Great write-up in today’s Seattle Times about the Stranger’s Sims v. Hutcherson debate tonight at Town Hall…

The Rev. Ken Hutcherson grew up in the segregated South, the illegitimate child of a poor Alabama family whose members rode in the back of the bus and drank from blacks-only water fountains.

King County Executive Ron Sims was raised in conservative Eastern Washington, marching alongside his parents for racial equality and enduring the kind of discrimination he has called searing.

Tonight at Town Hall Seattle, the two will confront each other over the issue of gay rights and whether the gay-rights movement parallels the civil-rights era of the 1960s that helped shape their lives.

Sponsored by the weekly alternative newspaper The Stranger, tonight’s debate comes amid an effort to recall gay-rights legislation narrowly passed by the Legislature last month… “We’ve interviewed both men several times,” said Josh Feit, The Stranger’s news editor. “They are dueling quotes smashed onto a page. We thought we’d bring them together to duke it out.”

The debate is at 7:30 PM, $5 at the door (to cover Town Hall’s expenses). Robert Mak from King 5 News is moderating.

UPDATE: Ahem. There seems to be come confusion about whose event this is—is it a Stranger thing happening at Town Hall, or a Town Hall thing being sponsored by The Stranger? It’s the former. After running piece after piece with dueling quotes from Sims and Hutcherson, we decided to challenge the two to meet in person and duke it out, and then called Town Hall and asked them to serve as the venue for the event.