It’s currently Pride Month. Pride began as a celebration and chance to remember the Stonewall Uprising of 1969. New York was persecuting gay people and frequently criminalizing their activities and presence.(1) It was illegal to simply exist as a member of the LGBTQ+ community. Activists such as Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, Miss Major Griffin-Gracy, and many other patrons of The Stonewall Inn fought back against a violent police raid. Their actions helped reignite the modern gay rights movement in the United States. Pride was a celebration of LGBTQ voices, culture, and activism.
And there is LGBTQ+ history to learn, explore, and celebrate everywhere, including rural communities. This might not fit in the mainstream cultural image of LGBT individuals. Most popular media features the community living in cities or on coasts; the home base for the cast of Netflix’s hit show Queer Eye is a very high-class apartment with an ambiguous city backdrop. Yet an estimated three million or more LGBT+ people call rural America home despite the surge of anti-LGBTQ legislation threatening to chase them out; as of today, there are at least 520 anti-LGBT bills in the U.S.
Even Want to learn more? Here are a few projects that explore LGBTQIA2S+ folks living in rural, small-town, or country communities.
- CountryQueers, a multimedia oral history project.
- Han Powell’s Queer Florida: Speculative Southern Oral Histories.
- Where We Call Home
- Just Queer Folks: Gender and Sexuality in Rural America by Colin R. Johnson