Queer Reconciliation Across Landscapes: A Rural Inclusive Alternative to the Rights-First Approach to Queer Equity

Abstract

This report explores the multifaceted challenge of queer equity, recognizing its technical and adaptive dimensions. While the rights-first approach has made significant progress towards political equity by legally safeguarding queerness, the challenge of social equity for queer individuals remains unaddressed. As a result, the preference for political equity over social equity has spawned a backlash towards queer political rights leading to a countermobilization against queer political equity and rising rates of reported violence. With a specific focus on rural queer individuals, this report lays out an adaptive mediation process called Queer Reconciliation Across Landscapes (QuRAL), which aims to reshape perceptions of queer individuals. The ultimate objective of QuRAL is for participants to engage with members of their community across differences to build relationships and alleviate fears associated with rising queer political equity. The hope is that individuals carry this transformed mindset back to their own social circles and help contribute to the creation of inclusive environments where queer individuals are accepted.

Introduction

Over the past two decades, the United States has taken what can be called a rights-first approach to queer equity based upon the idea that “by legislating better conditions…for a certain group of individuals, public attitudes toward that group would also become more positive” (Wheaton 2022, 2). As this process has played out, public support for queer rights has indeed increased. For example, polling from the Pew Research Center and Gallup finds record levels of support for same-sex marriage (Gallup 2023; Pew Research Center 2023). However, support of queer political rights does not necessarily equate to queer social equity. For example, the Federal Bureau of Investigations has recently released hate crime reporting data for the year 2022. The data shows that reported hate crimes against queer individuals overall have sharply increased since 2020 and more than doubled for transgender individuals specifically since 2017 (Bump 2023; Federal Bureau of Investigation 2023). In addition to increasing reports of violence against queer people, across the United States over 400 ‘anti-transgender’ bills have been introduced in 2023 alone and bills like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s ‘Don’t Say Gay’ legislation have gained traction outside of Florida (Godwin and Boyer 2023; Shin, Kirkpatrick, and Branigin 2023; Trans Legislation Tracker 2023). One possible explanation for this paradox comes from research by Wheaton (2022), which shows that certain types of laws tend to elicit a backlash. Though a problem for the entire queer community, backlash to legal progress is especially salient for queers living in rural areas due to certain characteristics of rural life.

That reports of violence targeting the queer community and legislation aimed at restricting the rights of transgender individuals is on the rise, despite the acquisition of certain legal and political rights at the national and state level, suggests that more deliberate work needs to be done at the community level to increase social equality for queer individuals. Therefore, to address the gap that exists between queer political and social equality, as well as the gap that exists between the national and local levels, and to counter or prevent backlash against queer political rights and strengthen queer social equity in rural spaces, this project seeks to develop a bottom-up collaborative intracommunity adaptive mediation process called Queer Reconciliation Across Landscapes (QuRAL). QuRAL would bring together individuals from a single community for a series of mediated conversations aimed at building relationships across differences to reduce zero-sum thinking and increase ontological security for the entire community.

Legal Framework

An intuitive assumption about social policy is that by passing laws to protect or enfranchise certain groups of individuals, public attitudes towards those groups will become more positive (Böcker 2020; Wheaton 2022). This assumption has been a driving force behind the queer rights movement in the United States and other Western countries and can be described as a rights-first approach. However, this assumption may not be borne out by the research making a right-first approach insufficient for ensuring queer social equity.

One way to assess a rights-first approach is by measuring a country’s queer legal inclusiveness. Flores and Park (2018) identify decriminalization of homosexuality, open military service, employment non-discrimination protections, public accommodations protections, adoption rights for same-sex couples, legal marriage recognitions, and constitutional provisions ensuring sexual orientation non-discrimination as legal norms as representative of a society’s legal inclusiveness for queer individuals (7). When applied to the United States, we find that many of these legal norms have been conditionally met. Beginning with the United States Supreme Court ruling in Lawrence v. Texas (2003), which overturned state sodomy laws thereby decriminalizing homosexuality, to more recently the Respect for Marriage Act (2022), which enshrines same-sex marriage into federal law based on the Supreme Court’s opinion in Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), the queer rights movement in the United States has made significant progress (American Civil Liberties Union 2002; Supreme Court of the United States 2023; United States Department of Justice 2018).

