(This information is available only for a subset of Facebook users.) Some gay men do move out of less tolerant states, but this effect is small.
I searched gay and straight men by state of birth and state of current residence. Have many of them moved to more tolerant areas? Some have, but Facebook data show that mobility can explain only a small fraction of the difference in the totally out population. On Facebook, for example, about 1 percent of men in Mississippi who list a gender preference say that they are interested in men in California, more than 3 percent do.Īre there really so many fewer gay men living in less tolerant states? There is no evidence that gay men would be less likely to be born in these states.
While these data sources all measure different degrees of openness, one result is strikingly similar: All three suggest that the openly gay population is dramatically higher in more tolerant states, defined using an estimate by Nate Silver of support for same-sex marriage. There are three sources that can give us estimates of the openly gay population broken down by state: the census, which asks about same-sex households Gallup, which has fairly large-sample surveys for every state and Facebook, which asks members what gender they are interested in.
