Jane Richey's Ongoing Attacks Against Gays & Lesbians Are A Threat To Venango County's Future

Jane Richey is Station Manager of WAWN, a radio station based in Venango County that is part of the AFA radio network. (The AFA, American Family Association, is an anti-gay extremist organization based in Tupelo, MS.)


On "Looking Through The Community Window," a weekly WAWN production, Ms. Richey (pictured at right) has devoted several recent programs to the promotion of "ex-gay" mythology, giving airtime to dangerous crackpots such as Regina Griggs of PFOX who stirs fear and hatred by claiming, on-air, that people become gay as a result of childhood molestation.

As long as this type of extremism continues unchallenged by local civic, business, political and religious leaders, Venango County will be viewed as a narrow-minded backwater to avoid rather than in which to invest, and its GLBT residents will remain at-risk.

What will it take to overcome the silence?

And who in the area actually supports this type of programming?

Well, for starters, there's WAWN's sponsor, Lighthouse Ministries of Franklin, Inc. and its board of directors:

Pastor David Hampson, President
Jane Richey, V. President
Sheryl Clinefelter, Secretary
Jackie Cokain, Treasurer
Bill Burwell
Ray Hudson
Pastor David Parker
David McCoy
Lee M. Richey
Jim Clinefelter
Jim Pankratz
Diane Gramley