Introduction
You likely assume that finding safety and community as a queer person requires fleeing to expensive coastal enclaves. Mainstream culture often tells you that red states are intellectual and social deserts where queer survival is impossible.
Queer Americans build resilient communities and drive lasting social change by staying and organizing in red states rather than fleeing to coastal enclaves.
Samantha Allen challenges the urban migration narrative by driving across America's most conservative regions to meet the people who refuse to leave. You will travel through Georgia, Utah, Texas, Indiana, Mississippi, and back to the South to witness how local queer residents claim their rightful place at home.
- How do queer individuals survive and thrive in culturally hostile environments?
- What kind of grassroots networks emerge outside of major coastal cities?
- Can staying in a red state become a radical act of political resistance?
1. Seeing Red in Georgia
Coastal liberals often view red states as hostile and assume you must migrate to blue enclaves. Many LGBT individuals choose to stay and build resilient networks instead. Living under conservative political pressure fosters strong solidarity and forces activists to fight tooth and nail for basic protections.
Queer people in red states build powerful communities and fight harder for their rights because opposition is constantly in their faces.
Michael Shutt moved from Washington, D.C., to Georgia, where he became a pioneer by founding the first public-university LGBT student center at the University of Georgia and leading advocacy at Emory University.
Red State Resilience
You will find that 30 percent of LGBT adults live in the South. The region receives only about 8 percent of annual domestic LGBT funding. Data shows distinct demographic patterns across the country:
- 7 percent of millennials identify as LGBT according to the Public Religion Research Institute;
- 47 percent of the LGBT population now lives in states ranked low or below on LGBT policies by the Movement Advancement Project.
Progressive coastal states and cities are vulnerable to political complacency regarding LGBT rights because voters assume safety is guaranteed. In California in 2008, voters passed Proposition 8 to ban same-sex marriage due to low voter turnout and complacency in progressive strongholds like San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Hollywood. California made same-sex marriage illegal by a margin of 600,000 votes.
Institutional Transgender Advocacy
Dedicated institutional advocates in red states can secure groundbreaking healthcare coverage for transgender individuals faster than elite liberal institutions. Michael Shutt spearheaded efforts at Emory University to include mental health counseling, hormone therapy, and surgical benefits in student health insurance, allowing Samantha Allen to access necessary medical care.
The stakes for trans individuals are exceptionally high. The 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey revealed stark realities:
- 40 percent of respondents reported making a suicide attempt;
- 82 percent of respondents soberly considered suicide.
Electoral victories for openly LGBT candidates in conservative regions demonstrate that political progress happens on the ground during tough election cycles. On the night Donald Trump won the presidency, Sam Park became the first openly gay man elected to the Georgia General Assembly. Other red states also added LGBT lawmakers on the same night.
2. Prodigal Daughter in Utah
Places that are culturally rigid serve as formative crucibles where queer individuals and allies enact strategic local compromises for survival.
Places that are culturally rigid serve as formative crucibles where queer individuals and allies enact strategic local compromises for survival.
You find that locations filled with personal pain often shape queer individuals the most indelibly. Samantha Allen spent solitary weeks in Provo in 2007 hiding her defection from everyone, eating midnight meals at Denny's while living in Happy Valley.
Mormon Faith and Gender Identity
Some queer individuals maintain faith within unaccommodating institutions by finding spiritual refuge in nature. At the age of 23, Emmett Claren transitioned from female to male after completing a Mormon mission and chose to remain in the Church.
Emmett climbed Squaw Peak alone at night to listen to the wind and ask if God supported his transition, finding overwhelming peace. His father had married a former missionary in 1998.
Community Sanctuaries
Cultural rigidity produces severe crises when youth feel cut off from families. Utah faced a youth suicide crisis where suicide became the leading cause of death for children ages 10 to 17, accounting for 22 percent of all state suicide attempts. The state ranked eighth nationally for youth-suicide rate from 2012 to 2014.
Homelessness disproportionately affects queer youth in the region:
- 40 percent of homeless youth in Utah are LGBT;
- 60 percent of homeless youth in Utah come from Mormon homes.
Encircle operates out of an 1891 Victorian house in downtown Provo directly across the street from the Mormon Temple. It offers a safe space for youth like 19-year-old lesbian and bi-gender youth Jeannie, who became unhoused after her uncle called her a gay freak.
