I grew up on a farm near Max Meadows and I can assure you had anyone around there known I was gay at the time, they would have done far worse to me (they *did* do far worse to a poor gay man who was known at the time) than to deface my ride.

Thank you Junior Henegar for rising above the baser aspects of the human spirit to embody compassion and justice. Thanks to all the vendors who helped. I am proud of the Commonwealth today.

It is a terrific story of the ongoing struggle for equality and respect by LGBT people and their straight friends and neighbors in generally politically conservative, smaller cities and towns of rural America. But it also illustrates how hard it is to understate the widespread ripple effect, just in the past three years+, of President Obama’s fierce LGBT civil rights advocacy

Consider the Obama Administration’s legislative pursuits, the president’s executive orders and his publicly stated personal support for marriage equality. As a byproduct of the president’s persistent LGBT equality advocacy, the Obama Administration has tacitly encouraged the many good straight folks of these more quiet, conservative areas to step out of their own closet of fear to take action. These good people are coming to the very public defense of their LGBT family members, friends, neighbors, co-workers and students.

That may be new milestone in American LGBT civil rights history, I think.

Let’s hope this story also spurs Radford University administrators to take serious action to prevent future anti-LGBT hate crimes and bullying on its campus. And let’s hope the Commonwealth’s legislators in Richmond– both Republican and Democrat– realize it is long past time to add LGBTs to Virginia’s existing hate crimes law.

Thanks to the Blade for continuing to cover LGBT rights progress in rural America.