Country musician Chely Wright to open LGBT center in Kansas City, Missouri

BY HEATHER HOLLINGSWORTH, ASSOCIATED PRESS

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- When country musician Chely Wright was growing up in Kansas, she had no place she felt she could go for support as she struggled with her sexuality.

Now Wright is opening such a place in Kansas City. The 41-year-old whose hits include "Single White Female" and "Shut Up and Drive" will be there this weekend for the opening of LIKEME Lighthouse, a community center where lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people and their families and friends can meet up. The location was chosen, in part, because Wright grew up 40 miles away, in Wellsville, Kan.

"This just gives so much hope to these outlying areas, that your major metropolitan area has a gay and lesbian center," said Wright, who married LGBT activist Lauren Blitzer last summer. "That would have meant everything to me had I been a kid growing up in Wellsville, knowing that there is a beautiful facility in our major city, that that was OK.

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