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Billboards show gay community's 'everyday people'

9-25-04
By Tom Steadman Staff Writer
News & Record

GREENSBORO -- Seven billboards featuring local gays and lesbians will go up in the Triad in October in what an activist group says is an effort to educate the public and fight prejudice.

Among those featured on the billboards, paid for by the Triad Equality Alliance, are Jeff Everette and Mike Barringer, partners of five years.

They get up, eat breakfast, go to work and come home just like everybody else. A big night out is a movie or dinner at a favorite restaurant.

"We're everyday people just like everybody else," Everette said. "People need to know we're out there trying to make a living and working alongside them."

Barringer, 56, says it's natural for people to fear the unknown. "We'd like for people to lose some of their fear about what being gay is."

That's why Barringer, a chemist, and Everette, a 42-year-old real estate salesman, agreed to put their faces and their sexual preference on one of the billboards.

The ad includes their photographs and the words, "We are your neighbors … and we are gay." Two of the ads include gay parents with adopted children and read, "We are your neighbors … and we are gay parents."

The billboards -- three in Greensboro, three in Winston-Salem and one in High Point -- will remain in place through the month of October.

The Triad Equality Alliance is a charitable nonprofit organization founded this year by local activists with a self-stated mission of educating the public and eliminating prejudice over gender issues.

The group's first project, a billboard that featured the U.S. Constitution and the words, "Gay or Straight Americans deserve protection under the law," went up in April on Interstate 40 at the Sandy Ridge Road intersection and now stands at Battleground and Wendover avenues. An identical billboard stands at Stratford Road and Healy Drive in Winston-Salem.

Response to that billboard was overwhelmingly positive, said Judith Kobler, co-chair of the alliance, and prompted the group to raise $34,000 and expand its efforts with the seven new billboards.

The ads, produced by Dick & Dave Design, will be in place to celebrate National Coming Out Day on Oct. 11 and also are featured on the alliance's Web site, www.triadequality.org. The group now is raising funds for a radio campaign, said Sean Cowart, a Greensboro resident who serves as the other co-chair.

"We think the most effective way of creating acceptance for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people is for people to get to know them," Cowart said.

The billboard initiative was inspired by the Charleston, S.C.-based Alliance for Full Acceptance, a nonprofit that has run media campaigns -- including radio, television, billboards and direct-mailings -- in that city since 1998.

Linda Ketner, that group's founder, came to Greensboro last year as featured speaker at a meeting of the Triad Business and Professional Guild, a local networking group for gay and gay-friendly people. Ketner offered to help with any similar campaigns in Greensboro.

Then, in February, President Bush announced plans to push for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. Less than a month later, the Triad Equality Alliance was formed as a tool to educate and fight prejudice, its founders said.

"We hope to change minds," said Kobler, who lives in High Point.

Finding people willing to put their faces on the billboards wasn't a problem, said Kobler and Cowart, though they admit that it's a big step for many gay people to take, particularly in a conservative state.

"It was a big decision," said Cowart, who also appears on one of the billboards. "But the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community wants to do something to make a difference."

Everette and Barringer, the couple who appear on one of the billboards along with three other members of the gay community, said they aren't sure just what to expect by way of reaction.

"We'll see," said Barringer, a Salisbury native who attended Catawba College and UNCG. He was married for 25 years before coming out after his divorce 12 years ago. Barringer regrets the pain that caused his ex-wife and three grown children, he said, and is unsure how they will react to the billboard.

"Sometimes you just feel obligated to make a statement," he said.

Three years ago, Barringer and Everette traveled to Vermont, still the only state permitting gay unions, to be joined in a civil ceremony. Held in July beside a stream in a picturesque village, the ceremony was performed by a justice of the peace.

"I'd like to be able one day to have a real marriage here," said Everette, a Greensboro native.

Everette admits that he's more nervous than his partner about potential reaction to the billboard. When he was a teenager, Everette said, he was attacked outside a local nightclub by men wielding baseball bats. But he, too, thinks it's important to make a statement, Everette said. That's why his face is in the ad.

"We decided if they needed somebody, we would be available," he said.

copyright © 2004 News & Record
reprinted with permission

 
 

Triad Equality Alliance ● P.O. Box 19842 Greensboro, NC 27419 ●  info@triadequality.org

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