Exploring the Gay Community Question: Neighborhood and Network Influences on the Experience of Community among Urban Gay Men

Abstract

The reported declining significance of gay neighborhoods has raised questions about the role of gay enclaves as a locus for community building. Using Wellman and Leighton's community “lost,” “saved,” and “liberated” frameworks, we examine the degree to which gay enclave residence and network socializing are associated with experiences of gay community among men in the New York City area. Multilevel models indicate that enclave residence is neither directly nor indirectly associated with perceived community cohesion or community attachment. Increased socializing with gay men and heterosexuals were, respectively, positively and negatively associated with our community outcomes. Increased socializing with lesbians was associated with greater community attachment, while socializing with bisexuals was associated with greater perceived community cohesion. Our findings lend support for a “gay community liberated” perspective; experiences of gay community are shaped principally by network relations rather than residential proximity to gay institutions.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The Sex and Love Project was supported by the Hunter College Center for HIV Educational Studies and Training, under the direction of Jeffrey T. Parsons. The authors acknowledge the contributions of the members of the Sex and Love research team: Michael Adams, Anthony Bamonte, David Bimbi, Lauren DiMaria, Christian Grov, Catherine Holder, James Kelleher, Juline Koken, Julia Tomassilli, Brooke Wells, and Anna Levy-Warren. Richard Carpiano also acknowledges funding from a Scholar Award from the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research. The authors also thank Viktor Gecas for his comments on an earlier draft of this manuscript.

NOTES

Notes

¹ As Black et al. (2000) indicate, measurement error in examining the population of gays and lesbians remains a large problem in many data sets and the government census. This remains a continued challenge for “hidden populations” of many kinds.

² Given that there is a debate on whether men with same-sex desire prior to the gay liberation movement should be called “gay,” we refer to gay men's historical counterparts as “homosexual” in our discussions of pre-gay liberation men with same-sex desire.

³ The means of identifying gay and lesbian populations via census data remains inexact and less than ideal given the necessity of utilizing same-sex households given the inability for respondents to identify as gay, lesbian, or bisexual.

⁴ The examination of residential concentrations of lesbians is beyond the scope of this article, although we acknowledge that pursuing such matters remains an important intellectual undertaking.