{"id":1315,"date":"2017-11-09T06:23:09","date_gmt":"2017-11-09T12:23:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/?p=1315"},"modified":"2017-11-09T06:23:09","modified_gmt":"2017-11-09T12:23:09","slug":"revisit-segregation-by-sexuality-in-the-united-states","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/2017\/11\/09\/revisit-segregation-by-sexuality-in-the-united-states\/","title":{"rendered":"Revisit: Segregation by Sexuality in the United States"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
Photo by GDJ via pixabay<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Originally posted 8\/8\/2017<\/em><\/p>\n

Most people know that there\u2019s a long and persistent history of racial and ethnic segregation in the United States.\u00a0There\u2019s less awareness of segregation of\u00a0gays and lesbians,\u00a0and\u00a0gay neighborhoods\u00a0often get treated as simply a matter of \u201cchoice\u201d\u2014\u00a0much the way that queer identities\u00a0have\u00a0historically been treated as a \u201cchoice.\u201d<\/p>\n

Is it the case that gays and lesbians simply gravitate to similar areas\u00a0and form gay\u00a0\u201cenclaves,\u201d<\/a>\u00a0or is the segregation of gays and lesbians related to systematic inequalities?\u00a0According to\u00a0new work in\u00a0Population Review<\/em><\/a>\u00a0by\u00a0Dudley L. Poston Jr.<\/a>,\u00a0D\u2019Lane R. Compton,<\/a>\u00a0Qian Xiong<\/a>, and\u00a0Emily A. Knox<\/a>,\u00a0it\u2019s a little of both.<\/p>\n

To a degree,\u00a0discrimination<\/a>\u00a0drives\u00a0the\u00a0segregation of gays and lesbians.\u00a0The\u00a0researchers point\u00a0to religious intolerance and\u00a0recent anti-sodomy laws\u00a0as evidence that gays and lesbians are systematically excluded from some heterosexual communities. But\u00a0Poston Jr. and colleagues don\u2019t reject the possibility that some\u00a0gays\u00a0and lesbians\u00a0segregate\u00a0voluntarily.\u00a0As\u00a0homophobia\u00a0decreases, gays and lesbians may still wish to\u00a0take advantage of the\u00a0\u201cprotective shield and social support\u201d and \u201cstronger political voice\u201d<\/a>\u00a0afforded by self-segregation.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s likely\u00a0that the dynamics\u00a0of segregation\u00a0might be different for gays and lesbians. Lesbians\u00a0are\u00a0more likely to have kids<\/a>,\u00a0and thus might voluntarily congregate in places with better school districts.\u00a0But they\u2019re also\u00a0more likely to live in poverty<\/a>\u00a0than gay\u00a0men, which\u00a0leads to\u00a0fewer living options.<\/p>\n

Poston Jr., Compton, Xiong, and Knox\u00a0examined\u00a0the\u00a0relationship between\u00a0factors\u00a0related to racial segregation\u00a0and segregation\u00a0by sexuality\u00a0among 100\u00a0metropolitan areas\u00a0with large gay and lesbian populations,\u00a0using American Community Survey\u00a0data\u00a0from 2008 to 2012.\u00a0The\u00a0researchers\u00a0estimated\u00a0the percentage of gay or lesbian households that would have\u00a0had\u00a0to\u00a0relocate within that metropolitan area\u00a0for the number of same-sex and different-sex households to be proportional.<\/p>\n

In\u00a0<\/strong>all<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0metropolitan\u00a0areas\u00a0examined, gay and lesbian households\u00a0were\u00a0segregated from heterosexual ones.<\/strong>\u00a0On average, about 75 percent of gay male and 69 percent of lesbian couple households would have\u00a0had\u00a0to relocate within their metropolitan area\u00a0to eliminate\u00a0neighborhood\u00a0segregation.\u00a0The lowest\u00a0estimate of segregation\u00a0was\u00a0between\u00a0lesbians\u00a0and different-sex couples\u00a0in Madison, Wisconsin.\u00a0Even there, though,\u00a0just over half of lesbian households would have\u00a0had to relocate for there to be no segregation.<\/p>\n

Gay male households were more segregated from heterosexual households than were lesbian couple households\u00a0in\u00a0most\u00a0cases<\/strong>.\u00a0Provo-Orem, Utah,\u00a0had\u00a0the most segregation by sexuality:\u00a0More than\u00a090\u00a0percent of gay male households would have\u00a0had\u00a0to relocate to\u00a0be proportional\u00a0to\u00a0heterosexual married and cohabiting couples\u00a0in the population.<\/p>\n

