Big Idea: Gay-Friendly Spartanburg Guide

This idea came up thanks to a comment on the post about PlanetOut.com running a very brief, user-submitted guide — questionnaire really — about Spartanburg.

This prompted commenter “JG” to ask …

Should we have a gay friendly places flier or would that just be asking for trouble?

Trouble is always a possibility. It’s not hard to see how a business that supports gay rights could have bricks thrown through their windows, get anonymous threats, or even be very publicly boycotted. Heck, they might even get a letter of complaint sent to The Stroller.

But I think the potential good outweighs the possible bad here.

Imagine the impact of such a flier or brochure after, say, five years of being published. For the sake of argument, let’s say that the furor of the hard-core religious right would have calmed down. Further, let’s say that more businesses would see the benefit of promoting themselves as open-minded — a place where you can be gay and not worry about someone harassing you for it. That’s really all we’re talking about with such a brochure or guide.

Wouldn’t more gay people would be visiting Spartanburg and putting money into the local economy? Wouldn’t those kinds of businesses attract customers who like spending their money at places that are non-judgmental? Wouldn’t those customers inspire more like-minded businesses, who, in turn, would bring more money into the area?

After all, as is pointed out by the PlanetOut guide, if you’re gay in this area of South Carolina, chances are you drive to Charlotte, Columbia, Atlanta or Asheville just to feel comfortable. Put that in dollars and cents for a moment: If there were openly gay-friendly places in Spartanburg, the money that’s currently going to those cities would instead be going to support local businesses, and all for basically saying “We don’t have a problem with gays.”

Such a guide would clearly be a valuable thing to have, don’t you think?

Of course, the will inevitably be fallout of some kind, mostly of people griping like they did before the Upstate Pride march. Someone has to be willing to take the initial punches. Someone has to step up and be the lightning rod for the gay-friendly — or just open-minded — businesses in the area.

Until they do, we will. The Spark will host an online guide to gay-friendly businesses in Spartanburg and Spartanburg County if someone else is willing to put in the time to compile such a list. What’s more, if a business is willing to put a little rainbow flag on their ad clearly denoting their status as such a place, we’ll give them a free web ad under the same terms of the Free Ad Initiative.

Of course, if the local business community would be willing to step up and take this on, all the better. The Spark is just one website, and we don’t actually have the money to even print such fliers.

What are your thoughts on the matter? Would it work? Are there more dangers than I realize? Is it worth the effort?