Although LGBTQ+ people have experienced increased acceptance and visibility over the past decade, the Southern U.S. continues to lag behind the rest of the country in terms of supporting LGBTQ+ people. Nevertheless, over a third of all queer people in the U.S. live in the Southeast.
Overall, the South is a unique geographic location—both in reality and in the national imagination. People continue to believe the region is uniformly closed-minded and conservative—religiously, politically and socially.
Many have written the South off as backwards and, therefore, given up hope for progressive change in this region of the country. This is also why the majority of media attention and research on queer lives is conducted in “urban enclaves,” which leads to a metro-normative narrative of queer life.
The 2019 Southern LGBTQ Health…
