Southern Cities Split With States on Social Issues
By CAMPBELL ROBERTSON and RICHARD FAUSSET
APRIL 15, 2016
JACKSON, Miss. — It was not that long ago that Victoria Fortenberry figured she would mark her 18th birthday by getting on a bus and getting out of Mississippi. But here she was, blue-haired, tattooed and 19 years old, singing at a party for a new line of craft beer to a crowd that included her girlfriend.
Ms. Fortenberry came here to attend a Christian college and found a place where she could be unashamedly Southern and openly gay in a way not possible in her conservative suburban hometown, or even in the Jackson of a decade ago. And so: “At some point,” she said, “I decided I won’t just leave.”
Jackson may not register nationally as an outpost of bohemianism or urbane liberalism. But its city government, which is majority black and Democratic, refuses to fly the Confederate-themed state flag at municipal buildings, and this month voted unanimously to oppose a new state law that creates special legal protections for opponents of same-sex marriage. And it has a place for blue-haired singers — and their girlfriends ...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/16/us/southern-cities-move-past-states-on-liberal-social-issues.html?_r=0
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