A point about North Carolina

[womzilla]

The HuffPo article "Why You Shouldn't Boycott North Carolina" (over NC's shameful passage of Amendment 1 earlier this month) makes a lot of good points:

• Here in Orange County the marriage amendment lost, with 80 percent against it and 20 percent in favor of it. In Chapel Hill, where I serve as mayor, the amendment failed even more spectacularly: 86 percent to 14 percent.


• While winning eight out of hundred counties may not seem like much, it is important to recognize that the Great Eight ... are also home to what Americans love most about North Carolina. These counties include the cities of Asheville, Pittsboro, Cape Hatteras, Durham, Charlotte, Chapel Hill, Raleigh, and Boone.


• We need your support to convince the rest of North Carolina that these issues are important and that equality is the only solution.

All of these swirl around 2 larger points that the writer doesn't make explicitly:

1. North Carolina is very populous but is one of the least urbanized states--in terms of the percentage of the population who live in urban areas.
2. No state--not even Mississippi or Massachusetts--is completely "red" or "blue".

Minority rights in modern America isn't so much a Northern/Southern or Coastal/Inland issue as it is an urban/rural issue. I have a larger constellation of thoughts about that (broadly speaking, the more one has direct experience of people greatly unlike one's self, the more one is willing to treat them like human beings), and it's worth reminding ourselves of this dynamic.

Comments

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

You should especially, if you have any interest in its products at all, not boycott Replacements Limited (which sells silver, china, and glassware), a NC-based gay-owned firm which took a stand against the Amendment and has been suffering abuse thereby. One of the liberal bloggers brought up this NYT article about it. (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/26/business/replacements-limiteds-stand-for-gay-marriage-draws-repercussions.html?_r=2&pagewanted=1&ref=general&src=me)

[quility.livejournal.com]

I'm spent the last week in a 300 person town in rural Colorado. The people here have treated me quite well. They seemed to be good people. But the graduation included so many God/Jesus references I was shocked. I was venting about it and was reminded how little diversity they have had a chance to actually live with. Plus, there seemed to be more pressure to agree with neighbors... or not to stand out. Part of me wants to start a campaign of living in small towns and just being me + friendly + see if I change any minds. But frankly - I like being in an urban environment.

[nellorat.livejournal.com]

My guess, based on what little experience I have and memoirs and realistic fiction, is that rural people can be accepting of individuals without it actually changing their overall view: "they's queerboys, but they keep to themselves and run a good farm." If this is correct, I'd guess that real changes in thinking don't occur until there are a sufficient number of people being different to challenge categories of "normal" instead of being seen as "exceptions" to established categories.

I think we three are sometimes categorized as exceptions this way even by some of our urban (but conservative) friends. Other times, people do rethink some assumptions. It's disappointing that more people don't rethink more issues, but it's reassuring that the tendency of many people is to be nicer in practice than they are in theory.