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. In contrast, 16 percent of Americans nationwide reported being food insecure in 2012. 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 reality, gay Americans face disproportionately greater economic challenges than their straight counterparts.
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.īut like most stereotypes, the myth of gay affluence is greatly exaggerated. The pernicious insinuation-that gays and lesbians are one the wealthiest demographics in the country-isn’t a new cliché.
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 not merely a grudging social toleration, but full social acceptance, of homosexuality.” As the justice wrote in his dissent to Romer v.
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.