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.
As they walk arm
in arm across a downtown street toward the entrance of a
popular bar, Maggie Ryan and Melanie Moore could be an
advertisement for cosmopolitan gay life.
They’re decked out in tight jeans, designer boots,
and fitted black overcoats, their entire look and attitude
screaming urban lesbian chic. But this is far from an
urban setting.
“You have
to see Cowgirl Bar & Grill,” Ryan says as we
approach a house-like structure with a small courtyard
that looks more like a Mexican restaurant than a
nightclub. “This place is great.”
Inside, a dense
mix of people—gay, straight, urban hipster, and
rancher boy—listen to a local pop musician pour
his soul into a microphone at one end of the room.
Just beyond, a lively crowd shoots pool in a small
lounge. A group of women—some wearing cowboy hats
that barely hide their buzz cuts—emerges from a
dining room on the other side of the bar. “This
is the heart of Santa Fe right here,” Moore says
proudly.
Like so many of
the city’s residents, Moore, 34, and Ryan, 27, came
from more urban places to this high-elevation town of
incredible natural beauty nestled against New
Mexico’s Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Santa Fe,
they say, “is the best place” they’ve
lived. It’s a place for mavericks and misfits.
“And as far as being gay, it’s completely
integrated,” Moore says. “We hold hands
everywhere.”
Integrated.
That’s how out gays and lesbians across the country
portray their city or town when asked why it’s
a great place to live. During a time when gay people
are coming out at younger ages, many cities outside of
the traditional urban gay centers have become important
examples of this subtle ingredient of positive change.
“As society becomes more accepting, the need
for intense gay enclaves begins to dissipate,” says
Gary Gates, 45, a demographer who studies LGBT populations
at the Williams Institute at the University of
California, Los Angeles, School of Law.
“It’s not that they won’t need a gay
community, they just won’t have to move to find
it.”
Most of the gay
people I spoke with for this story said they still value
a strong gay culture, but ethnic diversity, good jobs, low
crime rates, abundant natural beauty, and a
never-ending stream of things to do are equally if not
more important. Many also want good public schools where
they will be accepted as parents. “We’re
raising two African-American kids and no one even bats
an eye,” says San Diego resident Tim Mulligan,
39, an attorney who is raising a
7-year-old son
and a 3-year-old daughter with his partner, Sean Murphy,
43. “We live in a white neighborhood and we’re
sending our kids to a public school. A lot of times we
are the only same-sex parents [at school events]. The
school thinks it’s great. The sports teams think
it’s great. It’s been awesome. San Diego
is a beautiful place to raise kids.”
From Ithaca,
N.Y., to Missoula, Mont., gay residents praise a small-town
feel even before mentioning how gay-friendly their cities
might be. A great place to live is self-contained,
with little congestion, they say, but has enough
big-city amenities to prevent the need for routine travel.
“There are things going on all over town,”
says Brett Gambill, 27, a gay fourth-grade teacher who
lives in Columbus, Ohio. “It’s a great city.
It’s not too big. Everything is 20 minutes away. But
it’s big enough that you don’t feel like
you’re stuck in Middle America.”
I discovered the
same urban-bucolic balance in Santa Fe. It has big
retail stores on the edge of town, while small pueblo-style
adobe homes and businesses—the city’s
official architectural style—line most of the
streets and blanket the rocky hills and ravines around the
city. Their rounded edges and soft colors provide a
seamless transition between humanity and nature and a
charming backdrop to the city’s very walkable
downtown.
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