Texas! Who knew?
According to Wired, the top ten most creative cities include Austin, Houston, and Dallas. One of the ways they figured this out was to look at “gay population concentrations” to measure “tolerance and diversity.”
A little known fact is that Columbus has an incredibly high gay population concentration. It’s 6th overall (according to a 1998 article in The Advocate) and it’s ranked third in the top ten best places to live if you’re gay.
I’m trying to find out why it’s considered a gay-friendly city and I found this article quoting Jeff Redfield, executive director of Stonewall Columbus:
Redfield agreed that the size of the gay population is a plus–estimating that 120,000 to 150,000 gay people currently live in Columbus–but also said that the small town feel and low cost of living are an advantage. “Columbus is a typical all-American city with a hometown feel and all the options,” he said. “There is the ability in many parts of the city to hold hands over dinner and go out shopping with friends.”
But the article is primarily questioning the gay-friendly assumption in Columbus because we “have the country’s fifth highest rate of hate crime violence against the gay community.”
There’s still a lot of work to be done.
Despite a fear of living in Texas, not to mention raising kids…I have told the hubby that I would consider moving there only if we lived in Dallas or Austin. Glad to know there are some pluses to those cities.
That blows my mind! I can’t believe there are that many estimated gay people living in Columbus - I didn’t think Columbus was that big of a city. We lived in the Dallas area, and I can assure you it is NOT in any way progressive. It is definitely not gay-friendly either, according to my gay/lesbian friends when I lived there, unless you’re confined to basically one neighborhood in Dallas. I wonder where they get these statistics. Austin, though…now Austin IS a cool town.
Hi Dawn…are you from around Columbus? I am…it does have a nice large gay community. The Short North district is predominantly gay. It’s really lovely. I had heard about the hate crime, though. :o(
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