The national political scene in the United States took a sharp turn rightward in 2016, culminating in President Donald Trump’s election. But a recent trend among some local lawmakers shows that Trump’s views do not represent the views of those who live in states that voted for him, particularly in Appalachia.
A movement to pass ordinances that protect queer and trans people at the municipal level has been gaining traction — a recent Reuters analysis indicated that since the Supreme Court legalized gay marriage nationwide in 2015, about 50 cities and towns in states that voted for Trump have adopted local measures to protect LGBTQ people from discrimination.
Of those municipalities putting more protections in place, 11 of them are in West Virginia, in the heart of Appalachia. And this year the Mountain State may be on track to join the 19 other states who have already adopted statewide LGBTQ nondiscrimination laws.
In 2016, five West Virginia cities adopted municipal non-discrimination measures.
“We just finished a year in which we doubled the number of ordinances in the state, and we were doing it at a more rapid pace than any other state in the country,” says Andrew Schneider, director of the LGBTQ advocacy group Fairness West Virginia. In early September 2017, the city of Fairmont passed a resolution with non-discrimination language, bringing the total to 11.
What is behind this rise and what can other states learn from West Virginia’s example? Schneider, who has been with the young organization since 2014, says the successes have been a function of appealing both to people’s sense of justice and to their hopes for economic prosperity.
Gay marriage took legal effect in West Virginia in October 2014, when then-Governor Earl Ray Tomblin announced that the Attorney General’s office would not fight a lawsuit that challenged the state’s ban on same-sex unions. “I continue to encourage all West Virginians, regardless of their personal beliefs, to uphold our state’s tradition…