We've been talking about new and renewed efforts to win marriage equality in unlikely places. Just today, a friend back home in Mississippi sent me news that the Southern Equality folks are trying again, in Mississippi. Our homestate banned marriage for gay couples in 2004, with every county voting for the ban. Overall, 86 percent of the people said no then to marriage equality, the record for any anti-equality referendum in the nation.
But that was then. From Southern Equality's new video:
Sometimes when you're looking at bigotry and discrimination, you have to scratch at the surface a little bit, the way you an infection. Let it breathe to cure it.
LGBT folks live literally in every town across the South, and the solution to the discrimination we face is not for us to move. I get this all time: "Why don't you just move to New York, or Iowa, or Washington State?" Because it's cold. I don't want to live there.
What happens when real people say, "Enough. I'm not leaving, but I am standing up?"
In Mississippi, they're about to find out. Couples with Southern Equality ask for marriage licenses in local town halls; the next round of requests starts in Poplarville, population 2,800, on July 10. (Below, our segment about this from last night, including some -- butnot all! -- of the folks trying for marriage rights in Arkansas.)
