"Through the lens of gayborhoods, Amin Ghaziani offers a provocative and insightful new analysis of the gay experience. He combines historical documentation, popular media accounts, and empirical data to tell a compelling story of how gayborhoods shaped LGBT and urban life in America and considers what might be next for these enclaves in a post-gay society."--Gary J. Gates, Williams Institute, University of California, Los Angeles

"What happens to cities when gay life moves out of the closet and into the streets? In this important book, Amin Ghaziani examines the cultural politics and political economy of the gayborhood, charting its emergence as a safe space in a hostile environment and its evolving role in the gentrifying metropolis. There Goes the Gayborhood? is original, timely, and provocative. It's destined to spark a heated debate."--Eric Klinenberg, author ofGoing Solo and Heat Wave

"As gayness moves from the closet to the mainstream, the social and spatial structure of the gay community is inevitably changing. Social transformations are always expressed in the urban landscape, and gay neighborhoods are no exception. In his superb new book, Amin Ghaziani offers a nuanced and perceptive guide to the changing nature of gay life in contemporary urban America. As a former resident of San Francisco's Castro neighborhood during its heyday, I read the book with great interest and much appreciation for the power of Ghaziani's sociological imagination."--Douglas S. Massey, Princeton University

"Gayborhoods may come and go, but identities continue to inform processes of urbanization. This is a lively and informative read that contributes to contemporary theorizing on sexuality and space. Ghaziani deftly parses through demographic information and sociological narratives to clarify the histories and futures of sexual communities in the era of the post-gay."--Jasbir K. Puar, author ofTerrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times

"Examining the declining centrality of iconic urban gayborhoods in the wake of dramatic gains in social acceptance of gays and lesbians, Ghaziani nimbly escapes the twin pitfalls of lamenting liberationist losses or celebrating assimilationist victories. This sensitive and sensible intervention into 'post-gay' discourse on the shifting social geography of sex and the city makes welcome contributions to both queer and urban studies."--Judith Stacey, New York University

"There Goes the Gayborhood? is an extraordinarily researched and considered study of how we understand neighborhoods, communities, and cities in the post-gay era. Despite the increasing tolerance and support of gay culture in today's society, Ghaziani makes a clear and cogent case that the gayborhood remains an important source of identity, social capital, and solidarity among sexual minorities."--Elizabeth Currid-Halkett, author ofThe Warhol Economy

"Marshaling census data, historical records, and voices of gayborhood denizens, Ghaziani tells the complex story of queer geographies in the United States. In doing so, he eloquently documents how gayborhoods--their compositions, meanings, and functions--have evolved along with larger cultural, gendered, economic, and sexual changes."--C. J. Pascoe, author ofDude, You're a Fag: Masculinity and Sexuality in High School

"There Goes the Gayborhood? contributes to the important and growing literature on sexuality, moving past questions about individual identity and social-movement activism to address broader questions about daily life, social interaction, and the spaces in which people live."--Robert Wuthnow, author of Small-Town America

"Through the lens of gayborhoods, Amin Ghaziani offers a provocative and insightful new analysis of the gay experience. He combines historical documentation, popular media accounts, and empirical data to tell a compelling story of how gayborhoods shaped LGBT and urban life in America and considers what might be next for these enclaves in a post-gay society."--Gary J. Gates, Williams Institute, University of California, Los Angeles

"What happens to cities when gay life moves out of the closet and into the streets? In this important book, Amin Ghaziani examines the cultural politics and political economy of the gayborhood, charting its emergence as a safe space in a hostile environment and its evolving role in the gentrifying metropolis. There Goes the Gayborhood? is original, timely, and provocative. It's destined to spark a heated debate."--Eric Klinenberg, author ofGoing Solo and Heat Wave

"As gayness moves from the closet to the mainstream, the social and spatial structure of the gay community is inevitably changing. Social transformations are always expressed in the urban landscape, and gay neighborhoods are no exception. In his superb new book, Amin Ghaziani offers a nuanced and perceptive guide to the changing nature of gay life in contemporary urban America. As a former resident of San Francisco's Castro neighborhood during its heyday, I read the book with great interest and much appreciation for the power of Ghaziani's sociological imagination."--Douglas S. Massey, Princeton University

"Gayborhoods may come and go, but identities continue to inform processes of urbanization. This is a lively and informative read that contributes to contemporary theorizing on sexuality and space. Ghaziani deftly parses through demographic information and sociological narratives to clarify the histories and futures of sexual communities in the era of the post-gay."--Jasbir K. Puar, author ofTerrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times

