I grew up in Nashville. My parents met in grad school (UT Knoxville). Both worked at plants in Oak Ridge–the Oak Ridge that was part of the Manhattan Project, the Oak Ridge that competes with North Carolina’s Research Triangle for area with most PhD’s per capita in the US. (Both my parents have their doctorate in their respective fields. Both are Southern natives.)
In Oak Ridge, a store clerk can explain the difference between fission and fusion, something you don’t see in most of the US.

One of my first jobs was at a chain restaurant in Nashville. MTV had a show at the time, “IRS (records) The Cutting Edge.” Show producer wanted to take over the place on a Saturday. Store manager called corporate and got backing to refuse the demand; we’ll accomodate you earlier in the day, but you’re a TV show that won’t bring us as much money as our regular traffic. In Nashville, I learned that you don’t bother a camera crew because they’re working. Compare this to the hilljack “Look Ma!” BS you see on the Today Show…all those people from Ohio and other non-Southern states, all rubes like extras out of “Bye Bye Birdie.”

WSM–home of the Grand Ole Opry–had an FM station too. The first place I heard Joni Mitchell. And Split Enz. And Gil Scott Heron. Oh…but we’re all hicks in the South, dunno how that happened. I heard “Double Dutch Bus” on an AM station–a song that only one other white person in Cleveland, in 21 years, has indicated knowing at all. I saw Black Flag when Henry still had long hair, at a bar that used to be a Sonic.

So yeah, when I see a comment like Sarrellec’s, I do take umbrage, because it’s a blanket accusation that has NOTHING to do with my 20 years of living in the South. The rural South is a different universe than Nashville, or Atlanta, or Charlotte, and the gap is getting wider. The rural South has always embraced official measures as draconian as what Dick Cheney would have imposed if he were the official President, but note how he and Lynne both took great umbrage at anybody mentioning that their neo-con politics were a dagger aimed at their (self-hating) daughter. Anybody from the South could see Cheney’s rank BS hypocrisy; the rest of the country took their own stances, but much of the West is fundamentally the same as the South, at least culturally. You maintain the facade, even though it has nothing to do with reality, and you do that for continuity.

And in that respect, the rural South is perhaps more like Republican Arizona–I hate them damn Mexicans, but I won’t pay more than $20 for my (Colorado-irrigated) lawn to be cut. I’m from San Diego, and I expect a Big Mac to cost the same here as it did back by the Naval base in Jacksonville. Germany which denies no-strings-attached citizenship by birth. California and New York, built on fraudulent budgets and fraudulently selective taxation, which somehow run to the front of the line in bailouts. Yes, growing up in the South has taught me a great deal, not least giving me a machete to cut through the ignorance, pettiness, smugness and premature self-congratulation seen so often in the more “gay-friendly” parts of the world.

Guess I better go down to the river now. It’s time for my weekly bath, and I have to wear these overalls for a job interview this afternoon.

Not nearly as stupid as this blanket generalization of millions of people.

BTW, NC is one of the most beautiful states in terms of natural beauty. I love it up there in the Smokeys. I hope the people will show their beauty as well by not voting for this proposed amendment.

I love you, dear, but North Carolina is not revoking anybody’s rights because they never granted gay people the right to marry in the first place.

But I agree that bashing Southerners is not very productive. The South has produced some of our greatest cultural figures (though most of them had to leave the South in order to fulfill their talent), and in many places in the South queer people lead happy and fulfilled lives.