“Despite skewing Democrat, LGBT people are flocking to red states,” reports the Daily Beast. The piece cites marriage equality nationwide and more accepting attitudes as a factor, but notes that this is reflective of wider national migratory patterns:
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. …
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.
Other reports on the migration pattern are more explicit in citing the economic vitality of Red states as compared to those long-governed by Democratic majorities. Stephen Moore writes at the Daily Signal:
They are leaving states with high minimum wages, pro-union work rules, high taxes on the rich, generous welfare benefits, expansive regulations to “help” workers, green energy policies, etc.
Similarly, blogger James Joyner notes in a Christian Science Monitor column:
Red states offer lower housing costs, lower taxes, and less regulation than blue states. That’s why so many blue-state voters are moving to the West or South. In the short term, the red states gain power. in the longer term, they change. … While the near-term political effect of this has been to increase the power of red states, the longer term impact has been to turn them into purple and even blue states
The concern is that the new migrants, attracted to superior economic conditions, bring along their left-liberal economic ideas and will proceed to vote for big-government Democrats in their new havens—after which they’ll wonder at the mystery of why the economies in those states will have begun to falter, too.
On a more optimistic note, many LGBT people may have felt it necessary to live in liberal states and cities but now have the freedom not to do so. A rising number of fiscally conservative gay voters would be a good thing.
18 Comments for “Red State, Blue State”
posted by Tom Scharbach on
The concern is that the new migrants, attracted to superior economic conditions, bring along their left-liberal economic ideas and will proceed to vote for big-government Democrats in their new havens—after which they’ll wonder at the mystery of why the economies in those states will have begun to falter, too.
Far better, indeed, it would be if the new migrants proceed to vote for big government Republicans in their new havens.
I doubt that you have much to worry about. Gays and lesbians are a tiny percentage of the population. Even if the migration doubled the LGBT population in the red states, where Republicans usually win by 15-20% margins, it wouldn’t make any difference.
posted by Jim Michaud on
So this is the hottest trend. When are you moving out of your comfy blue bubble and into the oh so not homophobic anymore red states? Other commenters who actually live in red states may beg to differ with your analysis.
posted by Houndentenor on
The mainstream media has a tendency to treat anything they just discovered as if it were brand new. Gay people and others have been living in red states all along. Some of the largest gay communities are smack dab in the middle of red in places like Houston and Atlanta. Everyone has known this all along except the moron who wrote that article.
posted by Kosh III on
Indeed! I understand the cost of living is quite low in Sylacauga AL, Laurel MS or El Dorado AR and the weather can be nice at times.
Go on down, fly your rainbow flag next to your life-sized photo of Rush Limbaugh.
Show us how loving and accepting conservatives are. Go on I dare you, I double-dog dare you.
posted by Lori Heine on
I live in what I suppose would be called a “purple” state: Arizona. In the rural areas and some of the small towns, there are rabid right-wingers. In the cities, most of the conservatives are of the sort with which Stephen and other homocons are familiar. The Texas-and-Alabama-style nutcases are here, too, but everyone else pretty much ignores them.
More and more people are moving here from “blue” states, so the demographics are changing. That has been a mixed bag, as they bring in some notions (like crony capitalism) that are popular in the areas they came from but sink the economy. Nothing they do or advocate has anything to do with what logically might be considered left-progressivism. They’re here to stuff their pockets with all the money they can get, and rig the laws to benefit themselves and their fellow Babbitts.
As far as their inclusiveness goes, they appear to be “Hillary” types. They’re liberal in their rhetoric, but expect LGBT’s and people of color to just behave like good little pets and be quiet except when it benefits them. If this is what turning “blue” looks like, thus far color me unimpressed.
posted by Mike in Houston on
Oh yes — Bobby Jindal turned Louisiana into an economic powerhouse — thanks to all those right-conservative ideas that have bankrupted the state… ditto Brownback in Kansas.
Fortunately, thanks to left-liberal Texans, my state has a rainy-day fund to tide state coffers over when commodity prices demolish tax revenues… and we’ve were largely spared the real estate bubble because – again — those pesky liberals blocked allowing banks to give out second & third mortgages for the equity in people’s homes.
But of course, the real problem for Stephen is that these newcomers are making common cause with those of us who have always lived in the red areas and have been working diligently to persecute Christian bakers & florists with non-discrimination laws that include LGBT people. (end snark)
posted by Houndentenor on
There’s a lot of fluff and conjecture there when the cold, hard truth is that most people just can’t afford to live in New York, Boston or San Francisco any more. LA has gotten incredibly expensive too. If you are even at the median income (which is surprisingly not that much higher even in those high-rent cities than the national average) you can’t afford to live there unless you think it’s okay to pay over half your salary in rent. So, yes, people are going to where they can afford to live. That migration has been going on for some time now. Stagnant wages and ever increasing rents will do that.
posted by Clayton on
I live in Louisiana–a Red state attracting it’s fair share of young people, particularly in the New Orleans area. We have also had Republican governors for 16 of the last 20 years, and a Republican-dominated legislature. The result? Year after year of terrible budget deficits covered by smoke and mirror parlor tricks. We also rank near the bottom in health and education, but near the top in STD’s, mental illness, and chronic health issues. I would welcome some tax-and-spend administrations if it meant improvement in some key metrics.
posted by JohnInCA on
I don’t know about the underlying data, but the Consumer Affairs “report” (if you can call it that) doesn’t track movement to rural areas, only to cities. So those gay people moving to “red” states? Are moving to blue cities in those red states.
