No, that doesn’t make sense. Unless you sample by throwing darts at a map, geographic concentrations don’t make any difference.
libraries, archives and museums, and there’s an unusually high percentage of gay folks in those vocations.
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have a reliable source?
I’m suspicous of the DC number as well. It’s twice as high as the most “gay” state (Hawaii, 5.1%). There’s got to be a mistake in their polling.
Michigan is mid-high on the list, which is what I’d expect. The Royal Oak/Ferndale area is something of a gay hotspot.
Maybe they oversampled Republican Congressmen who were uncharacteristically honest. 
Which I find fascinating, having once lived there. It sure as hell wasn’t a gay mecca in 1978 ;).
As a straight male - who has read his share of straight dating profiles in the Baltimore/DC area - I can make these observations about DC:
- There are ALOT of fairly young professionals in government/policy/law in the DC area
- They are completely different than the matches from Baltimore.
(One of the DC matches claimed she was mentioned in the state of the union)
(Another works on arms control policy with Russia)
(likes to read the works of German authors in the original German) - Severe over achievers
- Many are not originally from DC - they moved there after college
vs women from Baltimore who read twilight (not that there is anything wrong with that)
I think - IMHO - someone who is gay is more likely to leave their hometown than someone who is not. I am not sure how big a factor this plays, but there is a HUGE difference between DC and almost anyplace Baltimore suburbs for example.
The number cited for San Francisco is generally 15.4%. I’ve never lived in DC, but that number doesn’t sound high to me at all. There’s a gay neighborhood in DC and all.
I didn’t know that. Maybe I just haven’t been spending enough time in the Castro or on Folsom St. 
OK, here you go:Gays in large cities in the US.
What’s with the gay-hate for NYC?
Or a place like Palm Springs with an estimated 33% gay population.
NYC? I figured LA would be a lot higher. At least higher than San Diego. And Dallas. Really, Dallas? As in Texas?
And why is Boston so high? I wouldn’t have expected that, but I admit to being pretty ignorant about a lot of the east coast.
NYC just has a ton of people. Look at the actual numbers. San Fran might be 15% of the population, but that’s just 94,234 people. Whereas NYC is listed at just 4.5% but yet that’s 272,493 people, about 3x as much!
Only reliable anecdote. I don’t think this is the kind of thing anyone wants surveys or articles done about.
The conclusion in the bottom line section is interesting. The author, Gates, seems to think states with high percentages appear that way because those states are more liberal and people feel safer disclosing their self-identification, and he considers if “less likely” that gays move to certain states.
Not sure I agree with that. How do get to 15% in DC if LGBTs don’t move there? It’s not like a greater percentage are born there.
I’m a librarian, and I can say there’s a stereotype within the profession that a high percentage of male librarians and archivists are gay. However, while I can’t cite this, I remember seeing recently that there had been a survey of librarians that indicated that the actual percentage of gay men in the field was only something like 3-5%.
I could easily believe it’s true that a larger than usual percentage of gay men working in libraries, archives, or museums are out to their coworkers, though. Again, no cite, but I remember hearing in library school that about 2/3 of gay men who are librarians are out at work. Librarianship is a fairly gay-friendly field, and IIRC the American Library Association was the first professional organization in the US to have an LGBT group. Since a large majority of librarians are women, I could also see how a gay man who’s a librarian might wish to be open about it just so his many female coworkers know that he’s not interested.
But that might be higher than the percentage of straight men. It’s all in the context.
I see that my wording was unclear, but the survey indicated that a small percentage of male librarians were gay, not that a small percentage of all librarians were gay men. Since only about 15% of all librarians are men, if 5% of all librarians were gay men then that would be 1/3 of all male librarians – far more than the percentage of gay men in the general population.
I haven’t been able to turn up the blog post where I read about this study, which I’m fairly certain was a recent one, but a little Googling did turn up a 1996 study (PDF) of male librarians where 9% self-identified as gay. That may be a higher percentage than would be found in the general population, but it’s still a minority of all male librarians. The same study indicates that about 80% of the male librarians surveyed considered “Effeminate, probably gay” a stereotype of male librarians. This was also the stereotype recognized by the largest number of respondents.
The city that really stands out on that list is Sacramento-any reason why?
People are people.
The percentage of gay people would be virtually identical in every state.
The article is merely about how many of those people “identify” or self-report as being gay. I’d put that down to cultural influences, although the large difference between South and North Dakota is admittedly quite intriguing.
It’s the state capitol, so it’s full of political types.
CapitAl. I keep seeing it lately, sorry: capitol is the building, capital is the city.