Can you guess which U.S. city has the highest rate of gay residents who are parents? Los Angeles? San Francisco maybe? Nope, it’s Salt Lake City, Utah.

Now can you guess the state with the highest rate of gay parents? California? Wrong again, it’s Mississippi.

UCLA researcher Gary Gates took a new look at census data and found that small and often times more conservative towns like Visalia and Porterville, CA have higher concentrations of gay couples raising children.

“That’s largely because in socially conservative areas, LGBT people tend to come out later in life,” Gates says, “so they’re more likely to have different sex relationship earlier in life which may have produced children.”

Kristin Beasley is one of them. She and her partner Candi Hood grew up in the Visalia-Porterville area. But before they were out, they married men and had children. Now, however, they live together in nearby Reedley with the two youngest of their six children and have written about their experience in the book, From Privilege to Pride.

“Nobody comes to the Central Valley because they’re gay. You can put that on a bumper sticker! ‘Don’t come to the Central Valley if you’re gay,’” Beasley jokes. “But people move to the Central Valley because there are economic reasons to live here, they have family reasons to live here, or if they have children in urban centers where they’ve been out and living, they’re moving back home to their extended family.”

People like Beasley and Hood are also changing attitudes towards LGBT families in these conservative areas. “It is prompting these conversations in parts of the country that haven’t had them,” says Gates. “As people come to know their LGBT neighbors, they tend to become more supportive.”

Anthony Maldonado and his partner Brian Albertoni both moved to Visalia several decades ago, themselves, and they found many people were open to them starting a family through adoption.

“We had social workers that came to our house, our bio was sent out immediately, and it was, they felt, an opportunity,” says Maldonado, whose adopted son Lincoln is almost 4-years-old. “I felt that in San Francisco, watching what my friends are going through, [social workers] were much more critical. There is a much larger community up there, and many more couples wanting a child. In Visalia, I felt we had it much easier.”

But Maldonado admits that, given the chance, he would definitely want to move to a bigger city. “I would like a diverse groups of families of every culture, and I feel that Visalia is still a little limited in that.”

However Beasley plans to stay. “We can go blend in and become invisible in a dense city like LA and San Francisco, but here in the Central Valley, we refuse to be treated as 2nd class citizens.”

INFOGRAPHIC: % of Same-sex Couples Raising Children in Top Metro Areas (MSAs)

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Contact:
Grant Wasson, gwasson@rabengroup.com, (213) 236-3751
Donald Gatlin, dgatlin@rabengroup.com, (202)587-2871

Research suggests that children of lesbian parents are satisfied with their current level of contact with their male donors and do not think of their donors as dads, according to a new Williams Institute study by Abbie E. Goldberg, Williams Institute Visiting Scholar and Associate Professor of Psychology at Clark University, and Katherine R. Allen, Professor of Human Development at Virginia Tech. The study, entitled, Donor, Dad, or…? Young Adults with Lesbian Parents’ Experiences with Known Donors, sheds light on how children raised in lesbian, gay, and bisexual families are contributing to the redefinition and reconstruction of complex kinship arrangements.

Participants in the study perceived their relationships with their male donors in one of three ways: as strictly donors and not members of their family; as extended family members, but not as parents; and as fathers. Participants ranged in age from 19-29, and while most were satisfied with the current level of contact with their male donors, several desired more information or contact with these men, and in some of these cases, had already begun to establish a connection with them.

“This research sheds light on the largely unexplored relationships between the children of lesbian parents and their known donors,” said Goldberg. “The findings suggest that the terrain of chosen families deserves greater attention from researchers, therapists, and other practitioners.”

According to Goldberg and Allen, the tendency for some participants to voice a growing interest in seeing their donors more often than when they were younger indicates a turning point in the participants’ identity that emerges in late adolescence or young adulthood. These individuals may be experiencing greater independence from their mothers, which enables them to craft their own relationships with their donors.

Most of the participants perceived their donors as “just donors,” or as extended family members, and even those who perceived the donors as third parents conceptualized them as tertiary to their primary mothers. According to the study, these participants are drawing upon the traditional heterosexual family lexicon to develop useful and appropriate terms to describe and name their donors, which provides them with the language to clarify the nature of their relationship with their donors.

Among other findings, the study suggests that therapists should allow all family members to define their relationships to one another, and not presume the nature or meaning of terms like “mother” and “father,” especially in the context of lesbian-mother families that utilized known donors. Further, the study also suggests that therapists should be sensitive to the possibility that young adulthood may represent an important time for further identity exploration, especially in terms of relationship formation, and that young adults with lesbian mothers may express particular interest in their known donors during this period.

Click here for the full study.

