The Courier-Journal (Louisville)
Ky. has more LGBTQ people than lawmakers think
Editors note: This op-ed has been updated to reflect the data correction from the Williams Institute released after the publication of the original.
Narrative theory explains that we mostly tell stories to understand the world. Some stories help, like the story that mothers will do anything to protect their kids. They give us something to look up to and be better for. Some harm, like the racist or sexist stories some tell. They give us ways to push others down. Most important, though, is that stories aren’t reality: they’re just building blocks for understanding it.
Let’s take the “story” of Kentuckians that many take for granted: unsophisticated, racist, and homophobic conservatives, small towns and backwoods filled with Pentecostals and Baptists. Let’s compare this to the typical story of Californians: LGBTQ activists, vegans, smug liberals.
When what we see agrees with our story, it’s confirmation.
When it disagrees, it’s an exception.
The Kentucky stereotypes don’t match reality
On Thursday, the Kentucky story was blown up by reality, as the UCLA’s William’s Institute released a study showing that, on average, 5.6% of Americans identify as LGBTQ, and fully 4.9% of Kentuckians do: That number is higher than some surrounding states and only within .2% of California’s average!
Statistically speaking, Kentucky is just as queer as California.
This has serious repercussions for how we need to move forward, for the stories we need to tell–because the popular story is not true. If you meet a random Kentuckian, they are almost as likely to be LGBTQ as Pentecostal (though they can be both). In fact, a given Kentuckian is more likely to be LGBTQ than Mainline Baptist, Episcopalian, Lutheran, and Presbyterian combined!
This matters. In the last few months, we saw anti-trans failed gubernatorial candidate Kelly Craft say that we “will not have transgenders [sic] in our school system.” We saw her running mate Max Wise sponsor the harshest anti-LGBTQ bill in the country, a bill limiting parents’ abilities to make decisions for their own children whose tactics all major medical groups state will cause increased depression, anxiety, and suicide. We saw Rep. Josh Calloway openly say the “LGBTQI+ community is a disease” and later team up with Sen. Lindsey Tichenor to share anti-LGBTQ hate speech against me, resulting in an onslaught of attacks and threats.
It’s easy for people like those listed above to engage in such vile attacks because of the stories we tell – that there aren’t enough LGBTQ in Kentucky to care – that we are a small number of people they can harass, insult and endanger because no one will stop them. We are, in the story that gets told, an easy sacrifice for any bigot to make.
Kentucky has more LGBTQ people than legislators will believe
I know how this story works well. When my cousin Jamie (also gay, also from a small, poor holler in Eastern Kentucky) was murdered in Louisville in 2009, Josh Schneider, the assistant commonwealth attorney, suggested the murder saw him as “the kind of guy no one would miss.” When you think of Kentuckians the way many of us do, then sure ... who cares what happens to a flamboyant gay man from the poorest part of Appalachia?
But thousands of us cared. We mourned him. We remembered him. We demanded justice. We received it. Reality did not match the story. The story of Josh Calloway, Lindsey Tichenor, Max Wise, Kelly Craft and other such people who harm LGBTQ Kentuckians does not match reality: real Kentuckians have always had queer neighbors, queer church members, queer colleagues, queer family, queer friends. Real Kentuckians overwhelmingly rejected Senate Bill 150, but Republicans passed it anyway. Real Kentuckians did not want Craft and Wise’s hateful rhetoric: they sent that message by choosing two decent people instead: Andy Beshear and Jacqueline Coleman.
Republicans aren’t the only ones who can learn right now. For far too long, many LGBTQ people and our allies in Kentucky have moved softly, assuming we are too few, not supported, not valued.
I say we’ve already won. We’ve already conquered the hatred of antiLGBTQ Kentuckians: we just need to see it. We need to run for office. We need to speak with confidence. We need to stand up and fight back confidently against the hatred being pushed by extremists in Kentucky who do not represent the good people of this state.
We need to remember that no one else writes our story. We do.
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