The Maine course.

For more than four years, the Maine Speakout Project has had one goal: to have an ongoing conversation with Mainers about gay rights. The project has trained more than 300 volunteers throughout the state, including remote Aroostook County, to appear before groups to talk about gay issues. "We want to promote respect and understanding between persons of different sexual orientations," says Jonathan Lee, the group's executive director. Speakers have turned out for everything from meetings of local Kiwanis clubs to a gathering of women construction workers. While speakers occasionally meet with a hostile reception, Lee says the respect speakers pay to their audiences often opens up a dialogue where none existed. "We're very careful to create an atmosphere where people can feel free to ask questions they have not been to ask before," he says. The success of the project--Lee says it will address 200 groups in the next year--has led to efforts to create franchises elsewhere. So far, Speakout Projects have been set up in Arizona and Georgia, and Lee hopes other existing groups adopt the project's model. "We feel the approach is effective and could be done well in many places," he says.