By Abbie E. Goldberg, Katherine R. Allen

Research suggests that children of lesbian parents are satisfied with their current level of contact with their male donors and do not think of their donors as dads. The study sheds light on how children raised in lesbian, gay, and bisexual families are contributing to the redefinition and reconstruction of complex kinship arrangements. Participants in the study perceived their relationships with their male donors in one of three ways: as strictly donors and not members of their family; as extended family members, but not as parents; and as fathers. Participants ranged in age from 19-29, and while most were satisfied with the current level of contact with their male donors, several desired more information or contact with these men, and in some of these cases, had already begun to establish a connection with them.

*Article originally published in Family Process.

Click here for the full study. 

Click here for the press release.

Salt Lake City has the country’s highest percentage of gay or lesbian couples who are raising children among large cities, according to a new report.

Though it may not have the country’s largest gay community, Utah’s capital city and its suburbs boast the highest rate — 26 percent — of same-sex parenthood, according to an analysis of census data by the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law.

Salt Lake City topped the list of cities with a population of 1 million or more, with Virginia Beach, Va.; Memphis, Tenn.; San Antonio, Texas and Detroit not far behind.

The highest rates, though, were in smaller cities. In the North Dakota towns of Grand Forks and Bismarck, more than 60 percent of gay couples are raising children.

All those cities are in states with bans on same-sex marriage.

More conservative areas may tend to have a higher rate because gay or lesbian people married young to someone of the opposite sex, before they recognized or acknowledged their sexual orientation, researcher Gary J. Gates told the Los Angeles Times.

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Researchers from the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law have estimated that, contrary to public perception about New York City and San Francisco as meccas for gay families, it’s actually Salt Lake City and its surrounding suburbs that have the highest rate of gay and lesbians raising children.

After analyzing census data, researchers found that 1 in 4 gay couples in Salt Lake City are parents.

The data isn’t all that surprising if you put it into context, as researcher Gary J. Gates told Emily Alpert at the Los Angeles Times:

For instance, “a big chunk of them are people who had children young, with opposite-sex partners, before they came out,” Gates said. After coming out, they raised those children with a partner of the same sex, he explained.

That may be one reason that in some more conservative places not known for celebrating gays and lesbians, a striking percentage of same-sex couples are rearing children, Gates said. Among states, Mississippi has the highest percentage of gay or lesbian couples raising children — 26% — his analysis of census data found.

Though Salt Lake City has a high percentage of gay couples raising children, the actual number is still much smaller than in coastal hubs such as New York or Los Angeles, the data show. Besides the Utah capital, other large urban areas where gay couples are more likely to have children include Virginia Beach, Va., Detroit and Memphis, Tenn. — all places where more than a fifth of couples of the same sex are bringing up kids.

As it turns out, gay parents choose to raise kids in places like Salt Lake City for the same reasons that straight parents do (go figure!): proximity to relatives, community ties and cost of living.

“When you ask, ‘Why are you living here?’ they almost always say family,” Abbie Goldberg, an associate professor of psychology at Clark University told the Times. “It shouldn’t really be surprising. They value family — and now they’re creating families of their own.”

Source

By Emily Alpert
May 21, 2013
Los Angeles Times

Salt Lake City: the gay parenting capital of the United States?

Unexpected as it may sound, a new study finds that the Utah capital and its outskirts have the nation’s highest percentage of gay or lesbian couples raising children.

Among couples of the same sex in the Salt Lake City area, more than 1 in 4 are rearing children, the analysis of census data reveals.

That fact may seem at odds with perceptions that San Francisco and New York are the centers of gay and lesbian life. Pop culture depicts gays and lesbians turning to adoption, sperm banks or surrogacy to form families in decidedly liberal cities such as Los Angeles.

But the reality for gay parents can be very different, said Gary J. Gates, the researcher behind the new estimates from the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law.

For instance, “a big chunk of them are people who had children young, with opposite-sex partners, before they came out,” Gates said. After coming out, they raised those children with a partner of the same sex, he explained.

That may be one reason that in some more conservative places not known for celebrating gays and lesbians, a striking percentage of same-sex couples are rearing children, Gates said. Among states, Mississippi has the highest percentage of gay or lesbian couples raising children — 26% — his analysis of census data found.

Though Salt Lake City has a high percentage of gay couples raising children, the actual number is still much smaller than in coastal hubs such as New York or Los Angeles, the data show. Besides the Utah capital, other large urban areas where gay couples are more likely to have children include Virginia Beach, Va., Detroit and Memphis, Tenn. — all places where more than a fifth of couples of the same sex are bringing up kids.

