First published on April 28, 2004, in the Chicago Free Press.
Two questions often asked about the gay community are: How many gays are there, and Where are they? The answer to the first question remains as controverted as ever, but for the first time we are beginning to obtain some approximation of the answer to the second.
In a fascinating new book, The Gay & Lesbian Atlas, Gary Gates and Jason Ost of Washington, D.C.'s Urban Institute used 2000 census data from the 600,000 same-sex couples who designated themselves "unmarried partners" to plot the location patterns of those gay couples across the U.S.
The handsomely produced, 230-page Atlas contains about 60 pages of methodology, analysis and description. But the heart of the book is the colored maps of each state and 25 major cities showing where gay and lesbian couples live, displayed by county as well as census tract (an area with 2000 people in it). The maps also show the relative concentration of gay couples - low (forest green), moderate (yellow), high (tan) and very high (burnt umber).
The best place to start is the national map on p.61 showing gay couple densities displayed by county. The map shows that gay and lesbian couples have higher concentrations in New England and downstate New York, along the California coast and in southern Florida. There is also a scattering through the southwest and southeast U.S.
Not surprisingly California, our most populous state, has the largest number of gay and lesbian couples, followed by New York, Texas, Florida, Illinois, and Pennsylvania. But it turns out that Vermont has the highest concentration (as a percentage of total households) of gay couples - and considerably more lesbian than gay male couples.
Also, interestingly, all the counties that have the greatest concentration of gay men contain major cities, while more than half of the counties with the highest concentration levels of lesbian couples contain smaller cities and towns, particularly college towns, and rural areas.
But counties hardly tell the whole story. For instance, Cook County, Ill. (Chicago) shows up as "high" concentration on the national map. But the map of Chicago itself (p.178), broken down by individual census tracts, shows that same-sex couples are clustered mainly on the north side toward lakefront.
More precisely, the separate Chicago maps for gays and lesbians show that gay male couples are more concentrated in the densely populated lakefront tracts while lesbian couples are a little more likely to live away from the lake and are more widely dispersed throughout the city - and the suburbs.
The same pattern holds for most other large cities: Gay men are densely clustered in a few areas, often near the center of the city, while lesbians are somewhat clustered and a little more widely dispersed. In a few cities the gay and lesbian clustering areas are markedly divergent.
The Atlas also tell us for each state and the 25 cities what percentage of same-sex households have children, what percentage are in various age brackets, and what percentage have a black, white, or Hispanic householder (the person who completed the census form).
Two questions arise. How can data about only a portion of gays tell us much about where all gays live? And what is that information good for anyway?
Even if only a small portion of same-sex couples identified themselves (and I think the Gates and Ost significantly overestimate the percentage who did), their location and density patterns fit roughly with our observations about where gays live for areas we know well.
As additional support, a Florida epidemiologist who compared the gay male couples data with location patterns of gay and bisexual men with HIV/AIDS, which would include single men as well as men in couples, found a high correlation between the two.
Even without specific numbers, gay residential patterns are useful for people who want to reach the gay community with public service information - e.g., AIDS or breast cancer education - or who want to provide social services to gays. Firms marketing products to gays can concentrate their efforts on areas where gays and/or lesbians actually live.
Gay concentration data should be particularly interesting to gays themselves when they are thinking about where they want to move to look for a job or retire and where in a particular city they want to live in order to find gay friends and social acceptance.
And finally, concentration data and even minimum numbers can let unwary politicians know they have gays and lesbians in their districts. Told that (at least) 55 gay couples lived in his town, one state senator blurted out, "Surely you jest. Wow, I have never met any of these people." (Whose fault is it if he has never met any gay couples who are constituents? I'm just asking, that's all.)
But most of all, the Atlas is just plain fun. Most of us like to read about ourselves and the Atlas offers a lot of interesting information in a visually appealing form.