Lgbtq

2023 - 1 - 6

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Image courtesy of "The New York Times"

Opinion | Want to Understand L.G.B.T.Q. Life in America? Come to ... (The New York Times)

I went to Alabama to understand what our country's anti-gay backlash looks like on the ground — and what it really means to fight back.

As I left Birmingham the next morning, I thought about the extraordinary people I had met and the fights they were waging for the lives of queer people in their communities. In Alabama, that spirit and the people who carry it refuse to give in to the backlash. It was held at an Arts and Crafts mansion in a fancy part of Birmingham, and all the grandees of the local gay community turned out in force. I am so fortunate to have lived in a time and place that permitted me to live my whole adult life out and to be proud of being a lesbian. As a candidate, Bill Clinton had courted the gay vote, but he ultimately triangulated his way to the Defense of Marriage Act and the abominable “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy in the military. It is clear that queer people will receive a frosty reception from the emboldened majority of the highest court in the land. I came here because the last time I was in Alabama, in 2017, I had one of the best nights of my life, at a gay bar with a bunch of queer people I had just met. For much of modern history in the United States, queerness had to be carefully hidden to avoid police harassment and violence. And so we have decriminalized gay sex, legalized gay marriage and allowed gay people to serve openly in the military. It is hard to explain how good it feels to walk into a queer space when you are a queer person in a strange place — the warm embrace and recognition of a shared experience, no matter how different our lives might be. Supreme Court decisions affirming the right to same-sex marriage seemed to have paved the way to mainstream acceptance of gays and lesbians. I traveled to Alabama last month to try to understand the state of queer America today, to try to understand this unsettling whiplash I’ve been feeling lately as a queer person.

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