Launching now through November, HRC is taking to the road on an “American Dreams” tour.
In a press release, HRC calls it “a bold, nationwide initiative to spotlight LGBTQ+ resilience, resistance and joy at a time of rising political attacks and cultural erasure.”
The tour starts in Columbus, Ohio and swings through five red state cities, plus Washington, D.C.
Planned stops include Las Vegas, Atlanta, Dallas and Nashville.
Each stop is themed – cute! In Ohio, they’re centering the LGBTQ+ community’s historical activism and present-day barriers to HIV care. In Atlanta, they’re shining a light on Black LGBTQ+ leaders.
In every stop, HRC will run a “Voices for Equality” training, teaching attendees how to tell their stories and advocate for change, whether it’s at a legislative town hall, in a TikTok, or neighbor to neighbor.
It’s harder to demonize queer and trans people when you know them, whether it’s someone in your community or the Queer Eye crew bringing small-town glam to someone whose live looks a lot like yours.
The queer community learned this in the AIDS era, when LGBTQ+ people were widely stigmatized.
Back then, queer folks were expected to stay closeted or pray away the gay. We begged for tolerance – to be allowed to exist on the margins, without persecution or threat of violence.
We gained mainstream acceptance when we shifted our strategy.
When we began coming out publicly to people around us, everyone realized that suddenly their niece was a lesbian or their neighbor was gay or their favorite coworker had a queer kid.
They discovered they already knew and liked someone who was queer, and that queer people couldn’t be all those awful things they say we were.
As we came out, we gained social acceptance and human rights.
I thought we’d reached a point of broader acceptance, where we’d be allowed to live our lives without others regulating our choices, but here we are moving swiftly backwards, with fewer rights and freedoms every passing day.
As I write this, nine states are trying to overturn same-sex marriage rights, so that when Clarence Thomas gets his wish and Obergefell is overturned, they’ll no longer need to recognize gay marriages.
HRC’s hope with this tour is that getting back to the basics of telling our stories will change hearts and mind.
I’m a storyteller, this appeals to me. I agree that the situation is dire and we need to do something.
Hats off to HRC for showing initiative, especially in the face of so much Dem handwringing.
But is this tour the right thing? It feels performative.
For one, why these stops?
If I were choosing places based on anti-LGBTQ laws Texas makes a lot of sense, Georgia not so much.
If these cities were chosen based on robust queer community and strong leadership, why not go into communities that lack those assets?
Why direct resources and energy toward best-of-the-worst cities, instead of empowering those most impacted by LGBTQ+ erasure to be advocates in their communities or move to safer states to be queer?
I think the key is the rural and suburban stops they’ll announce later this summer.
Two words: October surprise 😉
HRC seems to be targeting queer people in red states, who feel hopeless and abandoned by their elected leaders and tourists who change vacation plans to avoid the bigotry.
They’re releasing the highlights on YouTube, themed around queer joy and resilience.
Those actions suggest this tour is for us – to give us hope and something to rally around.
But then they’re also trying to rally around inclusive messaging.
The advocacy angle suggests HRC is also trying to reach the fabled Undecided Voter who might be swayed by personal stories. The Gen X Trumper Who Has Regrets. The Straight White Dude who fell for the scarcity messaging scapegoating trans people for making his lives worse.
Is their tour a feel-good effort that won’t shift the narrative, or the hope we need in these times? Stay tuned.
Look, I appreciate the gesture.
The attack on LGBTQ rights is overwhelming. We need hope. We need to fight.
But too often, resilience becomes the expectation.
Resilience is a command performance marginalized people give because it earns us praise when what we crave is the fairness and equality we were promised.
Resilience doesn’t make our lives better, it conditions the dominant culture to continue to sideline us, because we’re so good at rising above their systemic oppresion.
What we need isn’t more proof that we can overcome hardships, it’s less to endure in the first place.
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