How "Red America" is Becoming Queer Friendly

At times it is easy to get despondent in the face of the Trump/Pence regime war on LGBT rights and the continued alliance of Republicans with animus filled Christofascists. Yet, at the same time, progress is being made across the county in mid-sized and larger cities where LGBT non-discrimination protections are being enacted and LGBT acceptance is growing.  Sometimes the progress is in the most unlikely places: Jackson, Mississippi has more LGBT protections than Norfolk, Virginia.  A column in in the New York Times looks at the pleasant surprises happening in many parts of red America.  Here are some highlights:

In July 2017 — the same month that President Trump announced on Twitter that he would ban transgender troops — I left on a six-week-long road trip across the red states. I wanted to understand what motivated L.G.B.T. people to stay in the heartland at a time when some progressives were still pondering escaping to Canada.

What I learned on the way from Utah to Georgia only reaffirmed what I have come to believe over the past decade: Attitudes toward L.G.B.T. people are changing rapidly in conservative states, and no one inside the Beltway can stop it. This country’s bright queer future is already here, hiding where too few of us care to travel.

From a bird’s-eye perspective, it may not seem that life has changed for L.G.B.T. Americans in so-called flyover country. State laws prohibiting discrimination against them remain elusive in red states — although Utah notably passed one in 2015. But in their absence, midsize cities have become pockets of L.G.B.T. acceptance.

In the West, cities including Boise, Idaho; Salt Lake City; Bozeman, Mont.; and Laramie, Wyo., have passed L.G.B.T.-inclusive nondiscrimination ordinances in the past decade. Below the Mason-Dixon line, the list of cities with such laws includes Atlanta and New Orleans; Birmingham, Ala.; and Jackson, Miss. L.G.B.T. Texans have had to fend off all manner of horrific state-level bills, but if they live in Austin, Dallas, Plano or Fort Worth, they have solid local laws on their side. And Midwestern hubs like St. Louis and Omaha likewise offer L.G.B.T. protections.

A majority of Americans — in all but six states — now support same-sex marriage. Most support transgender military service. Most oppose businesses’ turning away L.G.B.T. customers in the name of religion. Public opinion on L.G.B.T. people is finally turning a corner, not just on the coasts but between them as well.

That shift is thanks in large part to the increasing proportion of Americans who identify as L.G.B.T. themselves. According to Gallup polling data, 4.5 percent of American adults now identify as L.G.B.T., which is a full percentage point higher than in 2012. Millennials may not be more likely to be L.G.B.T., but their increased willingness to come out of the closet is driving the community’s numbers up.

Queer people, simply put, are everywhere. . . . . As more millennials move to the South and West — and as more Americans all over the country come out as L.G.B.T. — cities like Louisville, Ky.; Norfolk, Va.; New Orleans; and Salt Lake City are all seeing huge spikes in the percentage of their residents who identify as L.G.B.T., as data from the Williams Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles, shows. At the same time, between 1990 and 2014, that same statistic stayed relatively static for longstanding hubs of gay culture like San Francisco and Los Angeles — and it even fell in New York City.

America’s queer center of gravity is moving toward the middle. Before we know it, this country will have become L.G.B.T.-friendly not from the outside in but from the inside out.

There are plenty of reasons for L.G.B.T. Americans to feel despondent right now. But hope is just down the road.