APRIL 24.2004 • Q-NOTES
Regional
Anti-gay billboards raise ire
from page 6
Hairspray is hopping with about 50 peo
ple. At the lesbian-oriented club, people
belt out karaoke songs under a disco ball,
while others play pool and smoke.
Working the front counter is Karvari
Ellingson, who moved here five years ago
and was surprised by the number of les
bians like her. People tell her there are
40,000 lesbians and she’s starting to
believe it.
“It’s easier picking out the straight peo
ple than counting all the gay people,” the
27-year-old says.
As she speaks, a lesbian known as
Mama Red — who is something of a local
celebrity — walks up. The billboards, she
says, caused her no angst.
“If the biggest thing they can do is a
billboard, that’s pretty weak.”
Soule, who says he didn’t know who
was behind the billboards, says he would
have declined the Leviticus sign as too
controversial.
If, however, someone asked for a bill
board urging people to read Leviticus, that
would have been fine, he says. One bill-
Greensboro's
iro-gay
lillboard
from page 1
and the threat to our right to equality by a
proposed constitutional amendment
spurred the formation of TEA (Triad
Equality Alliance).
The initial inspiration occurred during a
presentation last fall at the Triad Business
and Professional Guild by Linda Ketner,
president of South Carolina’s Alliance For
Full Acceptance (AFFA). Ketner offered to
share AFFA’s work with any LGBT group
willing to raise the necessary funds.
Assisted by Equality NC and encouraged
by the financial backing of numerous Triad
citizens — gay, lesbian and straight —
TEA is the first N.C. group to take up
Ketner’s challenge by beginning a program
to educate the general Triad public about
issues facing LGBT members of the com
munity. The group’s first effort is the
installation of a billboard where Business
1-40 and Bypass 1-40 merge just west of
Greensboro. Approximately 50,000 peo
ple each day will now see the message
“Gay or Straight... all Americans deserve
equal protection under the law.”
Efforts are currently under way to raise
funds to extend the initial 4-month bill
board contract through the November
elections, just as the billboard idea came
from AFFA, TEA also hopes to see it spread
across the state and the nation.
On Apr. 23, Ketner returned to
Greensboro for a presentation, during which
she introduced the full media effort — bill
boards, radio and TV — that AFFA has main
tained since 1998. TEA hopes to undertake
a similar media program in the Triad.
Inquiries regarding Ketner’s presentation
and/or TEA should be sent to the Triad
Equality Alliance at TEA@equalityNC.org.
board seen around Asheville shows a wide
cross and the words, “God loves you this
much. Repent & believe.”
Some churches make a point of wel
coming gay parishioners. One is the
Episcopal Cathedral of All Souls near
Biltmore. The church’s dean conducts
commitment ceremonies for gay couples,
and a few years ago the church kicked
out a member because of his antigay
rhetoric.
At some churches, pastors say they
agree with the Leviticus billboard’s intent
but not the approach.
Blount, pastor of Tried Stone
Missionary Baptist, says, ‘As Christians
we have to do it in a way that shows love,
not hatred, showing that it’s wrong, and
they need help with it.”
Paul Raybon, minister of education at
Beverly Hills Baptist Church, questions the
point of focusing on one passage.
“There are also Scriptures about not
wearing clothes that are a mixture of wool
and cotton,” he says. “There are all kinds of
laws for living; some are specific to that
time.”
Raybon says homosexuality is “outside
Christian teaching” and therefore a sin.
“But so is gossip,” he says. “We relate
with gossips all the time. 1 have a problem
with focusing on that as being the big bad
sin.”
This article previously appeared in the
Baltimore Sun.
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