The percentages are even higher in some cities with populations less than 1 million. Gates found that in the Visalia and Porterville areas in California, the last census counted roughly 500 gay or lesbian couples, nearly half of whom were raising children.

Among them were Kristin Beasley and Candi Hood, 45 and 44, who joke that their family of eight is “the lesbian Brady Brunch.”

The two women, friends long before they became a couple, married men and had children before realizing they were lesbian. After they came out and fell in love, both say they lost jobs and suffered bias while living in Visalia, which they chronicled in a recent book. They now live with the two youngest of their six children in nearby Reedley, where they grow plums and tangerines.

People have asked her, “Why don’t you just move to San Francisco?” said Beasley, coauthor of “From Privilege to Pride: Love Is the Road.” “Our families are here. Our children have grown up here. And the cost of living — it’s difficult to raise a family of six in San Francisco.”

Even if they weren’t married before, gay and lesbian people often choose to have children in seemingly surprising places because they have strong ties to their families, researchers say.

“When you ask, ‘Why are you living here?’ they almost always say family,” said Abbie Goldberg, an associate professor of psychology at Clark University in Worcester, Mass., who has studied gay and lesbian parents in rural areas. “It shouldn’t really be surprising. They value family — and now they’re creating families of their own.”

Activists who support marriage rights for gays and lesbians said the study underscores that many couples are raising children in states where they lack the protections of wedlock.

The inability to marry grates on Matt and Ray Lees, 41 and 44, who live with eight adopted children in the suburbs outside Columbus, Ohio. Some of their children were legally adopted by Matt; others were legally adopted by Ray.

Though both Matt and Ray Lees became custodians of their children, “outside of Ohio that has no weight,” Ray Lees said. “If we go on vacation, one of us could be denied the right to make a medical decision for the other’s children.”

They tote a stack of legal paperwork with them everywhere, just in case they need it.

Reacting to the new study, the National Organization for Marriage said states already provide substantial legal protections to gay couples and their children. The group, which opposes same-sex marriage, said the roughly 111,000 gay and lesbian couples raising children nationwide remain a tiny minority of U.S. households.

“The United States should not redefine marriage to accommodate the demands of this minuscule group of people,” Frank Schubert, the group’s political director, wrote in an email to The Times.

Click here to read post.

Salt Lake City: the gay parenting capital of the United States?

Unexpected as it may sound, a new study finds that the Utah capital and its outskirts have the nation’s highest percentage of gay or lesbian couples raising children.

Among couples of the same sex in the Salt Lake City area, more than 1 in 4 are rearing children, the analysis of census data reveals.

That fact may seem at odds with perceptions that San Francisco and New York are the centers of gay and lesbian life. Pop culture depicts gays and lesbians turning to adoption, sperm banks or surrogacy to form families in decidedly liberal cities such as Los Angeles.

But the reality for gay parents can be very different, said Gary J. Gates, the researcher behind the new estimates from the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law.

For instance, “a big chunk of them are people who had children young, with opposite-sex partners, before they came out,” Gates said. After coming out, they raised those children with a partner of the same sex, he explained.

That may be one reason that in some more conservative places not known for celebrating gays and lesbians, a striking percentage of same-sex couples are rearing children, Gates said. Among states, Mississippi has the highest percentage of gay or lesbian couples raising children — 26% — his analysis of census data found.

Though Salt Lake City has a high percentage of gay couples raising children, the actual number is still much smaller than in coastal hubs such as New York or Los Angeles, the data show. Besides the Utah capital, other large urban areas where gay couples are more likely to have children include Virginia Beach, Va., Detroit and Memphis, Tenn. — all places where more than a fifth of couples of the same sex are bringing up kids.

The percentages are even higher in some cities with populations less than 1 million. Gates found that in the Visalia and Porterville areas in California, the last census counted roughly 500 gay or lesbian couples, nearly half of whom were raising children.

Among them were Kristin Beasley and Candi Hood, 45 and 44, who joke that their family of eight is “the lesbian Brady Brunch.”

The two women, friends long before they became a couple, married men and had children before realizing they were lesbian. After they came out and fell in love, both say they lost jobs and suffered bias while living in Visalia, which they chronicled in a recent book. They now live with the two youngest of their six children in nearby Reedley, where they grow plums and tangerines.

People have asked her, “Why don’t you just move to San Francisco?” said Beasley, coauthor of “From Privilege to Pride: Love Is the Road.” “Our families are here. Our children have grown up here. And the cost of living — it’s difficult to raise a family of six in San Francisco.”

Even if they weren’t married before, gay and lesbian people often choose to have children in seemingly surprising places because they have strong ties to their families, researchers say.

