A good place to measure this sort of effect is within a metro area that straddles state boundaries. Specifically, the Washington Metro area in this case. It would be instructive specifically to see the distribution of gay households within the Beltway, where they have the choice to reside in Virginia, Maryland, or the District of Columbia itself. Then to look at how this has changed over time.
8:03 AM, August 08, 2006
Anonymous said...
I guess I should be happy that some gay people & their families can afford to make the "flight", but then I start thinking about the ones who can't afford to move & the future gay kids who are being raised in such a homophobic environment.
I agree, anonymous. That's the failure of the "voting with your feet" solution: it leaves people behind, and often they are the least able to defend themselves. All the more reason to fight for economic justice.
10:38 PM, August 14, 2006
Apparently, gay people are being driven out of Virginia by the hostile legal environment. Here's Sullivan: The most anti-gay state in the union, if you analyze its legislative history, is now beginning to see gay flight. May they take their disposable income, their skills, their jobs, their companies and their self-respect with them. This is tyhe state that has enacvted the full Christianist agenda on gay couples: denying them not just marriage and civil unions, but even legally-binding private contracts to help them support their relationships. I'd like to see some data on the gay flight: How many families? Where are they going? What reasons are they giving? I hope it gets to the point where the Virginia Chamber of Commerce (or some similar body) starts complaining that these hateful policies are hurting the state's business climate. I know one reason that corporations started offering benefits to same-sex partners was for competitive reasons: during the 90's, people with certain skills were very valuable, and corporations needed to offer incentives. (If only the military felt the same way about Arab language specialists.) Maybe states will start doing the same thing. Maybe they'll be quiet about it, for fear of stirring up anti-gay feelings. But I imagine that soon enough the desire of gay people for the rights that everyone else enjoys will outweigh the desire of homophobes to deny them those rights, at least in the eyes of the business community.
Note that gay flight is only the visible half of the problem for Virginia: the part you don't see is all the gay individuals and families who would move to Virginia, but are choosing not to because of those homophobic policies. That's much harder to measure.
UPDATE: A lot more information can be found here on Pandagon.
"Voting with your feet: Virginia and gays"
3 Comments -
A good place to measure this sort of effect is within a metro area that straddles state boundaries. Specifically, the Washington Metro area in this case. It would be instructive specifically to see the distribution of gay households within the Beltway, where they have the choice to reside in Virginia, Maryland, or the District of Columbia itself. Then to look at how this has changed over time.
8:03 AM, August 08, 2006
I guess I should be happy that some gay people & their families can afford to make the "flight", but then I start thinking about the ones who can't afford to move & the future gay kids who are being raised in such a homophobic environment.
9:35 AM, August 08, 2006
I agree, anonymous. That's the failure of the "voting with your feet" solution: it leaves people behind, and often they are the least able to defend themselves. All the more reason to fight for economic justice.
10:38 PM, August 14, 2006