At first glance, the United States appears to have a high level of queer legal inclusivity, but significant weaknesses remain. The United States has no explicit constitutional protections for queer individuals nor federal public accommodation protections. In fact, just this year the United States Supreme Court ruling in 303 Creative LLC. V. Elenis (2023) weakened public accommodation protections paving the way for businesses to discriminate against queer individuals in certain instances (Moore-Eissenberg 2023; Supreme Court of the United States, 2023). Further, of the anti-discrimination protections that exist at the federal level, most have been secured though court rulings interpreting mentions of ‘sex’ in other anti-discrimination laws to include both gender and sexual identity, while at the state and local level, they vary in both depth and breadth. For example, the Human Rights Campaign recently released its annual Municipality Equality Index, which measures the queer inclusivity of the laws and policies in over 500 U.S cities (Human Rights Campaign 2023b; Victor 2023). An analysis of the seven cities surveyed in Wyoming finds scores ranging from a low of 12 to a high of 89, out of 100 (Victor 2023). This illustrates that even if queer people live in a city or town that offers strong legal protections, they are not guaranteed those same protections traveling outside of their hometown.

Despite the amount of progress towards queer political equity since 2003, queer people continue to struggle with social equity as evidenced by an increase in reported hate crimes and the proliferation of proposed anti-queer legislation (Bump 2023; Federal Bureau of Investigation 2023; Mazzei 2022; Trans Legislation Tracker 2023). Though many believe that laws can change public attitudes, research suggests that this assumption is incorrect. Böcker (2020) finds that if laws, anti-discrimination laws specifically, do change attitudes, they “can do so only indirectly, by changing the situations in which attitudes and beliefs are formed” (33). This understanding suggests that anti-discrimination laws do not change the minds of people directly, but instead change the environment in which opinions are formed, indirectly influencing future generations. However, Böcker (2020) also finds that while laws on their own have little effect on public opinion, when political actors draw attention to certain laws this intervention can accelerate attitudinal shifts.

An additional attempt at answering whether laws influence public attitudes comes from research by Wheaton (2022). Instead of finding a neutral or positive connection between law and public attitudes, Wheaton (2022) finds that some laws produce a “persistent backlash” (42). The backlash effect is stronger in reaction to social laws, laws are perceived to be more expressive than functional, and in communities that are more ideologically homogeneous (Wheaton 2022). That the backlash occurs in response to the expressive nature of social laws in more homogenous communities suggests that individuals are responding to a perception that one’s own ideological preferences are threatened, a symptom of ontological insecurity (Carothers and O’Donohue 2019; Wheaton 2022). Some may imagine backlash as automatic, but this backlash is intentional and politically organized, like the efforts to pass anti-trans and ‘Don’t Say Gay’ laws targeting the queer community.

The rights-first approach to queer equity has been successful at guaranteeing specifical legal rights and protections for queer people over the past two decades. However, because social policy has no positive effect on public attitudes and may in fact produce a backlash towards the associated minority group, social policy alone is not enough to ensure queer social equity, and since backlash is more common in homogenous communities, queer people in rural spaces are especially at risk.

Rural Queers

Within American culture there exists an idea that queer individuals in rural areas should move to more urban areas to find acceptance. This concept, known as metronormativity, imagines the idea of queer people moving from rural to urban as a parallel for coming out of the closet (Johnson 2013). Relatedly, people in urban spaces tend to employ ‘rural’ as shorthand for a ‘backwards way of life’ and are often confounded by the existence of rural queerness (Gray, Johnson, and Gilley 2016). These two similar conceptualizations of queerness and rurality have the effect of minimizing the rural queer experience and excluding rural queer people from being considered by both mainstream queer and rural political thought (Gray, Johnson, and Gilley 2016).

Despite this minimization and exclusion, an estimated 2.9 to 3.8 million queer people live in rural areas and do so for the same reasons as anyone else: it is “where they were raised, where their families are, where they build their lives, or simply where they call home” (Movement Advancement Project 2019, iii). The denial of rural queer identities does not preclude queer people from the challenges that all people in rural spaces face, such as employment and economic security, housing and homelessness, and healthcare access; nor does it preclude them from the challenges that queer people face anywhere like discrimination, violence, and healthcare access (Movement Advancement Project 2019). However, four characteristics of rural life complicate the experiences of rural queer individuals in ways that they do not for cisgender heterosexual people: increased visibility, interconnected institutions, fewer alternatives, and geographic isolation (Movement Advancement Project 2019).

