LGBT Drive Set for Three Southern States

Jay Reeves

Associated Press

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) – A national organization is launching a three-year, $8.5 million campaign to promote LGBT equality and push for new legal protections in three Southern states dominated by conservative politics and religion and known for resistance to change: Alabama, Arkansas and Mississippi.

Decades after groups used boycotts, marches, sit-ins, pickets and mass rallies to end legalized racial segregation and push for equal protection for blacks, the Washington-based Human Rights Campaign is planning a new kind of civil rights movement. It’s one based on using chats and front-porch visits between relatives and friends to foster an environment more welcoming toward people of all sexual orientations.

The idea is simple, and it’s borne out in polls: People are less likely to oppose expanded rights and acceptance if they know and care for someone who’s gay. Activists hope that’s particularly true in a region that values hospitality.

The Human Rights Campaign – which calls itself the nation’s largest civil rights organization working for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equality – plans to open offices in each state and staff them with 20 people total, primarily residents.

Workers will meet with friends, allies, neighbors, business executives, faith leaders and community groups in an attempt to increase acceptance of LGBT people. The project is called “Project One America.”

The aim is to first change hearts and minds so that people hiding their sexual orientation will be more comfortable about coming out publicly. As that occurs, organizers believe, communities and states will be more likely to adopt laws to prevent discrimination.

“You overcome all of the objections by having conversations and getting to know your neighbors,” Chad Griffin, an Arkansas native and president of Human Rights Campaign, said in an interview with The Associated Press.

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