Ads against intolerancel: can a multimillion-dollar media campaign based on Christian values break down antigay prejudice? Furniture king Mitchell Gold and some surprising allies are targeting the heartland with an unprecedented ad onslaught.

Brent Childers wants to wipe out homophobia because he believes that's the Christian thing to do. Raised as a Southern Baptist, he long believed that God "despised" gay men and lesbians. "I would be quick to condemn this wicked group of people with speech that dripped with sentiments of disdain and condemnation," says the 45-year-old heterosexual father of four who lives in Cajah's Mountain, N.C.

His conversion began three years ago when he was visiting family. "I launched into an assault on homosexuals," he says. "I recall one precious family member stating that she didn't agree with whatever I was saying. She didn't think my attitude when it came to homosexuals was very Christlike." That simple observation stopped Childers in his tracks, and he realized that "perhaps God was looking for less an ardent soldier and more a humble servant." His evolution was encouraged by a woman he began dating about the same time.

Today, he is working with gay furniture magnate Mitchell Gold on a groundbreaking project to reach out to people just like the conservative Christians he grew up with. By leveraging Americans' faith rather than scoffing at it, and reaching out to people where they five, Gold believes he can turn back the antigay tide that flows from many of the nation's pulpits.

And not "someday." Gold wants it done in 12 months.

"We're talking about over $10 million," Gold says, speaking in his office located off the massive production floor at the Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams furniture factory that employs more than 700 local folks in and around tiny Taylorsville, N.C. "This is not 'Let's spend a couple of hundred thousand dollars and let's see what happens.' Our attitude is that this is a one-year project. I want to change this country in one year."

Gold's putting his money where his mouth is: He's the campaign's largest contributor. With 2005 sales for his company topping $100 million--supplying its signature slipcover couches and a wide range of other furnishings to stores such as Pottery Barn, Crate and Barrel, Restoration Hardware, and Nordstrom--Gold can afford to dip into his personal coffers.

He won't give up the fight at the end of a year, of course, but it's clear he's tired of the long-term, incremental approach of many national gay rights groups--to which he has donated tens of thousands of dollars and which he continues to support. "If we don't do it in a year, that'll be OK," he says, "but what I don't believe in doing is having a five-year strategy with no accomplishments.

"I found that the mainstream organizations will tell me that they believe in this, will want me to give money, but in fact they haven't done very much," Gold continues. "I think a disservice has been done by most organizations to spend a lot of time spinning their accomplishments instead of laying out the true landscape that's out there." It's that landscape that Gold plans to blanket with his national media campaign under the banner of Faith in America (www.faithinamerica.com). The project, which launched on February 4, Gold's birthday, is targeting key areas of Middle America such as Ohio. Until at least early 2007, the campaign will buy hundreds of ads in dozens of newspapers and magazines, on the radio, and on TV. The project takes the virtue of faith for granted, hoping to use just the kind of "what would Jesus do" morality that converted Brent Childers to expose religion-based antigay bigotry as unchristian.

A chief tactic: Remind people of faith how women, people of color, and people of minority religions have been mistreated in the past in the name of religion. A chief ally: Jimmy Creech, a straight former United Methodist minister in Omaha who was defrocked in 1999 for performing same-sex unions.

Creech is now on Gold's payroll and is executive director of Faith in America. He is coordinating efforts with a variety of national activist groups: the Interfaith Alliance, the National Black Justice Coalition, Soulforce, the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, and Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays. (The group is also consulting with the Human Rights Campaign on its own faith outreach.)

"The Christian church has lost its integrity because of the hate that it promotes against LGBT people," Creech says. "You can't talk about the love of God on one hand and then teach that a particular group of people because of who they are and who they love are not acceptable."

Faith in America's saturation campaign to spread that message could cost nearly $16 million. "Our hope is that the ads will speak to those people who are using religious teachings to justify attitudes of intolerance and discrimination," says Childers, who's still deeply devout. "We hope the ads will prompt them to begin to question whether those religion-based attitudes are consistent with the core principles of all authentic religions."

He adds, "I felt it necessary for me to develop some concepts that would speak to Christians who hold attitudes I once held. It gives me a sickening feeling today to realize how my barbed words and attitudes in the past very well may have inflicted some very ugly wounds on the soul of some unsuspecting man, woman, boy, or girl--simply because their sexuality was different from my understanding and perception of sexuality."

Gold is more direct, believing that antigay attitudes rooted in faith are a primary obstacle to full equality. Not disgust with gay sexuality or secular ideals of heterosexual marriage and family, just the antigay pulpit. "We've got to put a stop to this," he says. "The only voice people down here hear about religious beliefs is that of James Dobson and Jerry Falwell. These folks very rarely hear the voice of [gay Episcopal bishop] Gene Robinson. You tend to believe what you hear."

Recognizing that people can only hear what's said in words and pictures they understand, the Faith in America campaign uses language and imagery from the fundamentalist playbook. Gold did not want an ad agency in New York or Los Angeles--places he calls "the bubble" where residents don't understand religious fundamentalists. He hired Brent Childers for a good reason: He wanted someone who knew how to get the attention of conservatives.

One print ad depicts a cross filled with photos of gay men and lesbians. The text reads, "Do you know someone who is homosexual? Would you give your life for that person? Christ did. Let's end religious-based discrimination now." In other words, Jesus Christ died for everyone, including LGBT Americans.

In another ad, a black-and-white picture shows members of the Ku Klux Klan burning a cross. It reads, "Remember a time when a symbol of love was used as a symbol of hate? Looking back, it's pretty sickening, isn't it?" A message in smaller type reads, in part, "Christ's message was a message of love and acceptance. The Bible shouldn't be used to justify discrimination against any group, including gay people. That's just wrong."

The Human Rights Campaign has declined to get directly involved with Gold's work. Harry Knox, director of HRC's Foundation Religion and Faith Program, sees virtue in the fragmentation of resources among many different groups trying different tactics to address the issue of faith-based discrimination--even though antigay groups such as Focus on the Family and the Christian Coalition present a united front.

"The right wing speaks monolithically because their only job is to collect and direct those who already agree with them," he says. 'They have had that luxury because very few progressive religious leaders have been speaking out up to now. The movable middle has been following them because they were the only ones leading."

Even while distancing HRC from the Faith in America campaign, Knox sounds the same battle cry as Gold. "As we engage thoughtful people of faith in the middle, we will need people speaking authentically from many different traditions, so folks in the middle will hear someone who sounds like them. They will follow leaders they understand toward greater inclusion."

But Gold isn't content with reaching the middle. He's determined to reach and reshape people of faith at the extremes, those who've never considered the impact of their churches' hard line against gay equality. And for Gold, time is of the essence: Chest pains on a business trip a year ago led to his discovery of serious arterial blockage around his heart. He could have died. Instead, he reexamined his life. Have I done enough for gay rights? he thought.

Spearheading a controversial campaign that may even rub some of his North Carolina employees the wrong way is a risk he's willing to take. "If I walked away from this whole thing and just ran my business and made a lot of money, I don't know if I could put my head on my pillow at night," he says.

Graham is a reporter at The Arizona Republic in Phoenix.