The last few years of anti-LGBTQ legislation passed in Tennessee has life-long natives leaving their home state for bluer pastures.
The Biden administration had attempted to challenge those state policies, but the Trump administration has embraced them. Last month, the Supreme Court sided with Tennessee in banning gender-affirming care for half of all U.S. states.
“I see this rising wave of hate, and it scares me that I’m sort of losing the Tennessee I grew up in,” said native William Gwynn.
WPLN News spoke with several people who were leaving Tennessee or considering a move because of the state legislature’s stance on queer issues.
“I only have ever lived in Tennessee. It’s all I know. I have a lot of pride in being a Tennessean. And giving that up has felt really hard,” said one mom who left the state to give her transgender child a more welcoming environment. WPLN News is not using her name because she fears her identity could out her child.
Other queer Tennesseans are determined to stay.
“It’s too pretty. They can’t have it. I know the waterfall’s too well,” said Sam Raper from Cookeville, Tennessee. “The election was hard. But ultimately, I think had Kamala won, I may have lost a little bit of the fire. I think I may had felt, ‘Oh great, everything’s fixed. We won.’ But that wouldn’t have fixed or solved anything here.”
Lochlan Cook, a transgender college student, has left Tennessee for school, but he says he intends to come back to study at Vanderbilt University’s divinity program.
“Because I really think that the South and Tennessee is where the fight for democracy is and the fight for liberation,” Cook said. “Looking at it and being like, ‘Well, nothing’s ever going to change, so I’m not going to do anything.’ Yeah, nothing’s going to change if you don’t do anything … If I don’t pick my glasses up in the morning and put them on, I’m never going to be able to see.”
Another trans student, Lennon Freitas, wants to stay in Tennessee for college to be close to his family.
“The things that give me hope is mostly the community,” Freitas said. “The teachers in my class who will call me by my preferred name and will be open about these things, and the assistant principals who will be stern to the sub who’s just calling you the wrong name. Little bits of hope and positivity around that, it kind of all builds up.”
Singer-songwriter couple Crys Matthews and Heather Mae have toured all over the country, but they said that their love songs have a different tone when they perform them here in their home state.
“I’m hard-headed, you know, I’m a Southerner. It’s just like, you tell me you don’t want me there, I will die in Tennessee, I am never leaving,” Matthews said. “For some people it’s necessary for them to leave, and then some people it’s necessary for them to stay, and I feel like we’re in that latter camp.”
Mae said they’ve taken the queer community for granted in more accepting places, but their identity is not an afterthought in ruby red Tennessee.
“I am definitely concerned that it will be dark ahead, and living in a Southern state is definitely a choice,” Mae said. “We are not going anywhere … We are actively choosing to stay to help build hope.”
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