Subscribe to Breaking NewsWithers: Rural gay life in America
In April 2005, NPR had a piece called “Gay in the Heartland.” The reporter looked at the lives of rural gays and lesbians through the lens of her mother and friends. When I first heard the report I was a mess at the end. Blubbering in the coffee when a gay chorus nailed “My Old Kentucky Home.”
A cinematic look at the joys and struggles of what it means to be gay in small town America will be released soon. Joe Wilson, a native of Oil City, Pennsylvania, went to Canada and married his partner Dean Hamer. When they returned to the States, the couple put an announcement in the Oil City local paper. The hate mail came in of course, but a parent of a gay son contacted the couple; their new documentary “Out in the Silence” looks at the difficulties the mother and son faced with homophobia from their neighbors. The film will get a national release next year and will be previewed in Keystone State PBS stations.
As someone who made a conscious choice for city dwelling (all night diners and anonymity are hard to give up ), it would be easy to mock gays and lesbians from rural areas and ask why go through the hassle. That is the wrong question. If our identities are complex, contradictory things, then it makes perfect sense for gays to fight for the right to live and prosper in red states.
Ocenigma,
Thank you for saying “my partner and I” and for preserving a grammatically correct standard of English.
Me and my partner moved to the country 4 years ago. And this is Texas. We, however, have had a great experience. As soon as word got around we were a gay couple people started stopping by to meet us (out of curiosity I’m sure). Since then they have become very good friends. My partner does drag and believe it or not a few of the guys out here that found out that “the queers ain’t so bad” have actually gone to or participated in the show in male parts.
We have found a great accepting group of hetero friends in the area. Most of our neighbors attend our annual BBQ and Christmas parties and often just stop by to see how we are doing and to chat.
We must take ourselves to the rural areas and have a positive impact on these people so they realize we are not the enemy. In the last 2 years out here we have had 2 more gay couples and one lesbian couple move into the area.
Although big cities offer an easier sense of community and safety in numbers, the down side is that we are concentrating ourselves in a small number of legislative districts. Being out in small towns and rural communities means we are spreading our influence into the areas that need it and also creating a broader political base.
That scene with the farm looks nice. I compromise by living in the suburbs. Love my dead-ended quiet street with 2 adjacent dead ended streets and no rush hour traffic pouring through. I know my neighbors and don’t have constant strangers coming through.
No dusty, noisy, hard to park on traffic-choked city streets for me that never quiet down by 11 pm. And there is as nice hiker-biker path nearby and an occasional deer by the woods across the street from me. To me that is a far better treat than a diner open all night. The lofts, apartments, nightlife, shopping and dining in DC are enticing. But when I read about this guy (whose story I read somewhere else about his life in the city) who had so much loud city noise outside his windows that he now keeps them closed all the time, I knew that I had no desire to live in the middle of DC and I needed to keep living where I now am.
My partner and I built a home in a seaside town of 3,000 in central California. We were concerned how an interracial (Asian/White)gay couple would be received in an ocean of straights. In seven years we have yet to experience a single problem. Our first Christmas we sent out invitations to all our immediate neighbors for a hosted dinner and 18 of 20 came with apology from the other 2 they were going out of town. We started at 6PM and literally had to push some out the door at 11PM. When Prop 8 passed, several neighbors expressed their regret and said they voted “No” largely due to their interaction with us over the years. It’s been an affirming experience.
It may be a good strategy to center the fight in places like California, but telling LGBT people to move to cities is telling them that they don’t really have the right to be free except in those cities.
There were Prop 8 protests across the country after the decision came in. The people in rural areas were more than willing to stick their necks out for their fellows in Cali even when they couldn’t directly benefit. They deserve better than to be told to move, or that they are ignorant rednecks any time something happens.
Awesome. Thanks!
Nice close, btw
I grew up in the mid-west in smaller towns, I never had what I call a problem, but I have been called many names. You just get use to the abuse and ignore it. I am thick skinned because of it. Now I live near NYC and I find that the little things that set some of my friends off here, don’t bother me. My friends, who have grown up in the shadow of NYC, think that the “red” states are bad places, but the gay communities have carved out a niche that is all theirs and seldom are there any problems, just stay in the lines, LOL. I wouldn’t go back, but I am glad I was there. It made me the person I am today.