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U.S. South Equality In LGBTQ POLICY SPOTLIGHT: MAPPING LGBTQ EQUALITY IN THE U.S. SOUTH WV VA KY NC TN OK AR SC GA MS AL TX LA FL Percent of LGBTQ Southerners Living in States of Each Policy Tally Category % Negative Policy % Low Policy % Fair Policy % Medium Policy % High Policy 58 Tally (9 states) 35 Tally (4 states) 7 Tally (1 state) 0 Tally (0 states) 0 Tally (0 states) Authors May 2020 TABLE OF CONTENTS 2 INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................................1 WHERE IS “THE SOUTH”? ................................................................................................................2 WHAT IS THE LGBTQ POLICY TALLY? ............................................................................................4 WHAT IS THE LGBTQ POLICY LANDSCAPE IN THE SOUTH? ..........................................................6 As a Region, the South Has the Lowest Overall LGBTQ Policy Tally ................................................................ 6 Across Key Policy Areas, the South Has Much Work to Do ................................................................................ 6 But Southern States Have Made Progress .............................................................................................................. 10 CONCLUSION ....................................................................................................................................15 REFERENCES .....................................................................................................................................16 Recommended citation: Movement Advancement Project. May 2020. LGBTQ Policy Spotlight: Mapping LGBTQ Equality in the U.S. South. www.lgbtmap.org/regional-south-tally. INTRODUCTION South, more than in any other region in the country.3 Yet the South is also home to the most hostile LGBTQ policy 1 The South is home to over 118 million people, more landscape in the country. than a third (36%) of the national population.1 It is one of the country’s most diverse regions, both geographically— For more than a decade, the Movement Advancement from the Appalachian mountains to the Gulf and Atlantic Project (MAP) has tracked state laws and policies that shorelines to Black Belt farmland to large urban areas and impact LGBTQ people. This report provides a deep dive rural communities and more—and demographically. For into the legal and policy landscape in the South for example, the South is home to over half (53%) of all Black LGBTQ people. By comparing the South to other regions people in the United States, and Texas and Florida alone of the country, examining key policy areas, and by are home to over one-quarter (28%) of all Latinx people looking individually at the states in the South, this report in the country.2 The diversity of the South also includes provides a nuanced perspective on the challenges and LGBTQ people: as shown in Figure 1, roughly one out of opportunities for advancing legal equality for LGBTQ every three LGBTQ adults in the United States lives in the people in the South. Figure 1: One in Three LGBTQ Adults Live in the South, More Than in Any Other Region Percent of National LGBTQ Adult Population Living in Each Region % % 19% 21 27 MIDWEST NORTHEAST WEST (2.1 MILLION (2.4 MILLION (3 MILLION LGBTQ ADULTS) LGBTQ ADULTS) LGBTQ ADULTS) NH ND VT ME WA MN SD WI NY MA MT MI RI OR NE IA PA CT ID OH IN NJ WY IL DE KS MO MD NV UT DC CA CO WV VA KY AZ NM NC TN OK AR SC AK GA MS AL HI TX LA FL 32% SOUTH (3.6 MILLION LGBTQ ADULTS) Source: LGBTQ population data from The Williams Institute’s (2019) Adult LGBT Population in the United States. May not sum to 100 due to rounding. Regions adapted from US. Census Bureau 4-Region Division. WHERE IS “THE SOUTH”? sense—that is, to designate the counties where the 2 Black people outnumber the white.”8 These counties The U.S. South is a region not easily defined. There are are primarily in the Deep South states of Alabama, many different ways to think about the South, and even Mississippi, and Georgia, among others. among people who identify themselves as Southerners, there is little agreement as to which states are part of • The Rim, or Peripheral, South, typically referring to the South.4 Some describe the South more as an identity states—such as Arkansas, North Carolina, Tennessee, or experience than a clearly defined geography, and and Virginia—just north of the states of the Deep that “Southernness” itself “may be more cultural than South. This can sometimes include Florida and Texas, residential”—more a matter of how a person identifies states on the edges of the Deep South. than precisely where that person lives.5 • Appalachia, a unique region of its own that overlaps many Southern states and extends into other That said, there are numerous ways to define the states including Maryland, New York, Ohio, and South, or at least what states are Southern states. For Pennsylvania.a example, many discussions of the South focus on the history and continuing legacy of slavery and the Civil While there are many different ways to define the War. In this context, the