The Myth of Gay Affluence

[xchrom]

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/03/the-myth-of-gay-affluence/284570/

?n2slti
A gay pride flag flies in D.C.'s posh Logan Circle neighborhood. (Ted Eytan/Flickr)

Who are America’s gays? To hear it as Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia would have it, gays are a privileged set, living it up in cities across the country. As the justice wrote in his dissent to Romer v. Evans—a landmark 1996 case that overturned a Colorado state constitutional amendment prohibiting legal protections for gays and lesbians—“Those who engage in homosexual conduct tend to reside in disproportionate numbers in certain communities.” Even more ominously, to Scalia, they have "high disposable income," which gives them "disproportionate political power… to [achieve] not merely a grudging social toleration, but full social acceptance, of homosexuality.”

The pernicious insinuation—that gays and lesbians are one the wealthiest demographics in the country—isn’t a new cliché. Some of the most ingrained public images of LGBT people are their cosmopolitan, highfalutin lifestyle; gays, so the story goes, live in gentrified urban neighborhoods like The Castro in San Francisco or Chelsea in New York, eat artisanal cheese, and drink $12 cocktails.

But like most stereotypes, the myth of gay affluence is greatly exaggerated.

In reality, gay Americans face disproportionately greater economic challenges than their straight counterparts. A new report released by UCLA’s Williams Institute found that 29 percent of LGBT adults, approximately 2.4 million people, experienced food insecurity—a time when they did not have enough money to feed themselves or their family—in the past year. In contrast, 16 percent of Americans nationwide reported being food insecure in 2012. One in 5 gays and lesbians aged 18-44 received food stamps in the last year, compared with just over 1 in 4 same sex couples raising children. The LGBT community has made huge political strides over the past decade, but in economic matters they still lag far behind the rest of the country.

[Kaleva]

1. Everybody farts

[Nine]

2. Interesting article

I've always seen economic issues as being among the most important aspects of LGBT rights, although this doesn't seem to be a popular view.

[xchrom]

3. lol -- yes that's true -- but economic issues are important if you are lgbtiq. nt

[linuxman]

4. I blame the media.

Nobody makes a show about Salvation Army-shopping gay dudes in Kentucky. Television would have you think every gay man in this country is designing for Prada or styling soccer moms' hair for big bucks. The stereotype sets gays up for failure. When affluence is perceived as the norm people will wonder "What the fuck is wrong with YOU then?" when they see anything less.

[Igel]

5. Blame advocates.

In the '90s part of the advocacy involved showing that having gays was good for a city. They were more educated; more prosperous; more creative. Studies were put out showing that the presence of a gay community, either social or geographic, added to a city's prosperity and growth. You were a homophobe if you discounted or undermined the studies. This wasn't so much good work as the Good Work.

There were even a lot of approaches to showing causality: If you're gay then you're less ____ and that makes you more open-minded, more creative, more inventive. If you're gay then you're more _____ that that makes you more open-minded, more creative, more inventive. Hormones, brain structure, social pressure, opportunities, etc., etc. Lots of causes advanced to explain the data--oddly, those who pointed to social pressure also wanted anti-bullying programs, those who pointed to brain-structure typically also claimed that homosexuality wasn't a choice but biological and genetic. Each cause fit the researcher's narrative. Not really surprising, but certainly suspicious.

Rather than cities' viewing gay communities as offensive and to looked down on, cities starting thinking of gay communities as part of their economic engines and the diversity that made them great. They were artists, knowledge workers, those who pushed the culture forward and made for a vibrant intellectual and cultural scene. This was a good thing. It was in national magazines. It reverberated in local newspapers, from the free things you pick up in newstands to the LA Times and Houston Chronicle to the Eugene Register-Guard. It affected city councils, development boards, and made for a great way to shut up critics of gay rights. Some argued for finding ways to attract gays to create a gay community in their city, or to help gays "come out" to make obvious and visible the covert community that's there and oppressed.

High-profile gays made it easier for the media to buy into this and sell this idea. Many wanted to, anyway; the "liberal media" is mostly college educated, and that skews the sample strongly (D) in almost every nationwide survey of reporters and editors. Then "Queer Eye" came along, gay rights became more fashionable, and with the typical 20-minute memory of the typical American most forgot this multi-year trend in the national media ever happened. It shouldn't have; the entire campaign failed the critical thinking test, even if rednecks also decried it.

It was no more true at the time than it is now. It was PR. A tool. It was a good battering ram at the time; now it's in the way. I really wouldn't be surprised to find that there are those who held one view 10-15 years ago and the opposite view now.

[Starry Messenger]

6. k&r

I never thought of the Castro being that gentrified, it's getting more that way now that affluent (straight) brogrammer types are moving in. Older LGBT folks (some with HIV/AIDS) are getting hit by the eviction wave that's going on it the city, or getting priced out.

Nearly every LGBT person I know is very progressive, concerned about income inequality, and poor like me, lol.

[LiberalAndProud]

7. Scalia actually wrote about wealth and disproportionate political power?

I had to double check his Citizens United decision. Yes, he did join the majority.

I don't mean to derail the thread, but the premise that gays are mostly rich is just stupid anyway.

[UTUSN]

8. Yip, incredible: SCALIA saying "disproportional political power" = cash. That's, um, *rich*

This is a point that needs to be spread far and wide, that SCALIA -- who has been instrumental in undermining elections and one-person-one-vote by equating CASH with "free speech" and giving personhood to corporations and in coming weeks will finish off democratic elections by ruling that limits on campaign donations infringe on "free speech" -- is saying that "free speech" depends on who has the CASH for it really to be "free speech."

I take it that he will be forthcoming with detailed specifications as to when CASH is "free speech" and when it's not and when possessed by whom.

I suppose he will, also, enlighten us as to when stereotypes are permissible, since he's using one here, and when not, say, when mobsterhood is attributed to Italians.

[Catherina]

9. Thank you. Waiting for the "War on Poverty" DU rec. n/t