“People think of big cities when they think about the LGBTQ community because it’s just more visible there,” said Barry Loveland, co-founder of the LGBT Center of Central PA History Project, explaining that it’s often easier to find and document the stories of queer urban pasts. “The more rural areas, like Central PA — when I started this project 13 years ago, nobody was telling those stories.”
“I felt overdue — that we needed to start a history project here,” he underlined. “The same is true around the country.”
Research conducted by the Movement Advancement Project shows that rural America is just as queer as the rest of the United States. LGBTQ+ people in rural regions make up at least 20% of the queer community. And that’s not new. But the narratives many LGBTQ+ people know about queer history don’t often include those voices.
“More historians who are getting into LGBTQ history need to look at these rural spaces, because they really are ripe for finding new history, new information that’s been undocumented and uncollected so far,” Loveland said.
“There are stories to be told because there were LGBTQ people in every community across the nation,” he emphasized. “Where there are people, there’s history and there’s stories to tell.”
Queer history is a part of American history that has often been hidden on purpose — and its links to rural life have been especially suppressed. But Loveland isn’t the only one seeking to uncover those connections.
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“There were efforts that unfolded over the course of the 20th century to really try to bring rural areas and small towns under the sway of a kind of national consensus of what middle-class American life should be,” Colin Johnson, a professor of gender studies and history at Indiana University, told the Daily Yonder in 2021. “And those efforts were very, very successful.”
Before that, other ways of being and of thinking about diversity weren’t uncommon in these smaller communities, he explained.
Notable frontier, heartland, and rural Southern stories of the 19th and 20th centuries show that sometimes tolerance and acceptance was part of the LGBTQ+ experience in rural America. LGBTQ+ people worked all kinds of jobs, participated in queer and activist communities, and weren’t always ostracized by family and friends in their tiny towns.
But Johnson said these stories were displaced in the 1950s, burying centuries of rural LGBTQ+ histories across the United States. LGBTQ+ people and issues were intentionally erased from mention, and as a result, became disregarded. Worse, midcentury campaigns to paint LGBTQ+ people as problematic, demonizing the queer community in narratives that eventually went mainstream.
LGBTQ+ people, especially the trans community, face a similar experience now — suddenly thrust into the media spotlight as scapegoats subjected to political attacks after living with less attention in preceding years.
Finding each other
LGBTQ+ activists were most visible in urban centers. Lobbying and awareness efforts to promote LGBTQ+ rights often took place in major city and state capitals. Protests, sit-ins and rebellions that happened in those areas gained the attention of national media. For this reason, it was also easier to find LGBTQ+ people in urban spaces — as formal institutions and activist groups formed.
But the quieter lifestyles of LGBTQ+ people in rural America didn’t mean LGBTQ+ people disappeared, and they still sought and found each other.
Throughout LGBTQ+ history, small anchor cities or large towns became regional zones for people living in rural communities to find each other, Loveland explained — pointing to a variety of places across central Pennsylvania, which served as gathering spaces and informational hubs for LGBTQ+ people during the midcentury and in modern times.
Formal and informal phone trees played a big part in communicating local happenings. A volunteer-run switchboard in central Pennsylvania in the early 1970s took calls on weeknights to help LGBTQ+ people find affirming medical providers, religious groups, lawyers, social clubs, and each other. Founded as the Gay Switchboard of Harrisburg, the organization expanded by adding more hubs in other areas and publishing local guides.
Resources importantly emerged as people formally organized — bringing critical health care and hospice networks during the HIV/AIDS crisis, for instance, and launching LGBTQ+ voices into expansive advocacy careers. Across the US, some of the most impactful voices for change have come from rural regions.
Although there weren’t any large intentional communities launched in Pennsylvania, feminist and “back-to-the-land” movements inspired some LGBTQ+ people to develop safe harbors in rural places for those who didn’t fit in elsewhere in society as like-minded people sought new ways of supporting and liberating each other.
But not every LGBTQ+ person was looking for radical ways of life or rallied around a public cause. Many lived simple lives and the tangible artifacts of their experiences show what it looks like to simply seek and create community.
Loveland said that he’s heard incredible accounts of suffering and survival and what it’s taken to overcome catastrophes — like being disowned by family, facing violence and getting fired. But, he underlined, the project has also gathered stories and artifacts that represent the joy of gathering with like-minded people in community.
Even though LGBTQ+ people living in rural America weren’t always out within their broader communities, they found ways to do the same things queer people are doing today — dressing up, hosting events, playing sports and making art.
Some of Loveland’s favorite pieces in his project’s collection include costumes, cat-eye glasses, and stage props from 1950s drag performances as well as a few objects obscura (like a table that’s been decoupaged with penises cut from the pages of old magazines).
The project has collected T-shirts, music and matchbooks. It even has posters and trophies won by the Harrisburg Hustlers — a gay volleyball team that traveled up and down the mid-Atlantic for competitions throughout the 1980s.
Building archives with few resources
A lack of resources can sometimes cause barriers for those interested in preserving hyperlocal and rural LGBTQ+ histories, but networking among researchers, colleges, museums, libraries and other adjacent organizations and leaders can turn up volunteers and partners. Loveland fundraised for necessities and lucked into borrowing recording equipment. Two experienced historians trained volunteers to record oral histories and collect and handle photographs and physical artifacts at no charge. The group also attended Pride festivals to gather recruits.
The LGBT History Project of Central PA has shared some exhibits online and is working to add more — proving that a physical space to keep information and belongings isn’t always crucial to get started. Loveland underlined that making just a few stories accessible could make a difference for someone struggling today.
The objects and stories represent times in history that were hard on LGBTQ+ people in rural America — during forced conformity, the Lavender Scare, movements of religious intolerance, and the height of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. They show that even in quiet corners where people might otherwise think they’re alone, LGBTQ+ people persevered through hardship and have always found ways to celebrate life with each other.
“We’ve made a lot of progress in recent years, but a lot of that can just erode away so quickly that people are very concerned,” Loveland said about the risks to advances in LGBTQ+ rights in the current political climate.
From the most prominent LGBTQ+ advocacy groups to hyperlocal resource hubs, many queer-centered organizations have refused to go underground despite threats by the Trump administration. They’re continuing to provide visible and tangible support. But not every locality has access — and it’s a scary time to be openly queer. Some LGBTQ+ people don’t feel as safe living out loud.
Listening to and holding the historic stories of LGBTQ+ life in rural America can teach today’s queer community about finding each other, preserving connections and building paths toward a better future.
“Do rural queers spend more time in community with each other, if only because they have fewer places to go?” wondered writer Lauren Herold in an article she wrote for Autostraddle about the work of another author, Clare Forstie, who wants to change perceptions about what life is like for LGBTQ+ people in rural communities. The idea resonated with Herold — who said that LGBTQ+ colleagues were a lifeline for her in a small city that lacked many formalized resources or social networks for the queer community.
Forstie’s book, which centers on presumed “unfriendly” Midwestern towns, addresses the nuances of connecting in rural America. Formal institutions might be the first place people turn to when they need support in big cities. But those organizations are not always local, active or accessible in smaller communities.
Forstie’s work underlines that specific relationships create a stronger sense of queer community in these areas. Herold argues this might have something to teach urbanites — that connecting with queer communities is not just about using or sharing resources (though valid if needed) but also about simply being with each other.
“It’s difficult to find assurances or to find comfort in thinking that there’s going to be a better day ahead,” Loveland added, explaining that rural history projects and history-centered LGBTQ+ organizations are “critical for people to have something to cling to.”
“It shows that people have gone through a lot of adversity, but we’ve made it through,” he emphasized.
