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Austin, Tx is generally gay-friendly, but no gayborhood. It is becoming much more conservative. The rest of the state is beyond scary, outside of the cities. Austin is the only place I would recommend living for a gay person, in Texas. The cops here have a history of busting gay people for public cruising and dwi. The capitol police used to sit outside of Charlies, a former bar by the capitol. They would arrest gay people constantly for dwi there. APD does or did the same thing around the other gay bars. If you visit, do not drive drunk. There is not much public transportation. Armistead Maupin is moving to Santa Fe. Maybe that's the new Mecca.
I would say the 3 most gay friendly cities in North America are all in Canada and would be
1. Montreal
2. Toronto
3. Vancouver
All cities allow full gay adoption rights, gay marriage, protection from discrimination in the workforce, full protection under the human rights commission, and have sizable gay communities. These rights extend for trans-gender people as well. In all 3 cities you can walk down the streets hand in hand with zero problems.
In the USA my experience has been that gays have the best living conditions and rights in
1. San Francisco
2. NYC
3. LA
4. Parts of Miami
5. Philly
There are other areas as well but I'm only naming the big cities I can think of.
Austin, Tx is generally gay-friendly, but no gayborhood. It is becoming much more conservative. The rest of the state is beyond scary, outside of the cities. Austin is the only place I would recommend living for a gay person, in Texas. The cops here have a history of busting gay people for public cruising and dwi. The capitol police used to sit outside of Charlies, a former bar by the capitol. They would arrest gay people constantly for dwi there. APD does or did the same thing around the other gay bars. If you visit, do not drive drunk. There is not much public transportation. Armistead Maupin is moving to Santa Fe. Maybe that's the new Mecca.
I don't think houson and dallas would be THAT bad. My boyfriend was shocked though when he went out in Dallas a few months ago and there were a ton of people across the street on a random friday night with a ton of signs protesting and screaming at everyone in the gay bar across the street. You'd never see anything like that in Chicago.
I don't think houson and dallas would be THAT bad. My boyfriend was shocked though when he went out in Dallas a few months ago and there were a ton of people across the street on a random friday night with a ton of signs protesting and screaming at everyone in the gay bar across the street. You'd never see anything like that in Chicago.
That is strange. I go out in the gayborhood in Dallas at least every couple of months and have never seen anything like that. I can assure you that is not common at all. My wifes best friend is gay and we go with them.
For small-to-midsized cities, Chapel Hill, Durham and Asheville in North Carolina all deserve mentions.
Academic towns in general (like Chapel Hill, or the previously mentioned Iowa City) are generally pretty gay-friendly, as are places like Asheville, which is across-the-board freak-friendly (meant in the nicest of ways - A'ville is a hippie mecca, an arts mecca, once had a nudist run for mayor, and - if anything - orientation is less of a big deal than any number of other things).
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