The first complicating characteristic of rural life is increased visibility. Rural areas have increased visibility because low population make differences more noticeable (Movement Advancement Project 2019). For many queer individuals this creates intense pressure to blend in or conceal their differences to avoid being outed; for others blending in is not an option because of certain traits they may possess that are discordant with their assumed gender or sexual identity. The process of coming out, whether by their own volition or by being outed without their consent, can have consequences for any queer person regardless of the type of community they live in. However, for queer people in rural areas the consequences associated with coming out can have ripple effects due to the second complicating characteristic of rural life (Movement Advancement Project 2019). Social institutions such as churches, schools, local businesses, and healthcare facilities tend to be interconnected (Movement Advancement Project 2019). Because of this interconnected nature, ostracization or rejection from one institution is more likely to result in rejection from other institutions. Further, because of the limited number of public spaces, coupled with geographic isolation, queer individuals are disconnected not only from alternative options but also from supportive resources or legal protections more often found in urban spaces (Human Rights Campaign 2023a; Movement Advancement Project 2019). 

Collaborative Framework

The limitations of the rights-first approach, the backlash to social policy rooted in ontological fear, and the characteristics that complicate rural life for queer individuals all suggest the need for an alternative to a top-down legal approach to queer equity. Without deemphasizing the necessity for legal protections for queer people, and by recognizing communities as complex adaptive systems, an alternative approach to queer equity would take into consideration the needs of an entire community and from the bottom up build queer equity by building relationships across differences, separating people from problems, and focusing on positions rather than issues (Fisher, Ury, and Patton [1981] 2011; Esterle, Kopell, and Strand 2020). The hope is that by building relationships within a community, individuals can become more familiar with queer lifestyles and alleviate the ontological fear that individuals may experience in response to queer political and social equity. This collaborative intracommunity adaptive mediation process, or Queer Reconciliation Across Landscapes (QuRAL), would bring individuals with oppositional and supportive attitudes towards the queer community together for mediated conversations aimed at building and strengthening queer social equity.

QuRAL is envisioned as a five-week adaptive mediation program that is intentionally structured to be flexible so that it can better adapt to the specific context and community in which it is being utilized. Each week participants will engage with a topic related to common social institutions: the individual, family, health, work, and faith. Recognizing that “adaptive mediation consists of local ownership and external facilitation,” QuRAL’s first goal is to fit the needs of the individuals employing it (de Coning, Muto, and Saraiva 2022, vi). A flexible structure does not mean no structure, however. QuRAL is structured through two guiding principles: relationships are foundational and connections across differences are powerful (Civity 2023; Fisher, Ury, and Patton [1981] 2011). Further, by borrowing from methods described in conflict resolution and management literature, such as separating people from problems, focusing on issues rather than positions, as well as narrative and visual storytelling, QuRAL’s flexibility allows participants themselves to identify the differences, problems, issues, and stories that are important in their community (Civity 2023; Essential Partners 2022; Fisher, Ury, and Patton [1981] 2011; Sandercock 2003).

The QuRAL adaptive mediation program is a tool for individuals looking for help to resolve tensions that exist within an institution or community. Though the program is facilitated by an outsider from the community, the role of the facilitator is simply to keep the conversations on-topic and respectful, leaving all decision making in the hands of the participants. When making decisions, rather than seeking majority approval the facilitator will encourage consensus-based agreements with conditional unanimity. The preference for a consensus over a majority is because the latter creates winners and losers which can create tension in decision-making processes (The Consensus Council 2018). Even when supermajorities are used, majority approval leaves some individuals are left feeling as if their opinions are insignificant. In the context of queer mediation in rural communities, the queer members of the community are very likely in the minority. Therefore, in a majority rule situation, the needs of the queer participants are more likely to be overruled. For the sake of inclusivity of all participants, QuRAL seeks conditional unanimity consensus and allows participants to rank their approval on a scale from one to five, where one signals agreement, three signals agreement with reservation, and five indicates disagreement (The Consensus Council 2018; Wyoming Public Lands Initiative 2017). This allows participants to move beyond a binary expression of approval and better represents group attitudes by capturing the nuances between yes and no while including all participant opinions. Further, consensus-based decision making makes acceptance more likely, because “[p]eople are more likely to implement decisions they accept” (The Consensus Council 2018; 3).

