Us & Them Revists West Virginia LGBTQ Community

On this West Virginia Morning, June is Gay Pride month across the U.S. and around the world. It’s a celebration of increased social acceptance and expanded legal rights for LGBTQ people. But Trey Kay, host of West Virginia Public Broadcasting’s show Us & Them, has learned that, despite all the change, there are still attitudes and even words that continue to cause pain.

Here’s a quote from an earlier episode called “Revisiting the Grand Palace,” where Trey owns up to the way he treated gay people when he was a teenager in Charleston.

“When I was in high school. Contempt for gay people was just part of the landscape,” he said. “My high school buddies and I used to drive by that bar Ted mentioned, the Grand Palace, the gay bar, and we’d yell ‘Faggot!’ out the car window.

“Most of my friends didn’t know it, but I went to that bar once.”

Preston County listener Mark Yozie heard that segment while driving in his car. He was angry and he let us know. Yozie, describes himself as a “proud, gay man living in the Mountain State”. In the latest episode of Us & Them, he and Trey met to talk things out. 

To hear the entire episode, tune in to West Virginia Public Broadcasting tonight at 8 p.m. and again on Saturday at 3 p.m.. And you can download the Us & Them podcast from iTunes, Stitcher, NPR One or Radio Public.

Also on today’s show, Tattoos are considered a cultural norm by some people. Medically safe and visibly attractive, many people who wear them refer to the tattoos as body art. 
But as Cheri Lawson of KPRN member station WEKU reports, it can be a very different story for people behind bars who have tattoos.

West Virginia Morning is a production of West Virginia Public Broadcasting which is solely responsible for its content.

Support for our news bureaus comes from West Virginia University, Concord University, and Shepherd University.