South might be defined as the South, this report focuses on 14 Southern states, as 11 confederate states, or those that seceded from the shown in Figure 2: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Union in 1860 and 1861: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia. West Virginia. These reflect the Census Bureau’s categorization, while excluding the states of Maryland, By contrast, the U.S. Census Bureau divides the Delaware, and the District of Columbia, which are more country into regions for the purposes of demographic commonly thought of as part of the mid-Atlantic region. analysis, and it defines the South more broadly, encompassing 16 states and the District of Columbia. The Census definition includes the 11 confederate states Figure 2: Fourteen Southern States Examined in This Report as well as Delaware, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Maryland, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia.6 WV VA Other definitions or components of the South KY include, but are not limited to: NC TN OK • The Deep South, which itself can vary in definition AR SC but generally refers to the states that were the most GA MS AL dependent on slavery and plantation economies, TX and today experience often extreme disparities in LA poverty and health. Typically this definition includes FL at least Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina; it only sometimes includes Arkansas, Florida, and Texas, and includes other states even less frequently.7 a For more on the history of Appalachia, see Elizabeth Catte’s What You’re Getting Wrong About • The Black Belt, referring to counties and regions in Appalachia (2018). the South that, as Booker T. Washington described in 1901, were first “distinguished by the colour of the soil. The part of country possessing this thick, dark, and naturally rich soil was, of course, the part of the South where [enslaved people] were most profitable, and consequently they were taken there in the largest numbers. Later, and especially since the [Civil War], the term seems to be used wholly in a political The South is Not a Singular Place or Experience 3 While this report mainly analyzes the South as a whole, it is important to recognize the diversity of the states within the South, as well as across the various cities, towns, and communities within these states. Nearly two out of every three (65%) counties in the South are mostly or entirely rural, according to the U.S. Census. Yet, the South is also home to five of the 15 largest cities in the United States (Houston, San Antonio, Dallas, and Austin in Texas, and Jacksonville, Florida).b The South, along with the Southwest, is home to more “majority-minority” counties, or counties where a majority of residents are Black, Latino, or Native American, than any other region in the country.c For example, there are seven counties in Texas where Hispanic people comprised 90% or more of residents in 2018.d Of the 13 states with the largest Black populations in 2018, 10 are in the South (and the other three are the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Delaware, which are often included in the South as noted above). Additionally, in a seeming reversal of the early 20th century’s Great Migration—which saw millions of Black residents moving from the rural South to northern cities—between 2005 and 2010 alone (and continuing through to today), more than 66,000 Black people moved to the South from other parts of the country, with the cities of Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, and Miami seeing the largest increases.e One out of every three (32%) LGBTQ people in America live in these 14 Southern states, more than live in any other region.f Of these states, Florida has the largest percent of its population who identify as LGBT: 4.6% of Floridians identified as LGBT in the 2015-2017 Gallup Daily Tracking poll, and 24% of them were raising children.g A 2015 analysis showed that, of the 21 largest metropolitan areas in the United States with LGBT populations above the national average (3.6% in that year), nine were in the South: Austin-Round Rock (5.3%), New Orleans-Metairie (5.1%), Louisville/Jefferson County (4.5%), Virginia Beach-Norfolk- Newport News (4.4%), Jacksonville (4.3%), Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach (4.2%), Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell (4.2%), Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford (4.1%), and Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater (4.1%).h In a groundbreaking project exploring the diversity of communities across the country, the American Communities Project identified 15 community types using various metrics.i In the 14 Southern states in this report, 14 of the 15 community types are present. Notably, however, more than one in four (26%) Southern counties are classified as “African American South,” and another more than one in five (23%) are “Evangelical Hubs.” Roughly one in 10 counties are either “Working Class Country” (13%) or “Exurbs” (9%), and the remaining 29% of counties fall into one of the other 10 county types.
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