Strategic local compromises can alter statewide politics. In March 2015, Equality Utah director Troy Williams shook hands with Mormon apostles after Governor Gary Herbert signed Senate Bill 296 into law.
The law established landmark statewide non-discrimination protections for sexual orientation and gender identity in housing and employment while granting specific religious and institutional exemptions. In 2016, 88 percent of the Utah state legislature was Mormon, and 63 percent of the state population belonged to the Church.
3. Texas Outrageous
As transgender people gained mainstream cultural attention through media and public figures, conservative politicians and anti-LGBT hate groups shifted their focus from opposing same-sex marriage to targeting transgender individuals to raise funds and rally their base. Following nationwide legalization of same-sex marriage in 2015, anti-transgender bills filed in state legislatures more than double in number in 2016 compared to 2015. You witness how the transgender tipping point triggered a powerful political backlash.
Increased transgender visibility triggers intense political backlash, yet ordinary local communities and parental advocates create vital micro-environments for survival.
Restroom Precautions
Fear of assault and self-appointed vigilantes in public restrooms leads many transgender people to meticulously plan their stops, avoid food and water during travel, and practice extreme caution. Nearly a third of transgender people avoid food and water to use restrooms less frequently, according to the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey. You must adopt specific protective behaviors:
- Look for one- or two-stall restrooms in chain restaurants with moderate foot traffic.
- Avoid food and water during long trips to reduce the frequency of needing a public restroom.
- Enter and exit quickly without lingering at mirrors or hand dryers.
Legislative efforts to restrict restroom usage create severe psychological distress, directly correlating with a higher lifetime incidence of suicide attempts among transgender youth and students. A 2016 study in the Journal of Homosexuality linked denial of access to college bathrooms to increased lifetime suicide attempts among transgender adults. In Texas schools, 59 percent of transgender students face bans from using appropriate restrooms, and 75 percent do not feel safe at school.
Ordinary local community members often judge transgender leaders by their practical competence rather than their gender identity. Jess Herbst, the first openly transgender mayor in Texas history, found that the citizens of the 673-person town of New Hope cared much more about fixing rusty cars on lawns and local road paving than her gender transition. This occurred even though Collin County chose Trump over Clinton by a 56 to 39 percent margin.
Borderlands Activism
Parental advocacy and unconditional acceptance can create supportive micro-environments that shield transgender children from social hostility. When parents immediately validate a transgender child's pronouns and identity, young children adapt rapidly without losing peer relationships, while parents often become fierce political organizers known as Mama Bears. Amber Briggle invited Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to dinner at her home to meet her transgender son Max, who reached 9 years old after transitioning when he was nearly 7.
Queer organizing in the U.S.–Mexico borderlands intersects directly with immigrant rights, economic poverty, and intense militarization. Activists in South Texas navigate an environment shaped by heavy border patrol presence, high poverty rates, and traditional machismo culture, creating localized grassroots groups for mutual aid. Eduardo Martinez co-founded Aquí Estamos in May 2015 to fight wage theft, protect undocumented queer individuals, and host inclusive community events like the Queerceañera for the 1.3 million people living in the Rio Grande Valley, where 1 in 3 people live in poverty.
4. Boo-mington and Queer Spaces
Red-state college towns function as political resistance hubs where ephemeral queer spaces and intersectional networks sustain vulnerable individuals.
Queer world-making involves carving out cultural and physical spaces in a society structured around heteronormativity.
Social theorists Lauren Berlant and Michael Warner coined the term queer world-making in their famous 1998 essay Sex in Public. They address how queer people find and build spaces outside dominant heterosexual norms. Because official infrastructure is heteronormative, queer communities rely on slippery, mobile sites like bars, cafes, and drag shows that resist rigid mapping.
Samantha Allen utilized a brief email recommendation from Lauren Berlant to find Bloomington's underground queer spots, such as the Back Door bar and Rachael's Café.
Alfred Kinsey pioneered a continuum-based approach to human sexuality, rejecting rigid and discrete categories long before modern queer theory. Kinsey's research at Indiana University viewed human behavior as a continuum rather than fixed categories, creating the Kinsey Scale to measure sexual orientation from zero to six. This framework anticipated modern queer theory's rejection of black-and-white categorization. In 1947 the Kinsey Institute was founded, and in 1948 Kinsey published Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, earning him the title of father of the sexual revolution.
