We Were Never "Queer"

Just Gay, and Wanting to Belong

We think it fitting that LeAnne should get the last word on the last day of “Pride” Month 2025.

Last month, I was at the hospital in my hometown of Selma. While I was there, I got to talking with one of the nurses—a young woman in her twenties, born and raised right here in the Black Belt.

She was a lesbian—the out, grounded, kind. We talked about life, family, and work. Nothing academic, nothing political. Just two lesbians in Selma, different generations, both trying to live honestly.

And here’s what stuck with me: she’s not the only one. There are multiple out lesbians working at that small-town hospital in one of the most religious, conservative parts of the Deep South. And they’re not living some radical “queer” theory. They’re living real life. Quietly, capably, as part of the community.

They’re not following Chase Strangio on social media. They don’t know that someone with a high-level role at the Human Rights Campaign once said she wants to “disrupt the nuclear family.” They aren’t interested in abolishing marriage, sex categories, or childhood innocence. They’re showing up every day in that Selma—my Selma—doing their jobs, loving who they love, and contributing to the very society they’re told they’re supposed to want to destroy.

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The Great Lie of “Queering” Everything

Standing in that hallway, it hit me: the activist class has completely lost touch with the lives of ordinary gay and lesbian people. When someone like Strangio—who calls herself “queer” and “nonbinary” while working at the ACLU—talks about tearing down the family or redefining womanhood, she’s not speaking for us.

A young lesbian nurse in Selma isn’t trying to deconstruct capitalism. She’s trying to pay her bills. She’s showing up for her patients. She’s carving out a good life in the world she was born into. She’s not looking to queer the world. She’s just trying to live in it.

Most LGB People Don’t Want to Burn the House Down

Let’s be clear: most LGB people were never “queer.” We didn’t ask to be turned into a political experiment. We weren’t trying to dismantle society. We weren’t asking to be absorbed into a movement that sees biology as bigotry and thinks “woman” is a dirty word.

We were fighting for the right to live openly, form families, and be treated like everyone else. And now we’re told that wanting those things—marriage, language, reality—makes us conservative, regressive, or “not queer enough.”

What we are, is done. Done pretending this movement speaks for us.

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We’re Still Here

So here’s to the lesbians of Selma—working night shifts, building lives, and proving every day that it’s possible to be both different and deeply rooted. They’re not queering the South. They’re living in it. Thriving in it. Belonging in it.

They’re not trying to bring the house down. They’re the ones holding it up.