"Examining the declining centrality of iconic urban gayborhoods in the wake of dramatic gains in social acceptance of gays and lesbians, Ghaziani nimbly escapes the twin pitfalls of lamenting liberationist losses or celebrating assimilationist victories. This sensitive and sensible intervention into 'post-gay' discourse on the shifting social geography of sex and the city makes welcome contributions to both queer and urban studies."--Judith Stacey, New York University

"There Goes the Gayborhood? is an extraordinarily researched and considered study of how we understand neighborhoods, communities, and cities in the post-gay era. Despite the increasing tolerance and support of gay culture in today's society, Ghaziani makes a clear and cogent case that the gayborhood remains an important source of identity, social capital, and solidarity among sexual minorities."--Elizabeth Currid-Halkett, author ofThe Warhol Economy

"Marshaling census data, historical records, and voices of gayborhood denizens, Ghaziani tells the complex story of queer geographies in the United States. In doing so, he eloquently documents how gayborhoods--their compositions, meanings, and functions--have evolved along with larger cultural, gendered, economic, and sexual changes."--C. J. Pascoe, author ofDude, You're a Fag: Masculinity and Sexuality in High School

"There Goes the Gayborhood? contributes to the important and growing literature on sexuality, moving past questions about individual identity and social-movement activism to address broader questions about daily life, social interaction, and the spaces in which people live."--Robert Wuthnow, author of Small-Town America

There Goes the Gayborhood?

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Contents

Beyond the Gayborhood

"As the country opens its arms to openly gay and lesbian people, the places we call home have grown beyond urban gay ghettos. The Advocate welcomes you to this new American landscape." The March 2007 essay from this national gay newsmagazine concluded with a poll to its readership: "Do you prefer to live in an integrated neighborhood rather than a distinct gay ghetto?" The following issue reported the results from a self-selected group who had signed on to a website to vote: 69 percent said yes, and 31 percent said no. One year later, in a more methodologically rigorous story entitled "Where the Gays Are," a writer for the same source interviewed demographer Gary Gates, who had analyzed the 2000 and 2010 US Censuses. "Same-sex couples live virtually everywhere in the country," said Gates. In 2000, they reported living in 99.3 percent of all counties in the United States, and in 2010 they were present in 93 percent. As we have seen, gays and lesbians once considered the gayborhood a mecca, a safe space to live. Why has their residential repertoire changed in recent years?

This chapter presents the beginning of an answer, which is based on a comprehensive archive of more than six hundred media reports. We will examine these articles for the perspectives they contain of those lesbian and gay residents who live in gayborhoods, those who once did but have since moved out, and those who reject them outright. Like all news reporting, and judging from some dramatic headlines, journalists who write about gayborhoods contend with their own preconceptions and drama. Selection bias, for example, is a perpetual possibility with media coverage; reporters are human, just like the rest of us, and they like a good story. Therefore, it is possible that they consciously or unconsciously interview residents whose proclamations of gayborhood demise make for a captivating pitch. Although these articles are the main source for our thinking in this chapter, we will use them to focus on how the assimilation of sexual minorities is affecting where they choose to live, and how those decisions can change the significance of gayborhoods across the country. We will harness the insights that the media promises by reading past the headlines and capitalizing on the hundreds of interviews that journalists have tirelessly conducted over forty years. This treasure trove of perspectives will allow us to appreciate the lived realities of urban change in America.

WHERE THE GAYS ARE

Assimilation reveals a great deal about the groups that are intermixing — in this case, the gays and straights that cross paths on the streets and in the stores of gay neighborhoods. Demographers express the extent of this mixing through what they call an "index of dissimilarity." This statistic represents the proportion of minority group members who would have to exchange places, usually census tracts, with majority group members in order to achieve a relatively even residential distribution, defined as one where every neighborhood replicates the sexual composition of the city overall. According to sociologist Doug Massey and his colleagues, the index measures residential segregation and spatial isolation, both of which tell us about the "separation of socially defined groups in space, such that members of one group are disproportionately concentrated" in a particular area. Index values range from o to 100, where o represents total integration and 100 signifies conditions of extreme segregation.

Table 1.1 shows us that male and female same-sex partner households have become less segregated and less spatially isolated across the United States from 2000 to 2010. Male same-sex partner households remain in the moderate range of segregation (between 30 and 60), while female same-sex partner households have scores in the low range (below 30). Using 2010 Census data, demographer Amy Spring compared these scores with those for economic and racial groups. She found that the mean index of dissimilarity of the poor from the nonpoor was 33.13, and the index of all nonwhite racial and ethnic groups from the white population was 52.26. Spring concludes, "Segregation of same-sex partners rivals that of other types of segregation and should be considered alongside economic status and race as an important factor in urban spatial patterns."

