university of california los angeles

Back in 1991 the Internet was only for geeks and grad students. Ron Buckmire, who was studying applied mathematics at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in upstate New York, was both. When Buckmire visited Los Angeles that year, his welcoming committee included Dean Elzinga, who was studying mathematical logic at the University of California, Los Angeles.

The Williams Institute for Sexual Orientation Law and Public Policy at the University of California, Los Angeles, released a report Monday documenting what it called "a gay demographic explosion" in some of the country's reddest of regions. Using recently released data from the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey, the analyses show that the number of same-sex couples in the United States has quadrupled since 1990, growing at a rate 21 times that of the population. But increases have been the most dramatic in the Midwest, Mountain, and Southern states.