Dustin Barnes

USA TODAY

JACKSON, Miss. — The nation's largest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender organization is setting up shop in the South, announcing plans to establish field offices in Alabama, Arkansas and Mississippi.

The Human Rights Campaign said the new $8.5 million campaign, called Project One America, is focusing on these states because they lack nondiscrimination protections for LGBT residents in the areas of employment and housing.

"The opportunities for progress couldn't be clearer, and the need couldn't be greater," said Brad Clark, director of the new initiative.

Joce Pritchett and her partner of 10 years, Carla Webb, are raising two children in Jackson, location of one of the new field offices. Pritchett carried the couple's two children, but Webb was the egg donor in both pregnancies.

"They're her biological children," Pritchett said, referring to Grace, 5, and Ethan, 20 months. "But in Mississippi, the laws are antiquated. According to them, I'm their birth mother. She has no legal rights."

In spite of the lack of legal protections, the couple has remained in the state because it's their home, Pritchett said.

"What I'm personally hoping (HRC Mississippi) will be able to do is help bridge part of the divide in the state," Pritchett said, pointing out that the diversity of the state's LGBT residents has resulted in fractures among the community.

Former Arkansas state legislator Kathy Webb said HRC's clout will have a large impact, particularly on residents in more rural parts of the same state where the organization's president, Chad Griffin, grew up. Griffin is the first Southerner to head the Washington-based group.

Having an established office and people on the ground working with Arkansas' LGBT residents can bring significant change, she said.

"Often people in the South have faced discriminatory laws," Kathy Webb said. "We're not at the place where other states are."

Serving as Arkansas' first openly gay legislator, Webb said her career is a testament to how minds can change.

Bryson Pickens, a longtime central Mississippi resident and transgender male, said he hopes the offices will bring more attention to the lack of resources to members of the transgender community in his state.

And though he's noticed the attitudes toward gay and lesbian Mississippians changing in the state, Pickens said the transgendered community still worries about the general population's close mindedness.

"A lot of transgendered people are afraid of coming out," he said. "This is an at-will state, and they're afraid of losing their jobs, their livelihoods."

The lack of legal protections for LGBT residents in the South also highlights the growing gap on these issues.

"Right now, this country is deeply divided into two Americas, one where LGBT equality is nearly a reality and the other where LGBT people lack the most fundamental measures of equal citizenship," Griffin said. "Project One America is an unparalleled effort to close that gap, and it opens up a bold, new chapter in the civil-rights movement of this generation. In this grand struggle for equality, we can't write off anyone, anywhere."

As Pickens said, "It shows that somebody's listening and cares what we're going through."

Dustin Barnes also reports for The (Jackson, Miss.) Clarion-Ledger.