Statistical segregation is not the same thing as how residents perceive one another as they decide whether to share an urban space. The dissimilarity index, however, is silent on this question of motivation. "What a neighborhood truly is," argues sociologist Meghan Ashlin Rich, "exists in the minds of social actors, its residents, and neighborhood outsiders." Perceptions about sexuality and its significance in residential decision making must also be an important part of our explorations. We need to develop a qualitative counterpart, a dissimilarity meanings measure, if you will, that can help us to better understand why lesbians, gay men, and even straights choose to live and socialize in one part of the city rather than another.

Local laws exert considerable influence on such decisions. Writing for the New York Times in 2004, reporter Josh Benson interviewed a lesbian couple who had recently relocated to a New Jersey suburb. Neither woman considered herself "any sort of activist," Benson noted, and both wanted "to have a suburban family life that is almost boringly normal." But why Jersey? "We moved to New Jersey because the laws have just improved and continue to change in good ways for the gay and lesbian community," said Jeanne, one of the two women that Benson interviewed. "And we're specifically not moving into gay neighborhoods here. Within the state of New Jersey, we feel comfortable living anywhere." Jeanne's partner Diane added, "Here, we're just part of a neighborhood. We weren't the gay girls next door; we were just neighbors. We were able to blend in, which is what you want to do, rather than have the scarlet letter on our heads."

I suspect that Jeanne and Diane felt like they could blend in partly because of the safety that their legal environment provides them. New Jersey passed the Domestic Partnership Act in 2003, the year before Benson interviewed them. This law extended many legal rights, protections, and benefits to same-sex couples, and it made the state more progressive at the time than its neighbors: "By contrast, gay rights advocates in New York state celebrated the passage of an anti-discrimination law just two weeks ago"—on September 5, 2004—but "a similar law has been on the books in New Jersey for 12 years," Benson explained. Such legislative differences explain where gays and lesbians choose to live, especially when they are considering neighboring states: "Unlike politically influential gay constituencies in nearby urban areas, which have their centers of gravity in dynamic neighborhoods like Chelsea in Manhattan or Washington Square West in Philadelphia, New Jersey's [residential pattern] is a more diffuse phenomenon." Variation in state laws is related to whether the gay and lesbian population is concentrated (where laws permit inequality) or diffuse (where laws promote equality). In a 2007 Washington Post story, Lisa Leff arrived at a similar conclusion about the entire country: "Gayborhoods are losing their relevance as gays win legal rights and greater social acceptance."

Favorable legislation creates a perception among some gay people that they have greater options for where to live. Strides toward legal equality, therefore, may attenuate the backbone of gay life in urban America by encouraging individuals to diffuse across a respective state. Gayborhoods will become less relevant and less resonant for these sexual minorities who, in prior historical moments of legislative injustices, may have opted to cluster for protection. In a 2004 Boston Globe article, reporter James McCown asked, "With the dawn of same-sex marriage in Massachusetts and the acceptance of gays across wide swaths of American society, whither the gay ghetto?" Assimilation generates feelings of acceptance, comfort, and safety. It enables gays and lesbians to feel like they are a part of the mainstream, which remained elusive for so many of them in prior generations. It also reduces their sense of otherness, or a feeling that they are different from straights. This emerging social mindset is reversing an earlier propensity of sexual minorities to residentially concentrate in distinct gayborhoods. The most revealing example comes from a directive that former National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF) executive director Urvashi Vaid gave for gays "to leave the ghetto," which she condemned as "a more spacious closet," as we learned earlier.

If gayborhoods formed during the coming out era when sexual minorities sought sanctuary from discrimination and violence, then we would expect them to gradually disappear as they feel safer and more incorporated into the mainstream. David Smith, also from the NGLTF, anticipated this possibility early in 1993 when the Cincinnati City Council banned discrimination against gay people in housing and employment: "The movement is breaking out beyond the gay ghettos," Smith observed. "It's moving out to small cities and counties nationwide." He, too, suggests that legal equality can compel residential dispersion. More than a decade later, in a 2007 story for the Boston Globe, Robert David Sullivan expressed the same argument: "The gay population is becoming more dispersed. As gay men [and lesbians] feel more comfortable coming out to family, neighbors, and co-workers, they may also feel more comfortable living in small cities or towns rather than in the 'gay ghettos' of large cities." Assimilation allows gay people to feel comfortable and secure. And these feelings enable them to feel safer living in areas beyond the gayborhood.

