In Mississippi, you don't admit that you're gay. It's just an awkward thing down South, which is sad.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I feel like I can be myself in L.A. I feel like Mississippi is a little close-minded; not all of Mississippi is, but just the part that I came from. They really don't get outsiders.
I'm from the Mississippi delta originally.
Even though I'm from the Midwest, the majority of my life has been spent on the coasts where being gay wasn't really much of a conversation.
I went to college in Mississippi; I'm from Louisiana.
Only remember west of the Mississippi it's a little more look, see, act. A little less rationalize, comment, talk.
I see more genuine sociability between the races in Mississippi than I see in Michigan. No question.
Folks have a common misconception that Mississippi is strictly a rural, outdoors state. While we are famous for our hunting, sport fishing and year-round golf, we also have leading manufacturers like Peavey Electronics and Viking Range Corp.
Like a majority of Americans in recent years, I came to understand that fear of homosexuality was leading our governments - including the one I ran as Governor of Mississippi - to deny the equal rights to an entire segment of our population that are afforded all of us under the Constitution.
I didn't come east of the Mississippi for the first time in my life until I was 26 years of age, but I knew. I read magazines, I listened to radio, I watched television. I knew there was something out there, and I wanted a part of it.
Everybody in the South loves the one closeted homosexual who's married. It's just too funny to not have in a movie about the South. It's an epidemic. You gotta represent!