I’m not gay, or trans, or bi, but even so, if I were living in Texas, I’d be desperate to escape. And the direction I’d take would be…Northwest, baby.
Amid a glut of anti-LGBTQ+ laws passed by the state legislature over the past half-decade, many queer Texans have decided to pack up and move to greener, more supportive pastures. So many have chosen Seattle that the Pacific Northwest city is now considering declaring an emergency.
As first reported by the Seattle Gay News, the City of Seattle is close to declaring a state of civil emergency in response to LGBTQ+ refugees from red states moving there. That comes after Seattle’s LGBTQ Commission, an advisory committee that counsels local leaders on matters related to Seattle’s queer community, reportedly sent a letter last month asking the city council to make an emergency declaration. The commission said that the city needed “an effective and empathetic response” to protect a “rapid influx of 2SLGBTQIA+ persons seeking refuge in Seattle.”
I don’t have to ask “Why Seattle?” I know Seattle. But for those of you unfamiliar with the place, here’s the perspective of a trans woman:
For some ex-Texans, Seattle has become a haven. Victoria Scott, a trans woman and freelance writer, lived in Houston working as a programmer at NASA after college in 2018. After coming out as transgender, she said that she found both Houston and Texas hostile. Scott moved around and lived briefly in Reno, Nevada, before settling in Seattle with her wife at the end of 2023. In Seattle, Scott found the foundation she had long needed.
“It’s done more for my day-to-day lived experience and mental health as a trans woman than basically any other thing I’ve ever done,” Scott told Chron.
For her, Seattle was everything Houston wasn’t. (For one, it isn’t nearly as hot.) Scott appreciates the city’s relatively decent cost of living and protective state and local laws for LGBTQ+ residents. But Scott also said that there were more queer and trans people out and about in Seattle, noting that she could form physical communities in a way she couldn’t in Texas. She attributed that to Seattle’s long, vibrant queer history.
“Trans people here are normalized to a degree they’re not elsewhere,” Scott said. “I get culture shock visiting other places now because I return pretty suddenly to people staring or murmuring about me … Here, I genuinely feel like just another woman.”
I’m a little bit envious: Why not Minnesota? It’s also socially inviting, but I admit that it does have a few shortcomings. No ocean. No mountains. It gets a little bit chilly in the winter.
I guess I’d also put the Pacific Northwest in first place. But Minnesota is in second place.
Poor Texas. They’re losing a lot of intelligent, creative people in order to pander to MAGA dorks.
Meanwhile; Savannah, Georgia seems to have a lot of Seattle ex-pats.
I don’t understand what exactly is the “state of emergency” about in Seattle? What’s the problem they need to address?
I’m proud to be a Seattlelite and our LGBTQ+ community is one of the reasons, but I’m not so sure about “the city’s relatively decent cost of living”.
And meanwhile the Xians are literally erecting golden idols in honor of the god-emperor that hates gay people.
“Scathing Atheist 687 Electric Monk Edition”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=yAwEz9Qotb8
Clearly this calls for a Wall.
Start in New Mexico, please.
@rabbitbrush:
I’d assume the ‘state of emergency’ is basically an issue of ‘more people trying to move into the area than the housing market and services can currently keep up with’.
One thing you have to realize is that currently Seattle’s physical growth prospects are mostly ‘upwards’. Seattle sits on a narrow strip of land between Puget Sound on the west side and Lake Washington on the east side (Bellevue and Redmond are on the other side of the lake), and it runs into other city boundaries on the north and south ends. (Tacoma is the big one to the south, which is why you have ‘SeaTac airport’.) To put this in perspective, when they built a big new conference centre there in the late 1980s, the conference centre was literally built a few storeys tall, and over the I-5 highway, creating a man-made tunnel for the highway, because there wasn’t really space for anything that large anywhere else.
Building new housing in Seattle proper is not a fast process because most of the space there is already in use. Building in some of the surrounding communities is a little easier, but even they have limits on current sewage and power support, and not all of them have the same level of accepting ‘vibe’ as Seattle proper does, so I expect a lot of this particular refugee crisis is aiming for the actual city of Seattle rather than the surrounding area.
I get moving and to GTFO out of Texas, but it also feels like we’re giving them what they want. Feels like a “screwed if you do, screwed if you don’t” situation.
Unfortunately not all is well in Seattle for LGBT+ folks. On Monday a transgender woman was stabbed fatally in off-campus dorms near UW. Today the suspect turned himself in.
Along similar lines, states with abortion restrictions have seen sharp declines in the number of applicants for medical residencies, not just in OB/GYN but in many other fields. It seems that young educated physicians in training want to live in places with more progressive policies. They will soon have a shortage of practicing doctors.
OT but amusing in a dark sort of way.
I was at a gas station tonight on my way home refueling.
Gas prices are now at record high of over $6.00 per gallon, which is $1.58 per liter.
The vehicle in front of me was one of those newer oversized giant pickups, a Dodge Ram.
The guy filled his tank and it came to $150. For one tank of gas.
I don’t know if he voted for Trump or not, but there is a high correlation between giant pickup owners and MAGAs.
I doubt if this was a learning experience though.
PS I also stopped by the grocery store yesterday.
Prices were noticeably higher for a lot of things, including fresh fruits and vegetables, than even a week ago.
One of the other things that Seattle (proper… it gets less so the farther east one goes, until east of Issaquah might as well be Spokane) has going for it is that most of the population doesn’t have a whole lot of tolerance for bigots, regardless of the kind of bigotry. It’s far from perfect, but even nerds are (now, anyway) mostly accepted.
That’s different from many other supposedly liberal cities, like San Francisco, where there’s a veneer of acceptance badly glued to a particleboard base below Ikea standards; it’s not very strong, not very smooth, and not very durable. (And feels cheap, too.) Seattle is far from perfect — the Seattle PD is still here — but better than most, and better than anywhere in the Demokratisch Texasisch Republik.
(bad typing interrupted by a phone call, that’s Texasisch Demokratisch Republik)
@10 raven
From a swedish perspective, thats not that high a price at the pump. Weve got a lot of extra tax on gasoline.
@13 erik333
Well… There is a fundamental difference between taxes, which get used for services, and the current US issue – i.e., taxes that get used by MAGA to fund illegal wars, while cutting services, and gas prices that have jack all to do with taxes at all, just, again, MAGA stupidity. Its like comparing the thought processes of an adult saving money for a house, vs. an 8 year old, who has suddenly come across $1,000 and decides the best use for it is to buy out the local store’s supply of Bubblegum, while their parents are struggling to pay rent and the whole family might be thrown out at the end of the month. There really is no sane comparison.