Samantha Allen writes at the Daily Beast…
Despite skewing Democrat, LGBT people are flocking to red states. It’s a sign that cities in the center of the country are becoming more accepting but it’s also an indication that traditional LGBT safe havens are prohibitively expensive. ConsumerAffairs.com analyzed U.S. Census data and Gallup polling information to model the movement of the LGBT community from 1990 to 2014. The overall trend is striking. In 1990, the LGBT population was concentrated in coastal metropolitan areas and other safe havens—cities like San Francisco, New York, Seattle, and Atlanta. By 2014, LGBT hot spots cropped up in some seemingly unlikely places: Salt Lake City, Louisville, Norfolk, Indianapolis, and other red state cities….
Several of the cities that rose in the rankings were in traditionally red states. Meanwhile, many LGBT safe havens like Minneapolis, San Diego, and New York fell in the rankings. San Francisco remains the undisputed LGBT capital of the country but even there, the LGBT population fell by a few tenths of a percent over the last decade and a half. “What you’re really seeing is reflective of other national trends,” said ConsumerAffairs content manager Ryan Daly. “Specifically, it lines up with people—especially young people—choosing less to live in huge, expensive cities, which were traditionally friendlier toward LGBTQ individuals, and choosing instead to make lives for themselves in small and mid-tier cities in the middle and southern states.”
It’s not just skyrocketing housing costs pushing young people out of traditional gay meccas. The quality of urban life in some smaller, red-state cities is attracting young people, LGBT and otherwise:
“The drivers for this movement are economic,” said Daly. “Smaller cities have shorter commutes, cheaper rent, and less competition for good-paying jobs. And a lot of smaller cities are investing in the kind of infrastructure (public transportation and amenities, walkability and density near city centers) that young people value.”
Additional factors: same-sex marriage is legal in all fifty states, there are protections for federal workers (for now) in all 50 states, and the presence of LGBT people creates a positive/sparkly/rainbow-hued feedback loop (the presence of LGBT people attracts more LGBT people).
The movement of LGBT people to smaller cities is, as Allen indicates in her lead, very good news for Democrats: LGBT Americans—with certain notable exceptions—tend to vote Democratic. Remember, kids: there are no blue states, only red ones. But cities skew blue, and cities that are big and blue and queer can move their states solidly into the Democratic column; that’s certainly the case here in Washington state.
LGBT people used to flee red states and rural areas for “coastal metropolitan areas and other safe havens” because there was safety—and political power—in numbers. But even if rural and exurban America turned into progressive and tolerant utopias overnight, LGBT people would continue to clump up in the cities. Because gay meccas and queer neighborhoods weren’t just about safety in numbers. They were also about—and they’re still about—sexual and romantic opportunity. Queer people are a tiny percentage of the population, evenly distributed throughout the country by genetic lottery. Dating/sex apps have made it easier for red state queers to find each other, but queers who wants options are still going to head to the cities. They just have more gay meccas to choose from these days—which is good news for queers and good news for Democrats.