Not a surprise for those of us who live here, of course, but good to see we get such deserved recognition.
And the online story about the LGBT-friendly communities used Maplewood's own Randy Rabney and Fran Lichtman as the lead.
The story states, in part:
When Randy Rabney and her wife, Fran Lichtman, decided it
was time to pack up their lives in Manhattan more than a decade ago,
they only had one New Jersey town on their list of possible destinations: Maplewood.
As native New Yorkers, Rabney said they drove to the town "to rule it out," never expecting to take the plunge into the New Jersey suburbs, but the couple quickly decided that's the place they wanted to raise their son, who was two and a half at the time.
"For us, what we were looking for was a community where we could truly be integrated into the fabric," Rabney said, a place where people would look at their son and say, "There's Zan," not, "There's that Jewish boy with two mothers."
For them, Rabney said, Maplewood — and neighboring South Orange — has been that community.
While the Garden State is not home to historic gay meccas like the Castro District in San Francisco or Chelsea in New York City, there are towns throughout the state that many describe as havens for LGBT — lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender — people and families. Though there has been considerable progress in recent years, LGBT issues are still at the forefront of political discourse, and gays don't necessarily feel comfortable in every community — even in one of the most diverse and left-learning states in the nation.
Towns like Maplewood, South Orange, other suburbs of New York City, some Jersey Shore communities and the state's second largest city, are particularly welcoming to the gay community and particularly progressive on issues affecting that community, residents and activists say.
Read the entire story HERE.
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