Fairness ordinance in tiny town shouldn't be all that surprising, if you know the region, a native writes

The news that a tiny town in southeastern Kentucky passed a gay-rights ordinance shouldn't be as surprising as many news outlets made it out to be, if you know Appalachia and small towns, writes Ivy Brashear as she leaves her post at the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, publisher of The Rural Blog.

"Rural communities are often categorized as places where everyone knows everyone else, and in Vicco, that axiom is actually true," Brashear writes. "Knowing your neighbors on a first-name-basis, and having long-standing family and community connections, makes it much harder to cast a vote that directly discriminates against any one of them."

"They were looking out for and taking care of their neighbors because that’s the way life works in the mountains. You just take care of each other," writes Brashear, a native of Viper, eight miles from Vicco. We're proud to have had Ivy on our staff and to publish her piece, which you can read here.