Despite Tortured Past and Bible Belt Locale: Birmingham's LGBT Community Makes Gains (EDGE)

photo: Alabama Legislator Patricia Todd speaks to Birmingham's Gay Pride at the Historic Sloss Furnace (PHOTO JOHN SMALLWOOD)

Story by CODY LYON 

This simplistic view of the South by outsiders still raises the ire of local residents in Birmingham.

"People in Alabama don’t have a monopoly on prejudice and racism," said Gary Upton, an attorney and Executive Director of Equality Alabama, the state’s leading GLBT civil rights organization. "We certainly have struggled with it, and we have a tortured history because of it, but when people speak of Alabama with disdain, they are oftentimes speaking out of their own ignorance since many have never been here. And there are some pretty educated homophobes located outside the South."

Still, Birmingham is located in the heart of the socially conservative Bible Belt. In recent years here, shrill local politicians like former Alabama Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore and former Governor Fob James earned headlines by spewing anti-gay rhetoric, earning votes from Alabama’s well-organized conservative voting blocks. But rather than flee to more liberal turf like New York or California, a number of GLBT members have stepped up and are helping pave the way, slowly but surely, to a more inclusive and officially accepting society in the heart of the deep South.