A lot of people have a super, super skewed idea of what rural towns in America are like.
I grew up on a farm two miles outside a town with less than 200 people. For a short while, there was a queer-owned coffee shop/art gallery on the main highway. It's where I spent the better part of an entire summer, just hanging out with my laptop. The owner would start experimenting with new drink ideas on slow days, and give me free ones in exchange for feedback.
"And he didn't get run out of town?!" Nah, because his mom owned a hair salon and did the hair of all the old ladies in town, and if they were jerks to her son, she would have stopped doing up their hair and they'd have had to drive half an hour into the city to find a new hairdresser.
My hometown isn't some bastion of progressive politics or anything, but like...it's not a two-dimensional caricature, either. I still live in the area. There are queer people. There are a lot of people of color, especially Black elders and Latinx immigrants. There are disabled folks. There's an entire group of found-family queer leftists who bought a farm together. I know of at least two pagan families, and multiple Jewish folks.
If you read "town of 200 people" and immediately assumed that all of them are white, Christian, cis, straight, able-bodied, republican landowners? You're extremely mistaken.
Rural America is more diverse than you think.
#*farquad pointing* NORTHERNER
I'm from Florida, actually, which you'll recognize as being pretty notably in the South.
The American South has the highest population of Black people in the entire country. The three states with the highest population of Black citizens are Texas, Georgia, and Florida. [x]
Texas and Florida are both listed in the top three US states with the highest populations of Hispanic/Latinx people. [x]
Texas is listed as the overall second-most ethnically diverse state in America. Out of the five least ethnically diverse states, three of them are Northern states--Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire. [x]
Six--SIX--of the world's top 50 largest Pride events happen in the American South--Houston, Atlanta, St. Petersburg, New Orleans, Charlotte, and Miami [x].
Florida and Texas are both listed in the top five US states with the highest percentage of queer & LGBT people [x].
Of the top five American states with the highest percentage of disabled people, four of them are in the South [x].
I could keep going.