Samantha Allen won a fellowship to study at the Kinsey Institute in the summer of 2012, where she met her future wife, Corey.
Intersectionality in Oases
Red-state LGBT oases do not offer uniform safety, as systemic racism alters the experience of public queer life for people of color. Applying Kimberlé Crenshaw's theory of intersectionality, the text demonstrates that overlapping identities like race, class, and gender create simultaneous forms of oppression. White queer individuals may experience a red-state college town as safe, while queer people of color experience heightened anxiety and distinct safety risks.
Janae Cummings, the Black queer chair of Bloomington Pride, describes feeling apprehensive about holding hands in public even within the progressive enclave of Bloomington due to surrounding Confederate flags and racial dynamics.
Queer cultural spaces are inherently ephemeral and fragile, frequently appearing and disappearing like a game of Whac-A-Mole. Because of rising rents, shifting political climates, and economic precarity, queer businesses and cafes struggle to survive long-term. Despite this ephemerality, queer communities continually rebuild and map new reference points.
Rachael's Café in Bloomington closed down because rent became too high for owner Rachael Jones, transforming into a Chinese restaurant, though new spots like Hopscotch Coffee and the Back Door emerged.
5. Not the Family That You Are In
Queer survival and community thrive on deep friendships and chosen families rather than sheer population size or coastal urban hubs.
Love and close-knit networks of friends provide the true fuel for queer survival. You can build a fulfilling life in conservative areas like Tennessee despite hostile state laws.
The 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey showed that over a quarter of respondents reported a nuclear-family member ended their relationship after coming out. 1 in 10 experienced family violence, and 8 percent were kicked out.
The author formed a tight-knit chosen family in Johnson City, Tennessee, centered around friends like Jennifer Culp and Justin Mitchell.
Theory of Queer Friendship
Queerness disrupts heteronormative culture not merely through forbidden sexual acts, but through alternative ways of living centered on deep affection and friendship. Society becomes unsettled when individuals form intense bonds of camaraderie, tenderness, and fidelity outside traditional familial channels.
The author describes how her friendship with Jennifer Culp transformed through queer alchemy into an actual sisterhood that sustained her early transition.
Bisexual Visibility
Bisexual individuals make up the majority of the LGBTQ+ community but often remain invisible or perceived as straight because most have opposite-sex partners. Social pressures, fear of being accused of seeking attention, and domestic arrangements push many bisexual people back into the closet.
Jennifer Culp navigated years of making out with women while calling herself a straight girl obsessed with The L Word before publicly coming out as bisexual in an essay for The Establishment.
Data from the Williams Institute at UCLA shows that bisexual people comprise 1.8 percent of the total U.S. population, forming a slight majority of the LGBT community compared to 1.7 percent gay or lesbian. A 2013 Pew Research Center data set indicates that the overwhelming majority of bisexuals have opposite-sex partners. A study in the Archives of Sexual Behavior reported that 12.2 percent of millennial women experienced a same-sex sexual encounter.
6. Crossroads in Mississippi
Traveling through challenging political climates can induce fatigue and homesickness, tempting you to isolate yourself in motels. Adopting a daily mandate ensures continuous engagement with local queer communities. Samantha Allen and her partner Billy followed the motto "Something gay every day," which pushed them to visit WonderLust in Jackson, Mississippi, despite being tired after driving through torrential rain.
Isolated queer nightlife spots in conservative regions often foster cross-demographic unity rather than segregated cliques.
Because hostile political climates do not attract many alternative business owners, a single local nightclub becomes the central gathering hub for the entire diverse community. WonderLust serves as a welcoming venue where white and black, gay and straight, transgender and cisgender, young and old patrons comfortably share space.
Jesse Pandolfo barely broke even during WonderLust's first year, using grocery money for quarters, but kept it open because local youth and patrons depended on the safe space. Mississippi lost 4 percent of its millennial population between 2010 and 2017. 35 percent of the LGBT population in the country lives in the South. Bisexual individuals face significantly elevated statistical risks regarding depression, suicidal ideation, and victimization compared to other groups. Studies from Drexel University and the Journal of Adolescent Health showed that bisexual women experience the highest rates of suicidal ideation among female respondents. Each episode of LGBT victimization increases self-harm likelihood 2.5 times on average.