Gay and lesbian households are segregated from each other, too.<\/strong>\u00a0In\u00a0El Paso, Texas,\u00a0which had\u00a0the most segregation\u00a0of same-sex households by gender, there\u00a0was\u00a0almost complete segregation\u00a0between lesbians and gay men.<\/p>\n

What factors predicted increased segregation\u00a0between same-sex and different-sex households?\u00a0<\/strong>For gays and lesbians, high prevalence of gay\/lesbian couple households, high rates of Republican voters\u00a0and Southern\u00a0Baptists, and high poverty rates\u00a0in their metropolitan areamade segregation more likely.<\/p>\n

For gay men, they also found\u00a0high population density, anti-sodomy laws, and a lack of\u00a0non-discrimination laws\u00a0predictive of increased segregation.<\/p>\n

For\u00a0lesbian\u00a0households,\u00a0high racial segregation also made their segregation\u00a0from different-sex households\u00a0more likely.<\/p>\n

The only factors\u00a0that predicted segregation between gay male and lesbian households were the gay male prevalence rate\u00a0and\u00a0the poverty rate<\/strong>.\u00a0As the\u00a0proportion\u00a0of gay males in an\u00a0area increased, segregation between gay male\u00a0and lesbian\u00a0couple households\u00a0decreased<\/em>.\u00a0Conversely, as the poverty rate in an\u00a0area increased,\u00a0segregation\u00a0of these two groups also\u00a0increased<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0salience of poverty rates in\u00a0these patterns\u00a0suggests that\u00a0segregation by<\/strong>\u00a0sexuality is fueled at least\u00a0partially\u00a0by inequalities rather than the choices of gay and lesbian couples<\/strong>.\u00a0But, to the extent that they have the option, gay and lesbian\u00a0couples\u00a0might choose to live\u00a0in areas where they\u00a0share\u00a0political ideologies\u00a0with others\u00a0and can avoid discrimination.<\/p>\n

There are still unexplained factors\u00a0related to segregation by sexuality.\u00a0Earlier qualitative research<\/a>\u00a0comparing the Castro with\u00a0other gay enclaves, for example,\u00a0found that\u00a0what draws residents\u00a0toward specific\u00a0areas\u00a0varies\u00a0by the community,\u00a0often\u00a0in conjunction with\u00a0more specific intersecting\u00a0identities of the gays and lesbians that predominate in each space.\u00a0Future research\u00a0could examine\u00a0individual communities to better understand how inequalities may be perpetuated through\u00a0the\u00a0residential patterns of gays and lesbians.\u00a0But amid researchers\u2019 calls\u00a0for\u00a0more\u00a0<\/em>research on the geographic\u00a0distribution\u00a0of gays and lesbians, there\u2019s currently\u00a0a\u00a0policy shift away from data collection on LGBTQ demographics<\/a>.\u00a0The findings in\u00a0this research by\u00a0Poston Jr., Compton, Xiong, and Knox\u00a0highlight\u00a0that data on\u00a0where sexual minorities live\u00a0is crucial\u00a0for understanding, and thus addressing,\u00a0inequality more generally.<\/p>\n

Braxton\u00a0Jones eearned his MA in Sociology at the University of New Hampshire,\u00a0and has begun a doctoral program at Boston University this fall. He\u00a0serves as a CCF Graduate Research and Public Affairs Scholar.\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Originally posted 8\/8\/2017 Most people know that there\u2019s a long and persistent history of racial and ethnic segregation in the United States.\u00a0There\u2019s less awareness of segregation of\u00a0gays and lesbians,\u00a0and\u00a0gay neighborhoods\u00a0often get treated as simply a matter of \u201cchoice\u201d\u2014\u00a0much the way that queer identities\u00a0have\u00a0historically been treated as a \u201cchoice.\u201d Is it the case that gays and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1903,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[470,97663,1081,30294,42308,13,2998,1434,21526,97707,119,97705,3432,97706,110,176,96995],"class_list":["post-1315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-discrimination","tag-family-poverty","tag-gays","tag-heterosexual","tag-household-formation","tag-inequality","tag-lesbian","tag-lgbt","tag-lgbtq","tag-lgbtq-discrimination","tag-poverty","tag-same-sex-household","tag-same-sex-marriage","tag-same-sex-relationships","tag-segregation","tag-sexuality","tag-sexuality-discrimination"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1903"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1315"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1315\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1318,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1315\/revisions\/1318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}