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Asheville anti-gay billboards
cause controversy
Reaction from city residents split
by Scott Calvert
ASHEVILLE, N.C. — The billboard
worker owed money he didn’t have, so he
found a way to erase his debt: He let his
creditor cover six billboards with a biblical
passage condemning homosexuality.
That deal backfired spectacularly, at
least for the employee. Billboards are meant
to be seen, after all. When sign company
executives saw them a few weeks ago, they
promptly fired the worker and papered over
the unauthorized messages.
But many people couldn’t get over the
sight of a half-dozen billboards in
Buncombe County coated with the Old
Testament words of Leviticus 20:13:
“If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth
with a woman, both of them have committed an
abomination; they shall surely be put to death;
their blood shall be put upon them."
Days after the message was erased, peoT
pie were still talking about the episode in
this vibrant mountain city of 70,000 in west
ern North Carolina. The billboards struck a
nerve that goes to the city’s identity.
Asheville is indisputably in the Bible
Belt, with church steeples rising from hills
and hollows. At the same time it has such
a large gay and lesbian population that
some local residents consider it the San
Francisco of the Appaiachians.
The rogue billboards prompted dozens of
angry calls, says Bobby Soule of Lamar
Advertising. Half were from people demand
ing to know why the passage was displayed.
The other half demanded to know why the
Bible’s words were taken down.
Soule says the current debate across the
country over gay marriage inflamed the
reaction here. “If I kept my voicemails,” he
says wearily, "you’d be shocked.”
That passionate response doesn’t sur
prise Tommy Kerr, author of “The
Underground Asheville Guidebook.”
“Asheville is very unique,” he says,
“i’ve lived in a lot of rural communities
that were conservative, right wing, i’ve
lived in communities that were the oppo
site. Very rarely have 1 lived in both at the
same time.
“I love that about Asheville,” he adds,
“it makes it a very interesting place to live.”
It’s not just the gay community that
sends conservative Christians looking to
Scripture. The area has a fair number of
New Age types, young hippies in dread
locks and self-professed Wiccans.
Never mind that to reach Asheville,
most people travel on a highway named
for evangelist Billy Graham and end up in
the city where the We Still Pray school
prayer movement began.
Kerr, who is not gay or especially reli
gious, thinks the mix works well most of
the time, thanks to a tradition of tolerance
that infuses the blue-tinged mountains.
A sense of independence here reaches
back at least to the late i 700s when
Scotch-lrish, German and other immigrant
groups settled the remote hills.
And after George Vanderbilt built his
Biltmore estate here in the 1890s. many
Asheville, N.C., continues to attract a
growing liberal population.
artisans stayed in town and produced the
Art Deco gems that give Asheville’s
restored downtown much of its charm.
One result, Kerr says, has been an atti
tude that generally accepts and appreci
ates creativity and differences of all sorts.
Yet the influential Southern Baptists loom
as a sort of check.
No one knows just how large the gay
community here is. Asheville has four gay
nightclubs and a lesbian-owned bookstore
downtown. Several inns on the city’s edge are
run by and cater to gay men and lesbians.
According to the 2000 Census, the city
ranked 14th nationally in the percentage of
same-sex couples among all couples. But
Michele Hayslett of the State Library of
North Carolina says solid numbers do not
exist because the census doesn’t track sex
ual orientation.
Whatever the number, there is agree
ment that the gay population is thriving
and growing more visible. The Rev. Alfred
E. Blount says it is more common now
than a few years ago to see same-sex cou
ples holding hands.
To’Allen Murray, who runs a gay sup
port group called Closer, that is a good
sign. “Two men can walk holding hands,
and nobody says anything about it,” he
says while he sets up for a dance.
Unlike New Orleans or Atlanta,
Asheville attracts many gay couples look
ing for a place to nest, he says. Even so, he
was not surprised to hear about the bill
boards. “They do it all the time, constantly
— Bible thumpers,” says the 48-year-old
Sears salesman.
Kevin Petty, a 33-year-old factory
worker, bristles with anger and frustration
when asked about the signs.
“How could anybody put up something
like that? I’m saddened because there are
stupid people in the world today,” he says.
Petty told his family that he was gay
three years ago, but he’s selective about
who he tells in Asheville, in Closer’s meet
ing hall, though, he feels free to vent about
the billboards.
“The Bible says not to judge another,”
he says. “Who are you to say I’m going to
hell, who I’m going to bed with.”
Near midnight on a Tuesday night. Club
see ANTl-GAYort 7