US: The Last Frontier for Gay Rights

Word spread fast through the county that fall. Comments streamed across Facebook and in the halls of the high school and through the pews of churches: There was a gay-straight alliance starting up at Alexander Central High. It would be known as the P.R.I.D.E. Club: People Respecting Individuality, Diversity and Equality. Its detailed acronym notwithstanding, theories about it swirled. There were rumors that the school would have “transgender restrooms,” or that a “homosexual-based curriculum” would be used in health and physical education classes. Some community members were upset about the school district’s lack of communication. A woman wrote in to the town newspaper: “It is heartbreakingly sad that our morals have come to this.”

P.R.I.D.E. Club posters were torn off the walls of the high school, which is home to 1,350 students. Club members laminated the posters to prevent defacement and took to taping them on all four sides like a picture frame, to make the ripping down just a little harder — tips they had learned from GLSEN, a national organization that promotes gay rights education. Underneath the main flier, they taped a smaller poster in case the first was torn down, and sometimes under that poster they put a sticky note imploring students to love, not hate. Three notes, they hoped, were better than one.

What was happening in Alexander County was a version of the debate unfolding in recent years in towns across the country, places where the laws have swiftly changed but deeply held beliefs have not. Today’s national conversation about gay rights often assumes that the battle for gay equality has been largely won; but in these conservative regions, far from the cities and coasts that are synonymous with gay culture, the LGBT community is still in the process of making its presence known, rendering visible what has long been hidden in plain sight.

Along with countless other rural communities, Alexander County is part of this next, and too-often-overlooked, frontier in the LGBT rights battle — with one twist that has thrown the usual tensions into starker relief: Few places in rural America have a Mitchell Gold, a gay rights activist who is also one of the most powerful men in town. Read more via Washington Post