Image by Angela Yuriko Smith from Pixabay
Will knowing where all the gays live help you decide where to move? I think knowing where there is a great concentration of people “like us” is a wonderful thing. It’s fun hanging out with fellow gays. I know I moved to Wilton Manors, Florida area because there was a great gay population.
But what about if the number was focused on same sex couples. Would that be of interest? I think yes, again, as it might help us see where couples are welcome, owning homes together, raising families, and maybe, just maybe, they met there and this is the place to find love.
So where are all the same sex couples at in the United States? Here are some of the results form a study released this week using data from the bureau’s 2019 American Community Survey. Not sure why no other resource out there didn’t provide a link to the study, but it can be found here. Here’s our take on the numbers.
Does the map above surprise you? Nope, not really. Dark purple is pretty good alignment with the protectors of Democracy and where many of the states were first to give marriage equality to the LGBTQ community.
But when you break it down to cities within these darker spots. The more well-known gayborhoods get washed out when per capita comes into play. The state map is great, but as you know Tallahassee is very different than St. Pete or For Lauderdale.
Florida is home to two metro areas that have the highest concentrations of gay and lesbian coupled households in the U.S., according to a new report released by the U.S. Census Bureau. Most others reporting on this just said Miami and Orlando, but the picture is bigger than that. When you say Miami, the question always comes up, is it Miami or more of Southern Florida, which in this case the reports of Miami should instead say Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano, which are the larger cities in Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach counties respectively, which are the three big blue counties of Southern Florida. The other area of Florida is not as large population wise at les than half or the households of So Flo, a comparison of 1.1 million overall households to 0.5 million households of the Disney area of Florida. But for the gay comparison, the Orlando metro area has 2.4% same-sex households to the MIA/FTL/PBC of 2.2%
San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle topped the list. Hate when they don’t label Portland as being in Oregon as Portland, Maine has some great stats on equality, diversity that have them nationally ranked, too. We are able to mark a Texas city at number 5. with Austin. If you look at the list above, Boston and Denver are niot much of a surprise for most of us, but many were happy to see some newcomers to the obvious with Baltimore and Phoenix.
But where are the big boys? What about New York City, Columbus, OH, Chicago, and Los Angeles? Unfortunately, we are talking about per capita and once you add in so many people and so many straight couples, the NYC, CHI, LA LGBT numbers are too diluted to appear.
The Star Tribune notes:
- In the District of Columbia, which was categorized along with states in the report, 7.1% of coupled households were same sex.
- Austin, Orlando, and Phoenix have been among the metropolitan areas with the largest population growth in recent years.
Instincters, what do you think? Do surveys like this make us want to seek out these areas to live?
Sources: Star Tribune , Census.gov