Activist group plans billboards
featuring gay community members
By AP from wilmingtonstar.com on the Web, September 25, 2004
A activist group for gays plans to put up seven billboards next month featuring gays and lesbians in the Greensboro area to help fight prejudice.
Among those featured on the billboards, paid for by the Triad Equality Alliance, are Jeff Everette and Mike Barringer, partners of five years.
"We're everyday people just like everybody else," Everette said. "People need to know we're out there trying to make a living and working alongside them."
The ad includes their photographs and the words, "We are your neighbors ... and we are gay."
Two of the ads include gay parents with adopted children and read, "We are your neighbors ... and we are gay parents."
The billboards -- three in Greensboro, three in Winston-Salem and one in High Point
-- will remain in place through the month of October.
The Triad Equality Alliance is a charitable nonprofit organization founded this year by local activists.
The group's first project were billboards in Greensboro and Winston-Salem that featured the U.S. Constitution and the words, "Gay or Straight Americans deserve protection under the law."
The group now is raising money for a radio campaign, said Sean Cowart, a co-chair of the alliance.
"We think the most effective way of creating acceptance for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people is for people to get to know them," Cowart said.
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