And they should. If you aren’t going to California, Hawaii, or Massachusetts… you should be careful about vetting the state you plan on visiting. Things have gotten very nasty in “red states” over the last few years.
Oregon, Washington, and most of the Northeast are fine.
Just stay away from the South. This has always been good advice and remains good advice.
Still, you get 10 min outside of a city in Oregon and you start seeing Trump signs
Same in Washington. You’re mostly safe along I-5 and WA-101 but towns outside of those two highways can get very conservative very fast.
You have some pockets east of the mountains like Spokane and the tri cities that are slightly liberal but there’s a reason most of the Republican house representatives come from the east side of the state.
This is urban vs rural more than anything and not state vs state. Because I’m sure there’s some dudes from Laramie Wyoming who would take offense that you didn’t lump them in with all the other bigots.
Should a gay couple load up there family and move to Garfield Georgia? No probably not but what about Birmingham Alabama? Yeah that’d be fine.
If you aren’t going to California, Hawaii, or Massachusetts
*liberal cities in California.
There’s a loooot of deep, deep red areas of Cali that should be avoided.
Don’t know much about the other states you listed, so I can’t speak on their status.
Sparsely populated agricultural areas and shitholes like Bakersfield aren’t common tourist destinations. You don’t need to tell someone to avoid them. So yeah they’re “deep red” in the sense that half a dozen yokels that live there are idiots, but they’re very, very much in the minority.
And honestly, having traveled a bit, even California Conservatives aren’t as Conservative as they think they are; a fact which becomes extremely apparent when they leave the state and then get slapped in the face with actual out and proud racism and they get othered for being from California.
It would be funny if it weren’t so sad.