Obergefell v. Hodges is a civil rights case in which the Supreme Court ruled that the fundamental right to marry is guaranteed to same-sex couples. Decided on June 26, 2015, Obergefell v. Hodges required all fifty states, the District of Columbia, and US territories to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples and recognize the marriages of same-sex couples on the same terms and conditions as opposite-sex marriages.
While all 50 states are required to recognize gay marriages, some states and cities are more LGBTQ friendly and have higher populations of gay couples. Portland, Oregon, for example, is one of the most LGBTQ-friendly cities in the US. Portland was the first major city to elect an openly gay man as mayor in 2008 and mandated most public restrooms to be gender-neutral in 2016. Salt Lake City, Utah has two gay city councilors, a lesbian mayor and a pride festival of more than 40,000 participants every year.
The ten gayest cities in America are:
According to the Tax Policy Center, same-sex couples are more likely to be of working age and more likely to live in major metropolitan areas and coastal states. This holds true for nine out of 10 cities, especially the gayest city in the United States, San Francisco, California. There are approximately 13,220 married same-sex couples in San Francisco, about 1.52% of the city total population. With the nicknames “gay capital of the world,” and “the gay Mecca,” San Francisco is one of the most important cities in the history of LGBTQ rights, alongside New York City.
New York has the highest number of married same-sex couples with 13,892, but this only comprises .84% of New York’s total population.