LGBTers and Allies: How LGBT Friendly is your Community?

[HillWilliam]

16. Hey, Jas!! It depends on which "rural NC" you live in

Caswell is even more rural than the area around Rocky Mount. Hell, we didn't get DSL until 3 years ago. No cable available, so if you want to watch TV you have to have a "hillbilly sunflower" (aka a dish) in your yard.

Rob and I were really nervous about moving out to Caswell. We looked at houses in Stokes (Reddddddd! and Phoooooooobic!!) County, Rockingham County (ain' nothin' but the klan), Guilford (cool, but expensive to buy in), and Alamance County (klan and neo-nazis... nuh uh).

Then there's Caswell. After the "Klan War" (more like shootin' feuds), the klan got run out of Caswell on a rail. It's about half and half white and African American, with a few Mexicans thrown in for fun. It's blue, heavily Democratic, and pretty laid back. In five years there were only two people we ran into who said anything nasty about us and they weren't from Caswell Co. Folks up here are like, so?

When Rob and I celebrated our holy union (and pig-pickin'... girl, I serious LOL), my cousin who was to be my best lady (and shotgun toter... film at 11 [yes we had video of our shotgun wedding]) got lost and happened to run into a neighbor of mine who lives down the hill a way. He was like, "oh! I know them!! They're so nice. We love having them for neighbors. I can take to you their house. Just follow me!"

We hardly have contact with that fellow, but it meant a lot he was nice to my cousin and nice about us. We love living in Caswell and hold our neighbors in high regard. (Y'know Caswell went for Obama and Brad Miller )

I was raised in west Buncombe County. That's laid-back, friendly, always was. There's a reason LGBT's flocked to Asheville (A She-Ville, as Florida LGBT papers referred to it). It's no longer rural, not like it was, but it was its accepting attitude that encourage LGBTs to move there starting in the 90s.

I graduated high school in McDowell County, just the next over from Buncombe. You couldn't hire my dead body to set foot in that phobic, nut-religion-plagued hellhole again. Fuck a bunch of snake-handlers.

NC has always been schizophrenic like that. You almost have to specify "which" rural NC.