Daring to be gay in small town USA

Washington, D.C. residents Joe Wilson and Dean Hamer weren't expecting to become filmmakers when they placed an announcement of their wedding in Wilson's hometown newspaper. A similar announcement they had placed in the New York Times garnered only congratulations, but in Oil City, Pennsylvania, the reception to a same-sex wedding was not so warm. "It was a fascinating contrast," said Wilson, when the Oil City paper received angry letters instead of good wishes. Wilson went through high school closeted and had long felt unwelcome in his hometown, so the chilly reception to his happy news was no great surprise. Then Wilson received something that did surprise him: a letter from Kathy Springer, the mother of CJ, a gay Oil City teenager who had been harassed so badly in his public school that he had quit in favor of home schooling and barely left the house.