“When you ask, ‘Why are you living here?’ they almost always say family,” said Abbie Goldberg, an associate professor of psychology at Clark University in Worcester, Mass., who has studied gay and lesbian parents in rural areas. “It shouldn’t really be surprising. They value family — and now they’re creating families of their own.”

Activists who support marriage rights for gays and lesbians said the study underscores that many couples are raising children in states where they lack the protections of wedlock.

The inability to marry grates on Matt and Ray Lees, 41 and 44, who live with eight adopted children in the suburbs outside Columbus, Ohio. Some of their children were legally adopted by Matt; others were legally adopted by Ray.

Though both Matt and Ray Lees became custodians of their children, “outside of Ohio that has no weight,” Ray Lees said. “If we go on vacation, one of us could be denied the right to make a medical decision for the other’s children.”

They tote a stack of legal paperwork with them everywhere, just in case they need it.

Reacting to the new study, the National Organization for Marriage said states already provide substantial legal protections to gay couples and their children. The group, which opposes same-sex marriage, said the roughly 111,000 gay and lesbian couples raising children nationwide remain a tiny minority of U.S. households.

“The United States should not redefine marriage to accommodate the demands of this minuscule group of people,” Frank Schubert, the group’s political director, wrote in an email to The Times.

Source

Contact:
Laura Rodriguez, lrodriguez@rabengroup.com, (310) 956-2425
Donald Gaitlin, dgatlin@rabengroup.com, (202) 821-7923

Salt Lake City, Memphis and San Antonio among top 5 metro areas over 1 million.

LOS ANGELES—The metro areas with the highest percentages of same-sex couples raising children are in states that have a constitutional ban on marriage, according to a new infographic created by the Williams Institute.

“Research consistently shows that same-sex couples raise children all across the country,” said Williams Institute public policy research fellow, Angeliki Kastanis. “This analysis underscores the fact that recognition of LGBT families is a consequential policy question in every state.”

Mississippi has the highest percentage of same-sex couples raising children at 26 percent. Below is a list of the top ten metro areas above and below 1 million:

The top metro areas depicted in the graphic are comprised of a large population center and the adjacent communities that are highly economically integrated with that center. Each area is made up of one or more counties.

Click here for full infographic.

Morgan Stanley Wealth Management announced today that, in partnership with the Williams Institute – UCLA School of Law, it will host a panel discussion to explore the primary arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court regarding the pending Defense Of Marriage Act (DOMA) and California’s Proposition 8, at the Firm’s Purchase, NY offices on Thursday, May 23 at 6:00 p.m..

“This event serves as one of the many ways in which we are engaging clients and prospective clients in a discussion of the personal financial implications of the DOMA ruling,” said Doug Ketterer, Head of Field Management and Private Wealth Management, Morgan Stanley Wealth Management. “We are pleased to once again partner with The Williams Institute in this latest of a series of wealth planning seminars for LGBT couples around the country.”

The event, which is open to the public with advance registration, will be moderated by Brad Sears, Executive Director, The Williams Institute, and Roberta Conroy, Scholar of Law and Policy, UCLA Law School. Panelists will include David Codell, Legal Director, The Williams Institute, and Kenji Yoshino, Chief Justice Earl Warren Professor of Constitutional Law, NYU School of Law. The speakers will give an in-depth perspective on the primary argument before the Court, comment on their merits and outline the possible outcome of the two cases.

“These two landmark cases could establish the trajectory of LGBT rights for years to come,” said Sears. “We are thrilled to continue our partnership with Morgan Stanley Wealth Management with this nuanced discussion of what these cases will mean for same-sex couples and LGBT rights more generally.”

The event will take place on Thursday, May 23, 2013 at 6:00 p.m. 2000 Westchester Avenue, Purchase, NY 10577. Reservations are required for security access, and limited seating is available. Please R.S.V.P. to Naoka.Nakagawa@morganstanley.com or your Morgan Stanley Financial Advisor.

Morgan Stanley Wealth Management, a global leader, provides access to a wide range of products and services to individuals, businesses and institutions, including brokerage and investment advisory services, financial and wealth planning, credit and lending, cash management, annuities and insurance, retirement and trust services.

Morgan Stanley is a leading global financial services firm providing a wide range of investment banking, securities, investment management and wealth management services. The Firm’s employees serve clients worldwide including corporations, governments, institutions and individuals from more than 1,200 offices in 43 countries. For further information about Morgan Stanley, please visit www.morganstanley.com.

Guest speakers are neither employees of nor affiliated with Morgan Stanley Wealth Management. Opinions expressed by them are solely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Morgan Stanley.

Download the Data:
Metro Areas with Population above 1 Million
Metro Areas with Population below 1 Million
% of Same-sex Couples Raising Children by State