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Gay friendly cities


Kick_Me

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Honolulu is very gay-friendly although there were two bad incidents this year overall its very gay friendly, with gay owned and run hotels, karaoke bars, sports bars, live music bars, clubs, clothing stores, bathhouses, gyms, cruises, beaches, magazines, i think we are also about to get gay programming on the radio i know it has started on Kauai but Honolulu is supposed to get its own too, just all kinds of stuff not too bad for a city of under a million. It was also the first place in the world to push for gay marriage on the ballot unfortunately the rest of the state did not like hehe. I also think there's a push to put gay marriage back on the ballot but im not sure how its going?

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London, Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin, Oslo, Stockholm, Barcelona, New York, Boston, San Francisco, Atlanta (ignore Cobb County), Miami, Providence, Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Halifax, Whitehorse, Chicago, Sydney, Philadephia, Los Angeles, Rekjavik, Cape Town, Rio, Winnipeg...

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What about places in Europe?

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The Netherlands is gay friendly, Amsterdam in particular.

Detroit is a gay unfriendly city. :( It is the only major city I can think of where the so-called gayborhood is out in the suburbs instead of in the city. The city as a whole is fairly religious and socially conservative. Most of the gays live in Ferndale, just outside of the city limits.

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i dont think Jacksonville even has a gay community, atleast that im aware of, i could be wrong. the majority of northern cities are more friendly to gays due to the high percentage of democrats who support the issue. in the conservative south the number of gay friendly cities drasticly diminshes.

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The city of Charlotte is gay friendly to an extent. The suburbs are very anti-gay though. There is a HUGE gay population in Charlotte. Once you get so many miles away frmo uptown though, you start running into the religious conservatives.

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Most of the gays here in Honolulu seem to live in the city area especially in and around Waikiki to the midtown areas well it seems that way cause of the way the gay bars and establishments seem to be scattered about from the CBD, Midtown, north & east of my area and Waikiki. There are also thousands and thousands that visit the city every year its among their top destinations well here and Maui. In fact our largest gay celebration event thingy is coming up in Feb known as the Volcano Party, DJ Paulo, Abel, etc are all participating in the weekend event it should be cool i know the main event will be at the Hawaii Convention Center but there will be events going on all over til as late/early as 8am.

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Orlando? That kind of surprises me. I always thought it was ultra conservative.

All those Disney employees have to live somewhere.

It's not a great gay mecca by any means, but in my experience it's a friendly enough. I'm not gay though, so take that with whatever grain of salt you'd like to.

There's a lot of gays in Miami suburbs as well. Actually, it seems there's a lot of gays just about everywhere in the metro-area. It reminds me of the New Yorker cartoon, "we're here, we're queer, we're used to it". It's matured beyond the point of needing gay neighborhoods or districts. That's how it seems to me at least.

I'm used to it.

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It's matured beyond the point of needing gay neighborhoods or districts.  That's how it seems to me at least.

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Boston seems to get undo flack whenever this topic comes up for not having a "gay ghetto." And that is the whole point, Boston doesn't need one, it's over it.

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Here's some interesting stuff i found out about Honolulu thru research online:

The oldest gay university organization in the U.S. is the Gay and Lesbian 'Ohana at U.H. Manoa. The Metropolitan Community Church, Ke Anuenue O Ke Aloha, is over a quarter century old, as is the local gay support group. The community also holds a fancy Gay and Lesbian Cultural Festival in the summer. There are men's and women's choruses, an annual gay tennis tournament, gay boat cruises and gay Mormon, Catholic and Charismatic groups.

And of course, Honolulu was at the trailblazing forefront of the same-gender marriage movement in this country. Honolulu is one of the most gay-friendly cities you'll likely encounter, with few gay bashings, a gay-positive state government, and a generally cordial hetero populace that will treat you and yours with warmth and respect.

Did you know that Hawaiian royalty named their genitals, and wrote chants about them? Or that King Kamehameha had hot young boyfriends he boasted about? Or that quiet, rural Molokai is an island world famous for its plethora of transvestites? Or that Oahu is home to the world's first gay surfing group?

*From the Rainbow Handbook Hawaii

Its a pretty damn amazing place for being under a million its so underrated in so many aspects, if only more people knew!

:P

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Here's some interesting stuff i found out about Honolulu thru research online:

The oldest gay university organization in the U.S. is the Gay and Lesbian 'Ohana at U.H. Manoa. The Metropolitan Community Church, Ke Anuenue O Ke Aloha, is over a quarter century old, as is the local gay support group. The community also holds a fancy Gay and Lesbian Cultural Festival in the summer. There are men's and women's choruses, an annual gay tennis tournament, gay boat cruises and gay Mormon, Catholic and Charismatic groups.

