ABSTRACT
In February 2020 I arrived at my recently acquired vacation home in Tucson, Arizona, to find a copy of the newspaper Tucson Weekly, left by my partner Nancy, who lives there year-round. The sympathetic cover story featured a local transgender man, pregnant with his first child. A few days later I attended a meeting of a regional anti-gun violence group and heard a different young man speak about nearly ending his life with a gun. He described being gay and ostracized and rejected by his family, church, and his school, which refused to protect him against being bullied by his peers. Arizona is a ‘red state,’ arguably purple-ish now, with some of the least restrictive gun laws in the nation. Its highways are dotted with billboards that say things like ‘Jesus Christ is Lord’ and ‘Our Spirit Will Move You.’ It’s quite a culture shock for someone like me who has lived all my life in East Coast urban centers.
