Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, September 8, 1995 TAG: 9509080060
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MIKE HUDSON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The group wanted billboards with rainbow colors and a two-word message: "Diversity Enriches." But Lamar Advertising said the message - or at least its connection to gays and lesbians - is too controversial and could have hurt its business.
Last year, the Committee for Lesbian and Gay Concerns rented seven billboards for one month with a similar message, "Celebrate Diversity." But when the committee went back to the company several weeks ago for a new series of boards, the answer was no.
"I think it's a censorship, and it has to do with prejudice," said Bo Chagnon, a committee member. "That doesn't mean that I think any particular individual is prejudiced. It could mean that the manager feels there is prejudice that will impinge upon" the company.
Keith Austin, Lamar's general manager in Roanoke, said he had heard critical comments about the billboards. Some people also complimented the billboards, he said, but there was enough criticism that the company decided against selling space to the committee again.
"It was just simply a business decision that we made that accepting this business was not in our best business interests," Austin said. "There's some obvious concerns any time you deal with a controversial subject. ... We just made a decision based on the feedback we had the last time."
He said he believes gays and lesbians are "not in the majority of sentiment" in the debate over the rights of homosexuals. "We try not to put anything on our boards that a majority of the community - or a large segment of the community - would find offensive," Austin said.
Lamar has rejected other ads in the past. Two years ago, it wouldn't sell space to the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union for ads urging people to boycott Goody's. Another billboard company did run that ad.
Lamar does take other types of controversial advertising, such as cigarette ads. President Clinton and other critics have accused cigarette makers of using advertisements to target children. Austin said Lamar limits ads for products that are illegal for sale to children to 20 percent of its billboard inventory and keeps them away from schools and churches.
The Committee for Lesbian and Gay Concerns, which includes both homosexuals and heterosexuals, bought billboard ads last year as an educational effort. The committee's chairman, Episcopal Bishop A. Heath Light, said the group wanted to get out the message that "we're not a monolithic community, we're a diverse community." The first ad was signed by "Gay and Straight Citizens of the Roanoke Valley."
The billboards drew some letters to the editor - pro and con - in The Roanoke Times and at least one act of vandalism. Someone spray-painted "Kill Fags" on one of the billboards in Salem.
Some people wrote to The Roanoke Times denouncing the vandalism and praising the billboards' original message. Heather B. Spiva called the spray-painting an ignorant, "low-mentality act" and said the people who did it needed to "get an education." Spiva, a heterosexual, said she supported "the diversity that makes this country as great as it is."
Other writers were offended by the committee's message, saying it was actually celebrating "deviant behavior." Most deplored the "Kill Fags" vandalism, but one writer, Betty S. Williams of Pearisburg, said, "I believe those who spray-painted the billboard had as much right to do that as those who put that type of information on the boards. It seems to me that there's too much tolerance for things like this."
Light said the community must continue to educate against all forms of prejudice. "We thought that racism was dead, and Mark Fuhrman showed it was alive and well."
But Light doesn't want to paint the disagreement with Lamar as a censorship issue. "They see it as a business issue," Light said. "I see it as an educational issue."
The committee still plans to distribute bumper stickers with the "Diversity Enriches" message. At a gay-pride celebration scheduled for Sunday afternoon in Wasena Park, it will put up a banner with the message "Lamar says No! to diversity."
by CNB