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Long Enough

Bob and Dale
20 years

We were first drawn to billboard projects such as TEA’s by learning about the work of the Alliance for Full Acceptance (AFFA) in South Carolina. Our friend, Linda Ketner, was instrumental in AFFA’s creation, and it is a model organization. Headquartered in Charleston—then and now a more politically conservative place—AFFA has over 475 donors and numerous programs. Beginning in 1999, AFFA began placing billboards in and around Charleston pointing out the fact that, yes, there are gay and lesbian people in that community! Their effort has evolved over time, but very importantly, AFFA has been successful in creating awareness and dialogue in an area where little had existed previously.

We have been very grateful to Judith Kobler , John Overfield and Mike Barringer for their leadership efforts in bringing similar projects to Greensboro. One of our favorite experiences involved the local billboard campaign with the headline “We are your neighbors—and we are gay.” We appeared in a wonderful photograph taken by Dave Milstead with our twin sons, Ryan and Owen. A few years before this, our family had been featured on the front page of the News & Record, and there had been quite a bit of hateful mail (mostly, we noticed, from the smaller towns surrounding Greensboro). We were not sure what to expect—we were going to be bigger than life on a billboard! At the time, the boys were relatively new students at New Garden FriendsSchool. While we knew the school was progressive, we didn’t know how progressive until we learned that their teachers had placed clippings of the story about our involvement in the billboard project on the class bulletin board. Our involvement in TEA’s work has been very affirming.

We hope that other communities will follow AFFA and TEA in creating awareness about something we’re certain of: LGBT individuals and families are in every community, and each should be valued.

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

Tea is part of EqualityNC Project,
a 501(c)(3) group.

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by Triad Equality Alliance