And of course, Honolulu was at the trailblazing forefront of the same-gender marriage movement in this country. Honolulu is one of the most gay-friendly cities you'll likely encounter, with few gay bashings, a gay-positive state government, and a generally cordial hetero populace that will treat you and yours with warmth and respect.

Did you know that Hawaiian royalty named their genitals, and wrote chants about them? Or that King Kamehameha had hot young boyfriends he boasted about? Or that quiet, rural Molokai is an island world famous for its plethora of transvestites? Or that Oahu is home to the world's first gay surfing group?

*From the Rainbow Handbook Hawaii

Its a pretty damn amazing place for being under a million its so underrated in so many aspects, if only more people knew!

:P

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

i was really impressed with honolulu when i went there this summer. it's very diverse and open minded. not to mention the women match the beautiful scenery. but back to the topic, nashville is starting to get it's own gay section of town. it kind of suprised me because nashville is the heart of the bible belt and headquarters of the southern baptist convention. i'm glad to see it though, because a city needs to be very diverse to thrive. just look at nyc. plus i like to see those southern baptists get all huffy puffy (like when we got the lottery :thumbsup: )

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Q: What was the first major city in the Midwest to implement a Domestic Partnership Registry for same-sex couples?

A: Saint Louis.

It is also the same city that harbors a number of gay-friendly neighborhoods within its limits, including:

Central West End

Soulard

Lafayette Square

Tower Grove East

Tower Grove South

Delmar Loop

Benton Park

Dogtown

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Midtown Harrisburg has several "gay" blocks around North street and Third street. There's gay bars, a gay nightclub, and a gay bookstore. The most hilarious thing is Harrisburg's biggest gay nightclub is right across the street from the front of the state capitol! In the area around North street you can always see rainbow flags. I think Harrisburg has a pretty decent sized gay population for such a small city.

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Minneapolis is a great place for the GLBT community. Minneapolis extended gay rights to its citizens over 20 years ago and now has some of the strongest GLBT rights in the country. The private sector is doing its part in supporting the Twin Cities GLBT community by offering domestic partner benefits to their employees and some sponsor workplace groups for gays and lesbians. Also, Minneapolis has one of the largest pride festivals in the country, which attracted about 400,000 people this year.

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I guess it depends on what you mean by gay friendly. Gay friendly in the sense that the city has a large existing gay population or gay communities, activities (clubs, bars, whatever)? Or Gay friendly in the sense of politics, rules, regulations, attitudes, etc?

For the first, Atlanta does well. For the second, Atlanta does ok. The local city government tends to be very gay friendly, and is fairly liberal. However, the state as a whole and the general attitudes of many of the residents of the state, metro area... and even in some cases the city are anti-gay.

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There are gayborhoods nearly everywhere. The population density and the general level of sophistication in the city determines how 'vibrant' the gay ghetto will be. The gay ghetto of Raleigh, North Carolina is around the Cameron Village shopping center, but this is largely a leafy residential neighborhood of 1920s homes and mid-century apartment buildings that appears like all the other older in-town neighborhoods of Raleigh. No cluster of cafes, bars, sex shops, or anything else that typifies gay neighborhood commercial districts.

On the other hand, Chicago's Boystown-- an all-but-official name that Mayor Daley took to using several years ago-- is part of the densest community area of the city. Apartment blocks crawling with gay men, all of whom go out to cruise at Caribou Coffee and pick up their post-club grub at Nookies. The 'homo rocket' rainbow-ringed pylons along Halsted are one of the more visible symbols of the neighborhood's identity. It's pretty clear where you are, or at least what demographic defines the neighborhood, and it always seems like there's activity.

Some places, as previous posters have pointed out, have 'gotten over it:' my first visit to the Castro earlier this year was fairly anticlimatic-- it's beyond the provincial level of needing a gay neighborhood as a place of subcultural identity, so appeared pretty sleepy and non-descript. Same with Paris and the Marais-- I've engaged in public displays of affection with men all over Paris and have never really felt uncomfortable.

When you can have homos making out on the Pont-Neuf with no real reactions from passersby and gay men living evenly all over town, you have arrived at 'big city' in my book.

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Orlando is pretty ok. You can do that in certain areas of the town and certain time of the year. Thornton Park area have a lot of gays but generally speaking, u can show affections in about 65% of the orlando area. The other 35% area are bascally red neck areas. Disney and Universal are extremly gay friendly. They make gay jokes all the times. During gay days, when Orlando is full of gay people and u can see them everywhere.

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