You know how we're always making fun of The Advocate when they pump out that click-bait list every year where they try to say some city like Dayton, Ohio is gayer than San Francisco? Well here's why: It is patently, comically wrong, as a huge new Gallup poll confirms. Yes, San Francisco beats every other metropolitan area with a whopping 6.2% homosexuality (and bisexuality and trans people), and the next most LGBT-filled metropolis is tiny Portland, at 5.4%.
As the Washington Post reports, the poll included interviews conducted over two years, and covers entire metro areas, including suburbs and exurbs (the SF area would have included Hayward, for instance.) Therefore, "The distinctions between cities at the top and bottom here also might be more pronounced, Gallup suggests, if this survey looked only at central cities and not metropolitan areas."
See the full ranking here, via the NYT.
Also, there's a dig at Alabama, given that the poll confirms that the Birmingham metro area is statistically the least gay in the country, at 2.6%.
The difference between the largest and smallest gay populations among the 50 largest metros in the country is only a few percentage points Birmingham comes in at at the bottom at 2.6 percent. But the list of cities that appear the least gay-friendly here is noticeably full of Southern and Midwestern cities in parts of the country where gay rights have not yet expanded as fast as they have in places like San Francisco (San Jose is an exception here). Birmingham's appearance at the very bottom is notable given the very public intransigence of public officials in Alabama lately on marriage equality.
Given the presence of Hartford, Connecticut high on this list, you can expect The Advocate to choose them for #1 next year. And we will, once again, laugh and laugh and laugh.