Community Infrastructure
State-level religious freedom legislation can legalize wide-ranging discrimination under the guise of sincerely held beliefs. Governor Phil Bryant signed House Bill 1523, also known as the Religious Liberty Accommodations Act, in Mississippi in 2016. Temica Morton organized Jackson's first Pride parade down State Street in Fondren in 2016 as an offshoot of her long-running Metro Reunion Weekend, which she had hosted for eleven years.
Southern Identity
Progressive activists in conservative states often choose to stay and fight for local change rather than fleeing to progressive havens. Tyler Edwards packed his car for a PhD program in Washington, D.C., but ultimately unpacked and stayed in Jackson to work for the Jackson Free Press and advocate for local change. Kayley Scruggs felt immense pride in her Mississippi roots, maintaining that the genuine kindness found there is difficult to replicate elsewhere.
U.S. News & World Report ranked Mississippi 46th out of 50 states for education, 48th for economy, 49th in infrastructure, and dead last in health care in 2017.
7. Going Home to Atlanta
Atlanta serves as a transient hub for newcomers yet harbors a deeply interconnected and unified local queer community. You find an unusually high degree of unity where transgender people were included right from the start of visible community organizing.
Regional grassroots activism, generational acceptance, and personal knowing drive lasting alliancing and liberation across the American South.
According to a 2015 estimate, 4.2 percent of metro Atlanta’s population is LGBT. As of the 2010 census, 54 percent of the population of the city of Atlanta was black. Meanwhile, 28.2 percent of homeless youth in the Atlanta metro area are LGBT.
Intersectionality and Representation
Charles Stephens runs the Counter Narrative Project in Atlanta, drawing inspiration from historic black gay writers like Marlon Riggs and Essex Hemphill. He founded the organization to reject narrow representations of black gay men that focus solely on HIV statistics. In the fall of 2017, 9.5 percent of the incoming class of Emory undergraduates was black.
Activist Dohyun Ahn works with Southerners on New Ground, known as SONG. Southern queer activism relies heavily on local grassroots legwork and resource pooling. National organizations direct few resources to the South, forcing local queer communities to band together and fund their own regional movements.
Financial disparities between groups remain vast:
- the Human Rights Campaign reported a revenue of over $36 million in 2015;
- SONG reported a total revenue of less than $750,000 in 2015.
Allies and Faith
Younger generations represent the most queer and accepting demographic in American history. In a 2016 Gallup poll, 7.3 percent of millennials identified as LGBT. A separate 2016 study showed that 48 percent of Gen Z teens said they are exclusively heterosexual. Seventy-four percent of U.S. millennials support same-sex marriage.
Institutional prejudice dissolves when people forge direct personal connections with LGBT individuals. Pastor Kyndall Rothaus of Lake Shore Baptist Church in Waco, Texas, voted to include LGBT members after studying scripture and befriending a fellow student who came out to her. At that church, 118 out of 140 attending members approved formal inclusion. Pew research shows that 87 percent of adults know a gay or lesbian person and 30 percent know a transgender person.
After driving forty-three hundred miles across America over six weeks, you realize your place is not to inhabit one corner of the country. For some transgender individuals, perpetual movement replaces traditional geographic permanence as a form of personal liberation and home. You traverse the country and bear witness to the lives of those who stay.
10 Key Ideas
- Queer Americans build resilient communities and drive lasting social change by staying and organizing in red states rather than fleeing to coastal enclaves.
- Places that are culturally rigid serve as formative crucibles where queer individuals and allies enact strategic local compromises for survival.
- Increased transgender visibility triggers intense political backlash, yet ordinary local communities and parental advocates create vital micro-environments for survival.
- Queer world-making involves carving out cultural and physical spaces in a society structured around heteronormativity.
- Queer survival and community thrive on deep friendships and chosen families rather than sheer population size or coastal urban hubs.
- Isolated queer nightlife spots in conservative regions often foster cross-demographic unity rather than segregated cliques.
- Regional grassroots activism, generational acceptance, and personal knowing drive lasting alliancing and liberation across the American South.
- Dedicated institutional advocates in red states can secure groundbreaking healthcare coverage for transgender individuals faster than elite liberal institutions.
- Red-state college towns function as political resistance hubs where ephemeral queer spaces and intersectional networks sustain vulnerable individuals.
- Institutional prejudice dissolves when people forge direct personal connections with LGBT individuals.