One of the coolest things the Census Bureau does every year is the American Community Survey, which Uncle Sam has conveniently put online for all of us to play with. The ACS tries to provide, “one-year estimates are available for geographic areas with a population of 65,000 or more. This includes the nation, all states and the District of Columbia, all congressional districts, approximately 800 counties, and 500 metropolitan and micropolitan statistical areas.” What in the world is a micropolis anyway?

Normally, when they have big surveys, the results only go to the elite statistical priesthood capable of doing ANOVA with only a ball of twine and a cuneiform tablet. But Uncle Sam, champion of freedom of information that he is, has bypassed the eggheads and given the power to the people! So instead of repeating the pre-chewed numbers of some university “professor” somewhere, your hombre-in-chief, Angry New Mexican decided to lay off the cerveza long enough to get you some fresh numbers himself.

Inspired by some emails on our super-secret internal email list (yeah, somebody started on the gay marriage thing again) I decided ask the ACS Oracle the following questions: What states are living in sin and which ones are paragons of virtue? As a proxy for consorting with the devil, I decided to use two metrics: (1) number of homosexual households and (2) number of unmarried households and consider both of those to the overall household numbers in the state. This will tell us (using Science(TM)) which states to move the heck out of if we believe, like Pat Roberston does that God punishes such things with natural disasters and terrorist attacks. Or at least it will tell us which states to avoid if we don’t like being hit on by men at the laundromat. Whatever. So without further ado, I give you, courtesy of ACS 2007:

Gay Pride Day Every Day (most gay households, by percent)

  1. District of Columbia (1.72%)
  2. Massachusetts (0.94%)
  3. Oregon (0.90%)
  4. California (0.86%)
  5. Washington (0.85%)

Stay In-The-Closet States (fewest gay households, by percent)

  1. North Dakota (0.30%)
  2. Puerto Rico (0.34%)
  3. South Dakota (0.37%)
  4. Mississippi (0.41%)
  5. Alabama (0.42%)

Fortresses of Fornication (most unmarried households, by percent)

  1. Maine (8.01%)
  2. Alaska (7.90%)
  3. New Hampshire (7.89%)
  4. Vermont (7.87%)
  5. Nevada (7.35%)

Waiting for the Altar States (fewest unmarried households, by percent)

  1. Alabama (3.63%)
  2. Utah (3.96%)
  3. Arkansas (4.20%)
  4. South Carolina (4.42%)
  5. Kansas (4.62%)

So what does this all tell us? Well, first off, we know know that Washington DC is twice as gay as California. Given all of the, ehem, “hard” work these guys have been up to, is pretty impressive. We all suspected DC was playing on a different team, but now Science(TM) has told us this for sure.

Second, we notice that if you’re gay and politicians don’t do it for you, head to the west coast — but Oregon is a better bet than Cali and Washington is close “behind.” Or just go to Massachusetts, if you can handle their outrageous accents. I pahked the cah in the Hahvad, what?

Third, if you’re just a plain-old heterosexual fornicator, New England is for you. And so is Alaska, but I bet Bristol Palin already knew that. Nevada, home of drive through Elvis chapels and home of Sin City itself, is running substantially behind New England. It’s time to take away that title and give it to Bangor or something. Looks like you don’t need gambling to create fornication, you just need really cold weather. By that measure, the Canadians must go like rabbits. But I digress.

As a special bonus feature, my hombre Angry Immigrant put down his tequila shots, picked up his “math” hat and challenged me to calculate the “Gaydient,” you know, d Gay / d x. With the next round in mind (hey, he’s buying), I bring you the graphical version of the above tables. Yes, the outlier (as you might have expected expected) is DC.


So that’s all for today. I hope you all enjoyed the lies, damned lies and statistics I had on offer today and remember this bit of sage advice — DC residents should drive to Virginia (0.62%) to do their laundry, it’s probably safer in the end.