Family Stories: LGBT Families in the South

From the U.S. South, popular culture and media tropes portrayed Southern families as vastly heteronormist in structure, with a dutiful wife following her husband, who heads the household. Women\u27s place in the family was centered around child-rearing, exclusively. Single parent, multi-racial, and same-sex families were parodied as outcasts or progressive interlopers. Following the June 2015 U.S. Supreme Court decision, LGBT families now constitute legal reality. However, before there was marriage equality, there were lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender families living in the U.S. This presentation explores LGBT families who have made their lives and homes in the U.S. South. While the work seeks to explore meanings of varied notions of family living in a historically and culturally contested place, the voices return again and again to home and daily life. The central premise of the research is, “The story is that there is no story”--that LGBT people live in the South and raise their families is a given. Participants in the study represent intersections of race, class, gender, sexuality, and age, and are thus important to women’s studies. Interviews were conducted with eleven LGBT families. Conversations around place, sexuality, and families provide context for their lived experiences. In analyzing the stories to identify themes and topics, we note that while analysis will lead to greater understanding of people within place, the stories are significant and meaningful of themselves