The 'Country Queers' Who Don't Want to Flee Rural America

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4.6 • 8.7K Ratings

🗓️ 23 June 2022

⏱️ 16 minutes

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Summary

All across the country this month, people are celebrating queer and trans pride with parades, cookouts, dances, and family gatherings. And yet the future of the community feels darker than it has in a long time. Threats from Proud Boys and elected officials seem to reinforce the idea that LGBT people cannot survive or thrive in places outside a few coastal cities. But a study from the Movement Advancement Project in 2019 revealed that at least 3 million queer people live in rural America. And many have no interest in fleeing to big cities for protection. This week, Annalee Newitz sits in for Brooke, and talks to Rae Garringer about their oral history project, Country Queers. When Garringer was attending college in the early 2000s, the only queer rural representation they saw was in crime stories. Country Queers features LGBT people who are living in rural parts of the United States, in small towns and remote farms, and they’re often taking great joy in it.

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Annalee Nuit, and I'm co-hosting this week's show with Brook Gladstone.
0:05.2	All across the country this month, people are celebrating queer and trans pride.
0:09.8	We're having parades, cookouts, dances, family gatherings, and drag queen story hours for
0:15.4	kids and libraries in schools.
0:17.9	It seems like the LGBT community has never been more visible.
0:22.3	And yet the future of this community feels darker than it has in a long time.
0:27.1	Across Florida, protests against the so-called Don't Say Gay Bill.
0:31.1	Officially, the parental rights in education bill, it prohibits classroom instruction
0:35.8	by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity in kindergarten
0:41.7	through third grade.
0:42.7	And across the nation and attack on the rights of transgender children.
0:47.0	Hundreds of anti-trans bills have been introduced in the past year.
0:50.6	Police arrested more than 30 members of a white nationalist group in Idaho.
0:55.6	Officers confronted the Patriot front group on Saturday.
1:00.2	Dozens were piled in the back of a moving truck.
1:03.5	Police say they were traveling to a pride event where they were hoping to set off a riot.
1:08.5	A lot of these attacks, whether they come from proud boys or elected officials, seem
1:13.6	to reinforce the idea that LGBT people cannot survive or thrive in places outside of few
1:20.1	coastal cities.
1:21.8	But this has never been true.
1:23.4	A study from the Movement Advancement Project in 2019 revealed that at least 3 million
1:28.9	queer people live in rural America, and they have no interest in fleeing to big cities
	...

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