Gay marriage still social heresy in E. Ky county

SALYERSVILLE, Ky. – Tucked in the hills 100 miles east of Lexington, Magoffin County is best known for two things: Election fraud — a local lawyer once called it the "vote buying capital of the world" — and as the birthplace of pornographer Larry Flynt, who likes to joke that its biggest industry is jury duty.

But Magoffin is also home to 85 churches, many of the Pentecostal, Holiness and other fundamentalist Christian varieties. And that is probably why it enjoys another distinction as well.

Eleven years ago, when Kentucky voters approved a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, 94 percent of those who voted in Magoffin supported it, the highest percentage in any Kentucky county.

With the U.S. Supreme Court scheduled to hear arguments Tuesday in cases from Kentucky and three other states that will finally decide whether gays have a constitutional right to marry, a reporter and photographer visited Magoffin County last week to see if views had shifted.

In more than a dozen and a half interviews in and around the county seat of Salyersville, most expressed tolerance for gays and even for gay couples. But most said they continue to resolutely object to letting them marry.

"It's not the relationships that bother me," said Bertie K. Salyer, who recently retired as director of the county health department and previously taught at a community college. "It is calling them marriage."

Justin Williams, who pastors Lakeville Baptist Church and has organized a minister's coalition against vote fraud, said, "I know of homosexuals in Magoffin County and I would hope and pray they don't feel they're treated differently because of it."

But he says Magoffin sits in the "buckle of the Bible belt" and that most people — including even some nonbelievers — believe in the Old Testament's pronouncement that marriage is between a man and a woman.

At Straight Shooters Billiards, a man who would only identify himself by his nickname, Cheetah, gripped a wad of bills in one hand, gambled at a video machine with another and confided he's been divorced three times and once had sex with two women — simultaneously. But he said he thinks gay marriage is wrong.

"It's right there in the Bible," said the man, who is disabled and lives on what he calls his "crazy check."

In 2004, 4,519 residents voted for the amendment, which bars performing or recognizing gay marriages in Kentucky, and only 299, or 6 percent, voted against it. Statewide, 75 percent voted for the amendment and 25 percent against.

Statewide, opposition to gay marriage has dropped, to 50 percent last July and 57 percent in March, according to Bluegrass Polls. But Salyersville Mayor James Shepherd says he doubts many minds in Magoffin have changed.

"People here are pretty well set in their values and set in their ways," he said.

Miriam Silman, a transplanted New Yorker who moved to Kentucky 30 years ago and married into an old Magoffin family, said that while residents are "pretty tolerant" it doesn't translate into support for "civil rights."

Referring to one of the only gay couples who live openly in Salyersville, she said, "If people could vote on whether Mike and Jeff could marry, they probably would. But they oppose it as a matter of policy. They default to the party line — what they have heard in church."

In a quick interview before he pulled out of his driveway in an American flag-decorated sport utility vehicle, Mike Bailey, 49, a letter carrier, said most gays in Magoffin are still in the closet, though he said he and his partner of 25 years, Jeff Porter, are accepted by their neighbors.

Even if the Supreme Court legalizes gay marriage, though, he said he and Porter are unlikely to run to the county clerk's office to get a marriage license.

"Most people think we're already married anyway," he said, laughing.

At her family-owned trucking company, Salyer, the former health department head, said that as both a "sociologist and Christian," she is conflicted on gay marriage. As a trained professional, she said, she believes gays are born that way and that gay couples should have the same rights and benefits as opposite sex couples. But she says only couples wed in a religious ceremony — gay or straight — should be able to call themselves married.

She said her twin sons, Jimmy and John, 53, have staked out diametrically opposed views on gay marriage, like Kentucky brothers who went off to fight for different sides in the Civil War.

Sitting next to his brother in a trailer that serves as their office, Jimmy, who graduated from Morehead State University, said that in 27 years as a social worker for the Cabinet for Family and Children he saw "a significant number of couples in alternate lifestyles" who were "as committed to each other as Mother is to Dad." And he said they should have the same rights.

But John, who dropped out of college to run the family business, said, "I feel pretty strongly since I am straight and I am a Christian that marriage can only be between one woman and one man, and I believe that because my Bible tells me so. That is a union that I think is designed by God because the mechanics only work between a man and a woman."

He also said: "If just anybody can get married it will take away from my marriage."

On a pleasant spring day, Magoffin residents said they are focused on issues besides gay marriage, such as the recent flooding on the Licking River and County Judge-Executive Charles "Doc" Hardin's legal fight to stay in office after a circuit judge invalidated his 28-vote victory in last November's election, saying it was won through fraud and bribery. Hardin, a physician who was seeing patients in his clinic, declined to speak with a reporter about gay marriage — or anything else.

Vote fraud has been the county's scourge, along with poverty. A school superintendent once told The Herald-Leader that he could quit buying votes but that he would lose his job if he did and "they would get somebody in this job that will do it, and he'll keep the job because he does it."

Thirty-six percent of Magoffin's residents live below the poverty line, unemployment is 16.5 percent, and nearly 10 percent of the residents live on disability. One lawyer advertises that "when your working days are over, come see Grover."

Many residents who were interviewed, including the mayor, said they didn't know any gays. Others, like Garrett Ward, a retired mobile home transporter and pastor, say they find gay sex and gay marriage morally repugnant.

"The Bible says it's an abomination under God, and I want to go to heaven," Ward said. "I believe what God wrote is true — one man for one woman."

While Ward may represent the rule in Magoffin, there are exceptions like Jonathan Dyer and Garlena Workman.

Waiting for his next customer, Dyer, a third-generation barber, said, "Personally, I don't really care if gays marry gays. If they want to be miserable, they have that right."

Workman, a deputy sheriff who was guarding the front door of the Magoffin County Courthouse, said, "I think everybody should get to live their life as they please. To each his own."

She said she believes in the Bible "but it's their choice."

She said she probably thinks differently than most county residents because she lived in Florida for 21 years before returning home. And she said she has seen family members turn their backs on gay relatives. "That is wrong," she said.

Pastors say their flocks are unlikely to change their views, even if the Supreme Court rules for gay marriage.

"We do believe in obeying the law, but that doesn't mean we will respect the law," said Bishop Kennie Barker of the Unitarian Church of the Living, a Pentecostal church.

"Quite frankly," he added, "you are not going to get any full-blood Christian to accept it because we only accept the Lord's court."

Reporter Andrew Wolfson can be reached at (502) 582-7189

Vote on gay marriage ban

Here's how Kentucky and Magoffin and Jefferson counties voted on the gay-marriage ban in 2004:

Kentucky:

For: 1,222,125

Against: 417,997

Percent for: 75

Magoffin:

For: 4,519

Against: 299

Percent for: 94

Jefferson:

For: 199,099

Against: 125,525

Percent for: 61

Kentucky's gay marriage amendment

Only a marriage between one man and one woman shall be valid or recognized as a marriage in Kentucky. A legal status identical or substantially similar to that of marriage for unmarried individuals shall not be valid or recognized.