From Resistance to Recognition: The LGBTQ+ Movement in Orange County

ORANGE SLICES

By Laurie Paolicelli
Guest Columnist

In preparation for America’s 250th birthday on July 4, 2026, writer Valarie Schwartz—together with the Orange County Visitors Bureau—has been gathering stories that celebrate the many voices that shaped this place. Among them is one of courage, loss, resilience, and progress: the history of LGBTQ+ life in Chapel Hill and Orange County. It is a story rooted in the national struggle and defined by local action, activism, and community love.

The origins stretch back to the 1960s, when protests against the Vietnam War and support for civil rights and cultural liberation divided America. In 1969, the Stonewall uprising in New York City ignited a national Gay Rights Movement. Pride marches began in 1970, and a new phrase—“coming out of the closet”—entered public conversation and consciousness. For many, living openly risked losing employment, family, friends, and safety; even so, thousands stepped forward.

In the South, where social conservatism often shaped public policy, change was gradual. An important milestone was the creation, in 1974, of the Carolina Gay Association, now SAGA (the Sexuality and Gender Alliance) at UNC-Chapel Hill. It offered something not readily available elsewhere: a safe place to gather, breathe, and belong.

Two years later, in April 1976, Chapel Hill hosted the first Southeastern Gay Conference. The event was not merely a gathering, it was a declaration: LGBTQ Southerners refused to hide, and demanded the dignity afforded to us all.

Progress, though, was soon overtaken by unimaginable loss. When the AIDS epidemic exploded in the early 1980s, fear spread faster than information. Hospitals struggled to respond, families fractured, and funerals multiplied. At UNC Hospitals, 15 to 20 percent of admissions in 1985 were for AIDS. The crisis forged alliances and strengthened advocacy networks that would shape county policies for decades.

Joe Herzenberg

Leadership emerged. In 1987, Chapel Hill voters elected Joe Herzenberg to the Town Council, making him the first openly gay elected official in North Carolina. His win signaled both a cultural shift and political possibility. Herzenberg used his platform to champion civil liberties, environmental protections, public transit, and AIDS policy reform. In 1989, he wrote to the North Carolina Civil Liberties Union urging scrutiny of “coercive or discriminatory responses to AIDS,” insisting that compassion, not fear, guide public policy.

Community members heard that call to action. In 1990, the AIDS Services Agency of Orange County was founded to support people living with AIDS, with hopes of opening a family care home. The effort faced years of funding issues and neighborhood resistance. Yet advocates persisted, and with help from Congressman David Price in 1995 the home finally opened. That Christmas, neighborhood children arrived with a gingerbread house decorated with the address—a symbol of acceptance as sweet as any policy victory.

Former council member Karen Stegman reading the Chapel Hill Town Council proclamation in solidarity with Chapel Hill’s LGBTQ+ community in 2023.

For many, including a teenage boy watching from a living room in eastern North Carolina, these moments mattered. That boy was Mark Kleinschmidt.

“It was fall 1987, my senior year in high school,” he recalls. “I remember watching the local news when it was announced that Joe Herzenberg was the first homosexual elected to office in North Carolina.” In that instant, Chapel Hill became more than a college town to Mark. It became his future. “I felt called here,” Kleinschmidt said. “I knew I was going home.”

He enrolled at UNC, came out during his sophomore year—“very obviously and unapologetically”—and after teaching for five years, returned to earn a law degree. In 2009, Chapel Hill voters elected him mayor, a position he held until 2015. He also served on the legal team that successfully challenged North Carolina’s ban on marriage equality in 2014.

Former Carrboro Mayor Lydia Lavelle and former Chapel Hill Mayor Mark Kleinschmidt.

Since 2018, he has served as Orange County’s Ex Officio Judge of Probate and Clerk of Superior Court. But public service is not what it used to be.

“I’ve had death threats, threatening letters, people at the front door scaring my husband,” he says. “But the people of Orange County allow me to keep my job. I will do what I do boldly and proudly.”

Today, LGBTQ+ residents across Orange County live openly, raise families, serve in government, run businesses, teach classrooms, coach sports teams, and contribute to every facet of civic life. Portraits of leaders like Herzenerg now hang in public buildings. Pride flags wave from storefronts. Young people grow up knowing that love—not secrecy—is the norm.

Yet rights once won can be rolled back. Progress requires vigilance.

And so, we remember—not as a history lesson, but as a call to action: stand up, speak out, and protect one another, making sure that every person, in every generation, can live boldly, proudly, and without fear.

Former Carrboro Mayors, elected leaders, and LGBTQ leaders Damon Seils, Lydia Lavelle and Mike Nelson

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Laurie Paolicelli

Disclaimer: Published by Orange County’s Tourism Department through its Public Relations team, this story includes interviews and repurposed content from websites and partner press releases. For more, visit www.visitchapelhill.org or contact Laurie Paolicelli.

Laurie Paolicelli is executive director for the Chapel Hill/Orange County Visitors Bureau, a position she has held since 2005. Laurie has worked in tourism and marketing for twenty-five years, having served in leadership roles in Houston and California convention and visitor bureaus. She is a native of the Twin Ports of Duluth, MN/Superior Wisconsin. She holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Business and Communications from the University Wisconsin-Superior and graduate certification in Technology In Marketing from the UNC-Chapel Hill’s Hussman School of Journalism and Media. This reporter can be reached at Information@TheLocalReporter.press