Friends – 

Today the Campaign for Southern Equality is proud to join with our partners at Campus Pride for the release of Coming of Age as an LGBTQ Southerner: Family, Faith, Education & Health, a report detailing the findings of the 2021 Survey of Southern LGBTQ Experiences.

Thousands of LGBTQ Southerners – 4,186, including many of you – took this survey in 2021, and now we’re honored to publish this opening report. 

Unfortunately, the dominant narrative emerging from these data is that thousands of individuals throughout the South are not getting the social support they need and deserve at home, in schools, and in their communities. This lack of support and inclusion is disempowering and may cause detrimental harm to their mental and physical wellbeing, especially when that lack of support gets compounded with clear, state-sponsored discrimination such as the passage of anti-LGBTQ laws.

Click here to view Coming of Age as an LGBTQ Southerner, the just-published research report from the Campaign for Southern Equality and Campus Pride. 

We want to send a huge thank you to our community partners and our Survey Ambassadors, who helped disseminate the Survey and generate insight from thousands of participants. This research would not be possible without these organizations and community leaders, who are building a strong network of LGBTQ people across the South. Above all, we owe a debt of gratitude to the 4,146 LGBTQ people who shared their experiences and time in taking the 2021 Survey of Southern LGBTQ Experiences. 

In the months ahead we’ll share additional insight from this rich set of data, but in this first report you’ll read about participants’ experiences when it came to coming out and finding support and rejection in family spaces, the treatment they faced at school and in religious settings, and their experiences seeking healthcare as LGBTQ people in the South. There are some heartbreaking findings, including extremely high rates of suicidality and feeling forced to repress or change sexual orientation or gender identity. And there are also stories that give us hope for the many ways LGBTQ people have been affirmed by their communities. 

Read the full report, Coming of Age as an LGBTQ Southerner from the Campaign for Southern Equality and Campus Pride, by clicking here. 

Thank you,
Dr. Austin Johnson
He/Him/His
Director, Southern Equality Research & Policy Center
Assistant Professor of Sociology, Kenyon College