Are you dying to know which the top 10 gayest cities in America are? Are you sure? Are you rainbow-flaggedly, gay-paradingly, ass-less-pantedly sure? Then keep on reading to find out which cities are all in for the LGBTQ cause!
However much I love gay jokes -and messing with stereotypes in general- I’m glad we’ve reached a point as a society where saying “gay” doesn’t automatically remind people of nipple piercings and leather pants, or “lesbian”, of truck driver hats and bad tattoos. In fact, it’s not just about gays and lesbians anymore, instead, it’s all about LGBTQ. I know, you’re probably used to reading about LGBT, which stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bi, and Trans, but what does the Q stand for? That would be Queer, and there’s a big debate inside the community on whether it should be included or not. Now, I’m neither of the previous (or maybe I am, only time will tell), but it I feel that Queer should be included as a part of the collective, denying it just yells “resentful”, it seems to me. Still, I’ll stick with the first, since it’s the most frequently used.
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As for America, even though I thoroughly hate the fact that people automatically assume “America” means the USA, I’ll play along this one time, but first, let’s start with a world overview on gay-friendliness:
The 3 Countries with the Biggest Gay Population in the World are (in order) China, the Netherlands, and Italy; the USA comes in sixth, right behind Canada and France, so if you’re looking for the Best Cities for LGBT Families, maybe you should look beyond “America”.
As I narrowed down on the map, I was surprised by some seemingly incoherent relations between states and the cities on our list. As explained on Quora when asked which are the gay-friendliest states, a user commented: “That is a harder question to answer than you would think. For example, you might say Texas is a terrible place for LGBT people to live, but Austin is wonderful.” So there you go, you can live in a lovely, friendly city, in the middle of a judgmental state that is prone towards discrimination, so don’t be surprised if the urban areas I mention don’t seem to add up with the States with the Biggest Gay Populations in America. These, by the way, are California, New York, Illinois, Massachusetts, and Michigan.
To my disappointment, I found no stats post-2014, so just like The New York Times and Business Insider, I’ve based my article on Gallup’s survey data between 2012 and 2014, which ranks the population percentage that identifies with LGBT in metropolitan areas around the US. Nerd Wallet offers slightly different results that come from a profoundly interesting analysis that accounts for several other factors (such as the number of hate crimes) beyond the percentage of LGBT population. Even though it’s very much worth checking out, I find it to be about gay-friendliest cities, rather than gayest, so I’ll stick with Gallup and add some relevant data from the nerds mouth as I go along.
So, if you’re eager to learn about the gayest cities in USA and their surroundings, don’t hesitate to click next!
