This book provides knowledge and practice tips specific to the unique and changing needs of rural lesbians and gay men. It is intended to help social workers construct culturally competent service programs and intervention techniques.

Winner of the 2009 Ruth Benedict Prize for Outstanding Monograph from the Society of Lesbian and Gay Anthropologists Winner of the 2010 Distinguished Book Award from the American Sociological Association, Sociology of Sexualities Section Winner of the 2010 Congress Inaugural Qualitative Inquiry Book Award Honorable Mention An unprecedented contemporary account of the online and offline lives of rural LGBT youth From Wal-Mart drag parties to renegade Homemaker’s Clubs, Out in the Country offers an unprecedented contemporary account of the lives of today’s rural queer youth. Mary L. Gray maps out the experiences of young people living in small towns across rural Kentucky and along its desolate Appalachian borders, providing a fascinating and often surprising look at the contours of gay life beyond the big city. Gray illustrates that, against a backdrop of an increasingly impoverished and privatized rural America, LGBT youth and their allies visibly—and often vibrantly—work the boundaries of the public spaces available to them, whether in their high schools, public libraries, town hall meetings, churches, or through websites. This important book shows that, in addition to the spaces of Main Street, rural LGBT youth explore and carve out online spaces to fashion their emerging queer identities. Their triumphs and travails defy clear distinctions often drawn between online and offline experiences of identity, fundamentally redefining our understanding of the term ‘queer visibility’ and its political stakes. Gray combines ethnographic insight with incisive cultural critique, engaging with some of the biggest issues facing both queer studies and media scholarship. Out in the Country is a timely and groundbreaking study of sexuality and gender, new media, youth culture, and the meaning of identity and social movements in a digital age.

Choice Outstanding Academic Title of 2016 Rural queer experience is often hidden or ignored, and presumed to be alienating, lacking, and incomplete without connections to a gay culture that exists in an urban elsewhere. Queering the Countryside offers the first comprehensive look at queer desires found in rural America from a genuinely multi-disciplinary perspective. This collection of original essays confronts the assumption that queer desires depend upon urban life for meaning. By considering rural queer life, the contributors challenge readers to explore queer experiences in ways that give greater context and texture to modern practices of identity formation. The book’s focus on understudied rural spaces throws into relief the overemphasis of urban locations and structures in the current political and theoretical work on queer sexualities and genders. Queering the Countryside highlights the need to rethink notions of “the closet” and “coming out” and the characterizations of non-urban sexualities and genders as “isolated” and in need of “outreach.” Contributors focus on a range of topics—some obvious, some delightfully unexpected—from the legacy of Matthew Shepard, to how heterosexuality is reproduced at the 4-H Club, to a look at sexual encounters at a truck stop, to a queer reading of TheWizard of Oz. A journey into an unexplored slice of life in rural America, Queering the Countryside offers a unique perspective on queer experience in the modern United States and Canada.

'Another Country' expands the possibilities of queer studies beyond the city limits, investigating the lives of rural queers across the United States, from faeries in the Midwest to lesbian separatist communes on the coast of Northern California.

In this collection of articles, the various authors examine the interaction of gays and lesbians with the democratic process in regards to public policy, public opinion, and political representation.

City of Friends offers a practical, intelligent, and well-informed overview of what it means to be gay or lesbian. The authors seek to help gay men and women, as well as their families and friends, to better understand the institutions and communities that make up the most culturally and ethnically diverse minority in America today.Beginning with basic concepts, LeVay and Nonas define the words "homosexual," "gay," "lesbian," and "bisexual" and discuss the various patterns of homosexuality in different cultures around the world. They relate the history of the gay and lesbian community in the United States, and its struggle for equal rights and social acceptance, before tackling the question -- still highly controversial -- of what determines an individual's sexual orientation.City of Friends describes the great diversity within the gay and lesbian community: Life in the "gay ghetto." Old lesbians in rural hideaways. Gay resorts. A "town without men." Gay and lesbian Latinos, African-Americans, Asian-Americans, and Native Americans -- what it means to be a minority within a minority. Lesbian and gay youth, the elderly, the deaf. Bisexuals and transsexuals. Academics, drag queens, technoqueers, publishers, softball players -- all make their appearance in these pages.LeVay and Nonas continue with a discussion of health issues (especially of the AIDS epidemic and the community's response to it), the law, and gay and lesbian politics. They describe the cultural achievements of lesbians and gay men -- their art, literature, theater, music, and dance. Finally they take a look at the spiritual life of gays and lesbians, both within and outside of organized religion.

While the words "we are everywhere" can be frequently heard at gay and lesbian political events, The Gay and Lesbian Atlas provides the first empirical confirmation of this rallying cry. Drawing on the most recent data from the U.S. Census, this groundbreaking work offers a detailed geographic and demographic portrait of gay and lesbian families in all 50 states plus the top 25 U.S. metropolitan areas. These results, presented in more than 250 full-color maps and charts, will both confirm and challenge anecdotal information about the spatial distribution and demographic characteristics of this community. It is probably no surprise that San Francisco, Key West, and western Massachusetts all host large gay and lesbian populations, but it might surprise some that Houston, Texas, contains one of the ten "gayest" neighborhoods in the country, or that Alaska and New Mexico have high concentrations of gay and lesbian couples in their senior populations. The Atlas is a unique and important resource for the political and public policy communities, public health officials, social scientists, and anyone interested in gay and lesbian issues