Read the following in a magazine today: “Percentage of Americans, Britons, and gay Americans who have a passport: 20, 74, 84.” Now, the first two are hardly surprising, and are pretty easily explainable. Americans can travel great distances to vastly different areas without needing a passport; inter-continental travel is expensive, and (if you’re a cynic about this type of thing) American culture is maybe a bit insular. The British, last I was told, need a passport just to leave their tiny island, even when going to other EU countries – a weekend trip to France requires a trip to the Foreign Office. But why should gay Americans be more than four times as likely as their straight compatriots to have a passport?? I’ve never thought of international travel as a particularly gay thing, or even, to stereotype, as an even effiminate thing. (Maybe an interest in foreign cultures is seen as a bit less than “red-blooded” in some circles.) What do you think explains this?
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I would think this is often because gays do not have children, so they have more free time and discretionary income in order to do things like travel. Going along with this, they wouldn’t have to worry about timing for school vacations, purchasing extra plane tickets, hiring babysitters, and locating kid-friendly activities on trips.
Ah, that could be an excellent explanation. I just couldn’t believe that the average person would look at young backpackers with a raised eyebrow, as the information first seemed to imply to me.
I would place about 95% of the explanation on the no kids/two earners thing.
It means more income and more flexibility.
I don’t know if I’d call other countries more “gay friendly” than the US, but I would say that more gay folks I know would be more into seeing “exotic places”, if you will.
Just seems that Bruce and Larry from Rehoboth Beach might want to check out Les Jardins Du Luxembourg more than Jack and Carol with their kids Madison and Tyler from Duluth do.
From experience, I can say that a higher proportion of the crew and staff on board cruise ships are gay (higher, that is than if you just scooped a random bunch of people off the street); not sure whether the travel in this case is merely incidental though, so I’d stick with:
Less likely to have children.
More likely to be cut off from parents.
(perhaps)Less likely to remain integrated in a culture where there is homophobia, however slight or subtle.
WAG: I assume they mean openly gay Americans. Wouldn’t that group include a disproportionate number of young people who are more likely to travel? I think the difference would be smaller if they compared gay vs. straight people within a specific age range.
In addition to correlation with age, openly gay people are also going to tend to be better educated, richer, and more urban people, simply because pressures to stay closeted are stronger among the less educated, poorer, and rural population. And well-educated, richer city-dwellers are similarly more likely to travel internationally.
Been lots of studies over the years and most indicate the main reason is money - single Gay men, and even a lot of Gay couples, simply earn more (on average, but by no means ALL of us).
And if you have more money and are thinking of a vacation, you can plan to go further than the Wisconsin Dells. Suddenly, a $1500 air/hotel package for a week to Rome looks cheap, and if you have 1 or 2 or 6 friends who can afford to tag along, all the better.
That said, I can tell you that all of the single, straight friends I have in urban areas, who have fairly decent jobs, also all have passports. Every one of them have been abroad at least once, and some on a semi-yearly basis.
So again…money. That is the biggest factor. Straight or Gay.
EU isn’t the same country, but it sure is working like one in some ways. In this case the Schengen treaty allows travel without passport between all the old Euro-15 countries except the British Isles, and Norway and Iceland too. Thus while a British person needs a passport to enter continental Europe, they could then travel around inside Schengen area without showing the pass anymore. Of course, in practice most citizens of continental EU countries also have passports and are probably carrying them on international trips.
As for OP, i’d say that gays, whether male or female, are simply more open to new experiences, and this includes travelling abroad. Also high proportion of US gays live in big cities, not in rural areas, and big city folks in general are more likely to travel far away places.