Where the Great Cities Go, Do Other Cities Follow? Divergent Trajectories of LGBTQ Organizational Growth Across the United States During the AIDS Crisis

ABSTRACT

Numerous studies examine how LGBTQ life differs between large, cosmopolitan cities like San Francisco and other, less prominent cities. Nevertheless, most of this research is done through case studies of one or a handful of LGBTQ communities, making it unclear how unique the large hubs of LGBTQ life truly are. This study leverages nationally complete data from the U.S. Gayellow Pages, a historical listing of local LGBTQ organizations, to evaluate how the organizational response of LGBTQ communities to the AIDS crisis—arguably the most prolific era of organizational creation in LGBTQ history—differed between large hubs and other cities. Findings make clear the risks of generalizing about LGBTQ life from large hubs alone. Although AIDS stimulated the creation of health-related and social movement organizations in large hubs, AIDS was more strongly associated with organizational creation outside of rather than within large hubs. The types of organizations created due to AIDS tended to be more varied outside of rather than within large hubs as well. These differences highlight the value of decentering the large hubs of LGBTQ life as units of analysis in the study of sexuality and space.

KEYWORDS:

• sexuality and space
• AIDS crisis
• LGBTQ organizations
• Gayellow Pages
• organizational ecology

Acknowledgments

The authors thank Connor Gilroy, Frances Green, Theo Greene, Greggor Mattson, Kevin Smiley, Kristopher Velasco, and participants of UIC’s Gender and Quantitative Sociology Workshops for comments on previous drafts. The authors also thank Jay Orne and Fabrizio Perretti for their contributions to earlier stages of the project that led to this paper. Finally, the authors thank Gary Gates for providing county-level data on same-sex couples.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Throughout this paper, we use several terms to refer to sexual minorities, including LGBTQ, non-heterosexual, and queer. This language reflects the variety of terms used in scholarly and popular discourse. Our empirical analysis examines the 1980s and 1990s, when terms like LGBTQ had not yet become commonly used. We nonetheless use contemporary terms to inform current debates. When appropriate, we refer to specific sexual identity groups such as gays or lesbians.

2. Bivariate analyses of non-metropolitan counties suggest that LGBTQ organizational growth was not associated with local HIV/AIDS deaths in rural areas. Regardless, the sample size of non-metropolitan counties that contained at least one GP organization was too small to make strong conclusions.

3. More accurately, 1996 marked a transition in which the burdens of HIV/AIDS became stratified by more traditional forms of race-, class-, and gender-based inequality than by sexual orientation (Petrus, 2019).

4. The Gayellow Pages was not published in 1995, so we technically tested models that ended in 1994 and 1997. In both cases, findings are robust.

5. Lesbians frequently live in smaller cities than do gay men (Gates & Ost, 2004), so lumping together male and female same-sex couple households in the data set may bias our results. However, results are similar whether we control for all same-sex couple households, male same-sex couple households only, or female same-sex couple households only.

6. These counties include Los Angeles County, CA; San Francisco County, CA; Cook County, IL; and the five counties that comprise New York City. Results are virtually identical if we restrict great cities data from New York City to New York County (i.e. Manhattan) only. Results are also virtually identical if we include surrounding counties as part of the great cities (meaning other counties within a great city’s MSA).

7. We focus on HIV/AIDS deaths because both HIV/AIDS cases and AIDS deaths were only available at the state level during the study period.

8. All monetary variables in this study are measured in 1990 dollars.

9. Data for this variable come from Eskridge (1999, app. 2), the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (http://www.thetaskforce.org), and the Workplace database maintained by the Human Rights Campaign (http://www.hrc.org).

10. In counties containing the great cities, the leading category of economy organizations was “BARS, RESTAURANTS, CLUBS, DISCOS,” which comprised 41% of economy organizations in both 1987 and 1996. In fact, this category was so prominent in the data set that it may be useful to treat the category as distinct from other economy organizations, especially considering the role that many gay bars play in non-economic activities such as community organizing and public health (Thomas, 2011). Even when we treat this category separately from other economy organizations, findings do not change.

11. It is possible that many organizations created during the AIDS crisis were established before 1987 rather than during our study period. If so, then the organizational decline after 1987 would mask overall organizational growth over time. Nevertheless, in the 1984 edition of the GP, counties containing the great cities had 1,944 organizations, higher than the 1,803 organizations in the 1987 edition. The organizational decline in counties containing the great cities, in other words, had already started prior to our study period.

12. Even if we add counties that contained great cities to regression analyses, results do not change because there were so few counties in this group.

13. To be specific, large counties have a RUCC of 0 or 1 but do not contain great cities, and midsize counties have a RUCC of 2 or 3.

14. In the case of other organizations, the coefficient for local HIV/AIDS deaths had a p-value of 0.09.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.