That said, gay people, unlike other minorities, spontaneously appear in every generation. So I kind of doubt that there’s any significant migration going on, just regressing to the mean, so to speak.
On the other hand, the data set that Consumer Affairs is comparing 2014 to, 1990, was taken back when gay sex was *literally* illegal in quite a few of those “red states”. Gee, I wonder if that might impact whether a gay person, in 1990, in Texas or Salt Lake City, would have been willing to admit to a Gallup pollster on the phone that they were gay.
Conclusion: I’m not putting much stock in this, and making conclusions about “superior economic conditions” (looking at you, Louisiana and Kansas!) seems overly optimistic.
posted by Tom Jefferson 3rd on
Sure, not every single gay person or gay couple can afford to live in some, upscale, cosmopolitan, gay ghetto…The sort of places were a good number of gay pundits live.
The challenge is that thinks are not necessarily improving for gay people in the more rural/red state communities.
So, the urbane/gay ghetto will still have an appeal (albeit a easy glossed over appeal), simply because being openly gay in the red state areas is – with few exceptions – bad for your career, social life and quite possibly your health.
Minneapolis/St.Paul probably has quite a few gay people who were born/raised in “red” communities or States.
posted by Mike in Houston on
Is it just me or is the commenting system on this site messed up?
posted by JohnInCA on
Yep. For days I’ve seen only two replies. I tacked on a new comment below (about the Alabama marriage license/recording thing) and suddenly there were 14 comments over multiple days.
Something is screwy, and I don’t think it’s local caches.
posted by Jorge on
“Despite skewing Democrat”
Democratic. I spit on the Daily Beast.
Other reports on the migration pattern are more explicit in citing the economic vitality of Red states as compared to those long-governed by Democratic majorities.
That’s okay. Once we win that Supreme Court case and start making right to work nationwide, we’ll get those workers back.
Look, if there are too many people in the blue states, getting rid of the excess will have a positive impact on the poverty rate. Much of the conversation these days is about getting rid of the underclass. But we can get rid of the middle class, too, and then the underclass can rise up to become the middle class thanks to productive union labor.
What? Wall Street and other big corporations might leave and take jobs with them? Well it was worth a try.
A rising number of fiscally conservative gay voters would be a good thing.
That would depend on fiscal conservatism’s ability to keep big corporate jobs in the US.
posted by Tom Jefferson 3rd on
Well, many gay Americans – much like most straight Americans – probably don’t do a political background check on a State or city, before deciding to relocate.
In the Bakkens, an oil boom (now calming down) prompted quite a few people to relocate to towns in North Dakota and surrounding areas (even States).
Very little analysis has been done on the gay people in this oil boom, so it would be difficult to make the sort of claims that Stephen makes.
North Dakota civil rights laws do not include sexual orientation or gender identity.
The gay community has some pride events in Fargo, ND and Bismarck, ND, but in much of the State it’s best to stay in the closet.
posted by JohnInCA on
Apologies if this has already been mentioned, but for some reason comments aren’t showing right for me.
That law in Alabama, that would shift it from “granting licenses” to “registering marriages”? Passed another hurdle. I’m still curious who they think this is gonna appease. I mean, it’s basically shifting the “burden” of compromising their “religious beliefs” from probate judges to whoever gets to record the marriages. Did they actually go and check with all the [whoever will “record” the marriages] and make sure they aren’t just going from “probate judges refusing to grant licenses” to “whoever refusing to record marriages”?
I kind of doubt it.
So overall, I think the legislation is mostly pointless. It might work out, but it sounds like it’s just a shell game.
posted by Tom Jefferson 3 on
No
posted by Tom Scharbach on
I think that several things are worth pointing out:
(1) The underlying Consumer Affairs model compares the number of self-identified gays and lesbians located in various cities in 1990 and 2014, but does not adjust for the number of gays and lesbians who might well have been living in, say, Phoenix, in 1990, but unwilling at that time to self-identify. As a result, the blue-state to red-state “migration” may be more a matter of “perceived safety to identify” over time than actual movement.
(2) The cities identified in the study are have been well-known “gay havens” for years. Houston may be in a red state, for example, but it has long been a known to be a place in Texas where gays and lesbians can live in more safety than, say, Tyler. I think that is true for almost all the cities included in the study. Most are state or regional centers for gay and lesbian life.
(3) Related to the “self-identification” question, I notice that every one of the dozen or so cities I clicked on, with the exception of San Francisco, showed a higher percentage of self-identified gays and lesbians in 2014 than in 1990. Again, that suggests the need for control adjustments. It may well be that what we are seeing is that more gays and lesbians, increasingly willing to self-identify, are staying in smaller cities throughout the country rather than moving to Boston, New York, San Francisco, Washington, Chicago, Atlanta or Houston.
As others have pointed out, I suspect that what we have here is a combination of superficial analysis on the part of Consumer Affairs and the media’s tendency to breathlessly hype anything “new”. I’m not sure the data is sufficiently controlled to draw any conclusions at all.
posted by Tom Jefferson 3rd on
I think that much more research would need to be done, before we can say that lots of gay people or gay couples are moving to red states or red cities and towns.
I think it is research worth doing and it may indeed show what Stephen argues, but what research exists is too limited and too narrow.