryant and some local pastors would challenge to a citywide vote.
"We knew that it wasn't going to be pretty," said Bruce McKinney a Wichita gay rights activist.
McKinney helped pass the original ordinance, and would find himself not only facing Bryant but a barrage of national media.
"Voters in Wichita, Kansas will go to the polls tomorrow to decide whether to repeal their law that bars discrimination against homosexuals," a broadcaster said during a network newscast in 1978.
Here locally, Wichitans were quickly choosing sides.
"How can we possibly have a law giving special rights to sex deviants without infringing on the rights of our children," said former Wichita pastor Ron Adrian in 1978.
Adrian encouraged his congregation to vote to repeal the ordinance, while the Catholic Church encouraged its members to vote to keep it. A similar stance followed by some city leaders.
"Thank God, we are not voting for Civil Rights for blacks, for Indians, for handicapped people, for aged people, because I am not sure how that vote would come out on the ballot next Tuesday either," former Wichita Mayor Connie Peters said in 1978.
Leading up to the vote, Wichita was a battle of opinions. It was church against church and neighbor against neighbor. However, in the spring of 1978 Wichitans would side with Bryant and vote to repeal one of the few Civil Rights ordinances in the country protecting gays.
"Just two hours after the polls closed, the church organization that sponsored the repeal effort celebrated victory," said an NBC news reporter in 1978.
The vote to repeal would be nearly 5-1.
"Wichita was the low point," McKinney said.
It was such a low point for supporters, the Wichita vote would spark protests in San Fransisco portrayed in the movie.
Back here at home, activists like McKinney would face the vote's real-life consequences.
"It was so bad, that I stopped going out," McKinney said. "I was so associated with it that I would get negative comments, I would get back-stabbing. It wasn't pretty. They didn't treat us very nice."
McKinney says he was evicted from his rental home, and that many of the people associated with the ordinance left town in a matter of weeks.
More than 30 years later, Wichita has never revisited that repealed Civil Rights ordinance. In 2005, Kansas voters overwhelmingly passed a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. To some, current day Wichita may not seem as progressive as Wichita of the 70's. However, for those who were here, they say Anita Bryant and her crusade may have done more good than harm.
"I think we opened up a conversation, and we haven't stopped talking," McKinney said.
A conversation put back in the spotlight thanks to the silver screen.
