Thompson then spoke of dealing with the bullying and encourages viewers that “it is okay to be who you are.”
GA Voice spoke with Thompson earlier this month about being out in south Georgia and his life on reality TV. The story has since become one of the most read stories on our website this year. Media outlets from Huffington Post to US Weekly sourced the interview.
In the interview, Thompson spoke of his struggle to be accepted in the rural South:
If you want people to accept you, you have to show you don’t have a problem with yourself and just be up front about who you are. If you do, you earn people’s respect. If everybody would just go on and do that, ignorant people couldn’t cause so many problems. I know this is how I was born and I don’t need to explain it to anybody. I live my life for who I am. That’s why ‘Born This Way’ is gonna be my next tattoo.
Thompson called himself “as redneck as I can get” explained why he and his husband choose to remain in rural areas, despite less acceptance:
Things are changing. My husband and I live in Milledgeville because we want to be out in the country. I’m gay, but I’m as redneck as I can get, and we want to be somewhere we can fish and jump on a four-wheeler, go hog wallowing. There’s probably 40 or 50 of us — gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transgendered people — around here, they’re all open about it, everybody knows it.