Farm Living; Is It the Life for Us?

While my sixth novel Now I'm Here focuses on Joshua, a piano-playing prodigy and Queen fan, it also includes almost equal focus on his boyfriend David who is raised on a farm in southern Ohio in the 1970s to 1980s. While the town of Serene is fictional in my book, it's based on my own farming experience, and that of real gay farmers.

This Labor Day weekend, I'm thinking about the joys and struggles of contemporary LGBT people in rural areas, and the current insane political environment's effect on their livelihood.

According to a recent USA Today feature, nearly 4 million LGBT people live on U.S. farms and rural communities. This and other recent articles reflect the finding of a groundbreaking study by the Movement Advancement Project, Where We Call Home: LGBT People in Rural America.

“The report by the Movement Advancement Project puts a spotlight for the first time on a sizable segment of the 19 million LGBTQ people in the USA – or 4.5% of all adults and 10% of youths – who don’t congregate on the coasts or in major cities.

“Rarely do we see images of LGBTQ people in rural areas, and when we do, they are portrayed as the only one there and stick out like a sore thumb or a target of violence,” said Logan Casey, author of the report by MAP, a think tank that researches LGBTQ issues. “It’s a stereotype that’s not the case.”