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.
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