New reports from the 2010 Census show that California has nearly twice the number of gay couples than any other state — thanks for playing, New York and Florida! — and that Los Angeles is home to more same-sex couples than any other city:
The Golden State had 98,153 same-sex couples, followed by New York with 48,932, Florida with 48,496 and Texas with 46,401. North Dakota had the fewest same-sex couples with 559, just ahead of Wyoming with 657 and South Dakota with 714.
Among the nation’s largest cities … Los Angeles was No. 1 with 13,292, followed by Chicago with 10,849, San Francisco with 10,461 and Seattle with 6,537. [San Diego was fifth with 5,910 couples.]
The U.S. Census Bureau this week released revised estimates on same-sex married couple and unmarried partner households: There were 131,729 same-sex married couple households and 514,735 same-sex unmarried partner households in the United States.
But wait — uh-oh. Hold the confetti, L.A. Those are aggregate numbers. The Williams Institute on Sexual Orientation Law and Public Policy at UCLA’s School of Law sliced and diced the Census figures on a per-capita basis:
Provincetown, Massachusetts, still ranks highest, with about 148 same-sex households per 1,000, or 14.8 percent of households. Wilton Manors, Florida, has 125 same-sex households per 1,000, or 12.5 percent, and Palm Springs, California, has 107 same-sex households per 1,000, or 10.7 percent…
Overall, the geography of same-sex couples is spreading. Cities with populations under 100,000 tend to have much higher rates than larger cities. All 25 of the cities in this smaller category have higher rates of same-sex couples than the top ranking cities with populations between 100,000 and 250,000 and those cities with populations above 250,000. This smaller category includes places like Oakland Park, Fla.; Pleasant Ridge, Michigan; and Ocean Grove, N.J…
“The large city lists doesn’t surprise me at all,” [Gary Gates of the Williams Institute] says. The top ranking big cities are San Francisco, Seattle, Oakland, Minneapolis and Atlanta. “St. Louis coming in 11th probably surprised me a little bit.”
And where is Los Angeles? It’s 24th on the Williams Institute list — and the institute is based here. Traitors!
It’s likely part of the reason for the anomaly is an age-old question: What is, and what is not, Los Angeles?
The Williams report is very strict about municipal boundaries. In its small cities breakout, it lists Palm Springs, Rancho Mirage and Cathedral City, Calif., as separate entities, but, as a practical matter, these three municipalities are part of the same desert sprawl.
Los Angeles County, with a population of about 10 million, is, by far, the nation’s most populous county. The first numbers may have been based on the Los Angeles metro area, which would include the gay populations of LA County municipalities like Long Beach (total, 462,000), Pasadena (total population, 137,000), Santa Monica (total, 89,000) and West Hollywood (total, 37,000).
There is one area in the report where two cities in the South dominate:
The report also looks at same-sex couple raising children, and this geographic distribution is much more spread out. The numbers suggest that same-sex couples raising children don’t only locate in cities or areas with high rates of same-sex households. The metropolitan areas with the highest rates of same-sex households raising children are San Antonio, Jacksonville, and Raleigh. Neither of these areas ranks in the top 25 cities for same-sex couples.
It would also be interesting to see how the distribution of gay COUPLES relates to the distribution of gay PEOPLE.