The Log Cabin Republican; New York Times, 9/28/13

Frank Bruni, New York Times; The Log Cabin Republican: "The university president, Karen Whitney, said that the warm reception she and her partner had received in their community had convinced her that a big part of progress in rural America depended on gays and lesbians showing up, sticking around, weaving themselves in. “People meet you and they don’t immediately change their stereotypes, but they do have to adjust,” she said. That’s what Fleck is hoping for and counting on, an adjustment. If it proves to be too much to ask and he’s defeated in the primary next May, he said he would nonetheless feel that he had accomplished something, noting that many closeted gay men in rural Pennsylvania had sought him out for counsel. He recalled one in particular. “I had a Mennonite drive two hours to my house to ask if I thought he could still go to heaven,” Fleck told me. Before last December, that man wouldn’t have known where to turn. He wouldn’t have found an ear and solace in an overgrown log cabin on Fleck Road."