The purpose and structure of QuRAL resembles a truth and reconciliation process. One such example is the Vermont Truth and Reconciliation Commission (VTRC). Their mission is to “seek collective liberation from violence and discrimination systemically perpetrated by the State of Vermont by uplifting community voices through storytelling, researching and community relationships, and recommendations for implementation” (State of Vermont 2023). Although QuRAL may not be as formally structured as the VTRC, which has the legal backing of the Vermont state legislature, its mission statement similarly emphasizes the desire to reduce violence and discrimination and the significance of storytelling, community involvement, and building relationships.

Concluding Remarks

Upon reflection of the challenge that is queer equity, one recognizes that it, like most challenges, consists of both technical and adaptive aspects, with technical aspects requiring technical solutions and adaptive aspects requiring adaptive solutions (How to Dialogue 2021). And over the past twenty years, the rights-first approach has addressed the technical aspects of queer equity by legalizing queerness and penalizing mistreatment of queer people in many situations.  Despite these positive steps, the adaptive challenge of incorporating queer individuals into the environments in which they exist as been neglected, resulting in a backlash rooted in ontological fear. The goal of QuRAL is to change the way people think about queer individuals. However, it is not expected that participants develop positive feelings towards queerness. What is expected, though, is that participants walk away with stronger relationships with other community members, a newfound openness to embracing differences, and without negative feelings towards queer individuals. The only hope is that and take that way of thinking back to the institutions they are members of and help create an environment in which queer people are accepted, no matter the landscape they exist in.

Appendix I

Key Terms. This project utilizes several words and terms that may be confusing or unfamiliar to some readers. For the sake of clarity, this section provides a definition and justification of terms that will frequently appear in this writing.

Queer. There exist many ways to identify lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning, intersex, asexual, 2-spirit individuals as a group. The acronym LGBTQIA2S is often shortened to LGBTQ, LGBT+, or simply LGBT. ‘Gay’ is also frequently used as an umbrella term. However, since the LGBTQIA2S community is a spectrum of sexual and gender identities, and because gay more specifically refers to male sexual identities, many people view it as exclusionary and patriarchal.

This project utilizes the word ‘queer’ to refer to the LGBTQIA2S community. Up until the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, queer was a descriptive term associated with words like ‘abnormal’, ‘strange’, or ‘weird’. Queer then became to be used a derogatory term to describe an individual attracted to members of the same sex and by the 1960s and ‘70s the LGBTQIA2S community had rejected the term. However, beginning in the 1990s, activists began to reclaim the term because it is “indeterminate and unstable” and therefore is more flexible and nuanced much like the spectrum of gender and sexual identities (Gray, Johnson, and Gilley 2016, 8). Further, because similarly disparaging ways that people use ‘queer’ and ‘rural’, this paper intentionally uses queer to remind readers of that similarity (Gray, Johnson, and Gilley 2016).

Rural. As a concept, ‘rural’ is difficult to define yet intuitively understood. One definition of rural comes from the United States Census Bureau. As summarized by the Movement Advancement Project (2019), for purposes of the U.S. Census a rural state is defined as “a state, where, in a majority of counties, a majority of people live in rural areas” (4). Interestingly, under this definition, Wyoming is not considered a rural state.

Regardless of the exact definition, it is the characteristics of rural spaces that are significant to this project. Rural spaces are often described as family oriented, close-knit, connected to the land, and self-reliant. Rural communities also tend to be more homogenous and have close ties to church, school, and local business (Movement Advancement Project 2019).

Social Law or Policy. Wheaton (2022) describes laws as having functional roles, such as “civil or criminal penalties which incentivize compliance” as well as expressive roles, such as “signal[ing] a society’s goals, norms and standards for acceptable behavior” (1). He further finds that laws tend to have varying degrees of functional and expressive roles, and describes social laws as being more expressive than functional (Wheaton 2022). When this text refers to social law or policy, it recognizes these laws and policies as having not only a functional purpose, but an expressive purpose as well.

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