On the other hand, the Panhandle's a bigger place than just SoWal alone, and for the most part, people tend to be pretty live and let live. Pensacola manages to be home to one of the most conservative Christian colleges in the country while at the same time, Pensacola Beach is one of the big gay beaches in the Southeast. The military towns near Eglin and Tyndall are pretty conservative on the surface, but those same conservatives have lived in a lot of different places in the world, and tend to be a lot more open-minded than you might first think. The military also seems to do a better job of squashing racism than the civilian world does a lot of the time. I seem like I know a lot more interracial military couples than interracial civilian couples. And then there are a ton of odd little high tech clusters in various places between Tallahassee and the state line.
As for the newspaper letters, I don't see them as particularly indicative of the average person here. They're pretty much the fringes on either side of any given issue.