Boston is another city where gays and lesbians are leaving the gayborhood. Assimilation here has expanded the local residential repertoire beyond the South End, which was formerly the nucleus of queer life. Gays and lesbians have been relocating several blocks east to South Boston. But "Southie," as locals call it, is an odd choice since it is "a neighborhood made famous for raising barricades against change," notes Phillip Bennett in his article for the Boston Globe. Gay people "are quietly adding a dimension to a place where, to outsiders, intolerance has seemed at times part of civic duty." How can we explain this? Based on his interviews, Bennett concluded that the dispersion of gays and lesbians into unexpected urban areas like Southie was related to feeling accepted across the city: "Several activists said that the movement of gays and lesbians into South Boston is part of the widespread dispersion of the gay community as individuals and couples seek to settle down in more established or quiet neighborhoods. 'In recent years, we've moved further out into many different kinds of communities,' said John Meunier, Mayor Flynn's liaison to the LGBTQ community. 'It reflects a general acceptance outside of our own little downtown enclaves.'" As gay people feel more accepted and safer in today's post-gay era, they will make some unexpected decisions, such as opting to live in a neighborhood that they once perceived as intolerant. Very few places in the city will feel out of bounds to them if they do not perceive themselves as all that different from their straight neighbors.

Consider next the legendary Castro district of San Francisco. The city's Convention and Visitors Bureau chief Joe D'Alessandro lives there with his partner and their six children. D'Alessandro said that "he thinks gay enclaves marginalize the people who live there. He said the gay community in his previous home of Portland, Ore., a city without a historically gay neighborhood, is a model because gay and lesbian residents comfortably live in the mainstream. 'They do not live in a ghetto,' D'Alessandro said, 'and I think they're stronger because of it.'" On the one hand, his comment supports the contention that gayborhoods are declining in significance. But if Portland is a model city because it lacks such a district, then why, after moving to San Francisco, did he choose to live in the most famous gayborhood in the country? Why valorize those gays who "do not live in a ghetto" but then elect to live in one yourself?

For many residents, the City by the Bay is "one of the great immigrant stories" of the United States, but "these immigrants weren't coming from Italy, Ireland or Germany, but from within their own country," notes award-winning film producer, director, and writer Peter Stein. In this case, the immigrant is the gay person—and a domestic one, at that, if not also a moral refugee. Stein suggests that gayborhoods such as the Castro are "like other immigrant neighborhoods" because "the residents staked a claim to their turf. They made it a place where they could own businesses, buy property, elect their own officials, and where they could be themselves 24 hours a day." But the Castro today is not like it used to be. It has become "a sort of gay Disneyland," he continues, "and as gay men and women realize they can live in lots of different places without fear, the need for a gay neighborhood may in fact be obsolete." Because San Francisco often provides a litmus test for the rest of the country, changes in its gayborhood either signal the loss of community or they are a powerful indicator of equality.

If we spend a little more time in San Francisco, we will discover the first of two change mechanisms, or the actual, on-the-ground process through which assimilation diminishes a desire among some gays and lesbians to live in a gayborhood. "There is a decentralization occurring. Gay people are assimilating and moving to other neighborhoods," said a Castro bar owner in 1996. Eleven years later, an unauthored Philadelphia Daily News brief added, "Growing confidence among gays that they can live pretty much wherever they want nowadays and do not need the security of being in a 'gay ghetto' is contributing to cries around California that 'there goes the neighborhood.'" Don Romesburg, cochairman of the GLBT Historical Society of Northern California, said that same year, "What I've heard from some people is, 'We don't need the Castro anymore because essentially San Francisco is our Castro.'" That phrase of his —"San Francisco is our Castro"— captures how individual decisions that people make can add up to collectively undermine gayborhoods. In a post-gay era, many gays and lesbians feel like their residential imagination is expanding. When they decide where they want to live, for example, they consider the gayborhood if they want to, but they also think about the rest of the city as well—all of it is becoming a gayborhood of sorts. If everything is the Castro, however, then nothing is uniquely or distinctively so. Hence, a post-gay paradox: assimilation expands the queer horizon of residential possibilities, yet it also erases the material and sensory location of sexuality in specific, identifiable urban spaces.

This first effect of assimilation is not exclusive to big cities like Boston and San Francisco, or to medium-sized cities like Cincinnati. A geographic reordering is happening in smaller cities, small towns, and the suburbs as well. Travel with me to Northampton, Massachusetts. "There are other gay enclaves, but there's no place I know where the gay population is so integrated into the community," said Julie Pokela, a lesbian business owner and former head of the chamber of commerce. Although some people have dubbed her entire town "Lesbianville, USA," Pokela thinks that locals discourage segregation. "The town is too small and the lesbian population is too big to have ghettos." Tracy Kidder, who is the author of a nonfiction book about the area (entitled Home Town), agreed: "Northampton is on the way to being a place where [being gay or lesbian] doesn't matter anymore." But if it truly does not matter anymore, then why bother calling Northampton "Lesbianville, USA?"