Which Is The Gayest State In The U.S.?

The folks at UCLA’s Williams Institute crunched the numbers to come up with a list of the gayest states in the U.S. According to the data, Oregon is officially America’s gayest state in terms of the highest proportion of LGBTQ people in its population, with 7.8% of adults in Oregon self-identifying as LGBTQ. I should mention that reporting on this news story had a bit of a hiccup when the Williams Institute first released its results last week. The report originally indicated Kentucky as having the highest percentage of people identifying as LGBTQ at 10.5%. Naturally, you can see how that raised some eyebrows in the LGBTQ news space. Apparently, some of the data for their report came from the Centers for Disease Control, who initially reported the 10.5% number but corrected it this past summer. The Williams Institute issued an apology for not catching the correction sooner. https://twitter.com/WilliamsPolicy/status/1733251215524262371 Technically, the highest proportion of LGBTQ adults in the U.S. is in the District of Columbia, with 14.3% (yep – technically not a state). But in terms of states, Oregon holds the top spot, followed by Delaware and Vermont with 7.5% and 7.4% respectively. Filling out the top 10 gayest states are: • New Hampshire (7.2%) • Washington (6.9%) • Colorado (6.8%) • My home state of Nevada (6.6%) • Massachusetts, Maine, and Rhode Island all clocked in with 6.5% The states with the lowest percentage of LGBTQ people are West Virginia and Mississippi, with both reporting just 4.1%. Other states at the bottom of the list include: • North Carolina (4.4%) • Illinois (4.5%) • Alabama (4.6%) • Iowa (4.7%) • North Dakota and South Carolina both clocked in with 4.9% The study also crunched the numbers by region, and found that the highest percentage of America’s queer population is — wait for it — in the South, with 36.9% of all LGBTQ adults in the U.S. living in southern states. The West is home to 24.2% of American queer folks, 20.6% in the Midwest, and 18.3% live in the Northeast.

Overall, the study found that 5.6% of American adults identify as LGBTQ which comes out to about 14.1 million people across the U.S. It’s worth noting that the percentage gets higher the younger the adult: between the ages of 18 and 24, 15.4% of Americans identify as LGBTQ. The numbers trend downward with older demographics. Check out the full report here.