“Bob has been absolutely fearless in the face of that,” Mr. Spainhour said. “It’s a North Carolina that exists but that I don’t recognize. There are two North Carolinas: the progressive cities and college towns, and places where there are no openly gay people.”

Much the same could be said of America as a whole. Although recent polls suggest a majority of Americans favor legalizing gay marriage in their state, those who do are concentrated in the Northeast and on the West Coast. But even in those states most hostile to the idea, support for gay marriage has grown strongly over the last decade.

Most companies have traditionally tried to avoid taking positions on political and social issues. But corporate involvement in campaigns to support gay marriage has mirrored the shift in the nation’s attitudes, from nonexistent 10 years ago to some involvement by major companies in 2008, when Apple, American Apparel, Google and Levi Strauss publicly opposed California’s Proposition 8 to ban gay marriage (it passed). Last year, corporate support in New York was deemed critical to the Legislature’s passage of a law allowing gay marriage. This year, major corporations based in Washington State, led by Amazon, Starbucks and Microsoft, have publicly opposed an effort to repeal the state’s law permitting gay marriage, scheduled to take effect on June 7.

Mr. Page, 67, said he didn’t like politics and wasn’t “extreme,” or “in your face” about being gay. But, he added: “I just refuse to hide. I did that way too many years and it’s just not healthy.”

At the same time, he said: “I’m always concerned I will hurt our business. I know we have lost business. But I don’t have a board or shareholders I have to answer to. My life is not about money.”

Mr. Page drives a Ford Explorer with 146,000 miles on it and said he had never paid more than $10 for a shirt. His father was a tobacco farmer with a ninth-grade education and his family of six lived in three rooms with no indoor bathroom. He attended the Happy Home United Church of Christ with his family and earned a 10-year attendance pin. “I prayed that God would not make me this way,” he said. Mr. Page served two years in the Army and was the only member of his family to attend college, graduating from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

“I could not deal with being gay,” he said. “I didn’t know anyone who was gay. I never discussed how I felt with anybody straight through the Army. At one time, I hoped I would go to Vietnam and get killed. I contemplated suicide. I never felt I measured up to everybody else. Sometimes, I still feel that way.”