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http://www.intellectualcapital.com/issues/issue389/item9923.asp
Thursday, July 06, 2000
Different Worlds
by Bill Bishop
Want to know how complicated our politics have become? Consider the relationship between gays and the New Economy.
Gary Gates, a doctoral student at Carnegie Mellon University, used 1990 census data to show that certain cities were more popular than others among people living with unmarried partners of the same sex. (His findings were published in the academic journal, Demography, in May.) Gates used the census information to construct a "gay index" of cities.
And the results are in!
Gates' gay index is based on the concentration of unmarried partners living in metropolitan areas of more than 700,000. The more gay couples per population, the higher the city ranks. There are 50 cities in the gay index. The top 10 are:
(1) San Francisco
(2) Washington, D.C.
(3) Austin
(4) Atlanta
(5) San Diego
(6) Los Angeles
(7) Seattle
(8) Boston
(9) Sacramento
(10) Orlando
The bottom 10 cities in the gay index have the smallest concentration of gay couples:
(41) Detroit
(42) Louisville
(43) Cincinnati
(44) Charlotte
(45) St. Louis
(46) Greensboro/Winston-Salem
(47) Cleveland
(48) Las Vegas
(49) Birmingham
(50) Buffalo
The accounting looked familiar to Richard Florida, a professor of regional economic development at Carnegie Mellon. Gates' ranking looked eerily like the Milken Institute's ranking of cities by concentration of high-tech businesses. So Gates ran the numbers.
The gay index did more than just follow the Milken rankings. Gates and Florida compared other measures that are thought to predict high-tech development: education levels; the number of scientists and engineers; various measures of quality of life.
Gates' gay index beat them all. "You're not going to find a stronger predictor of high technology than the gay index," Gates says. "One is clearly signaling the other."
Why the link?
The match is uncanny. Six of the top 10 cities in the gay index were also in the top 10 of the Milken when it was adjusted to count only the cities over 700,000 (San Francisco, D.C., Atlanta, Los Angeles, Seattle and Boston). Similarly, of the 10 gay-poor towns, four (Greensboro/Winston, Las Vegas, Buffalo and Louisville) were also in the bottom 10 of the Milken.
Is there a connection to gay communities and the new economy? Is there a connection to gay communities and the New Economy?
Florida and Gates do not argue a direct, literal connection between the presence of gay couples and the growth of high-technology firms. Gays are not disproportionately represented in New Economy businesses. It is more complicated than that.
"There is something about cities that gays go to that is also attractive to high-tech firms," Gates says. For instance, gay couples "move to really nice places," Gates says -- places with a high quality of life. They also "go to places where in general there is a more progressive thinking." They seek out towns where there is a "diversity of thought and progressive attitudes, or at least tolerant attitudes."
Those attributes, it turns out, are exactly those sought by young, talented, high-technology workers -- both gay and straight. Florida has been questioning these New Economy workers and has found that diversity -- not rocks to climb or good jobs -- was the No. 1 attribute people wanted in a place to work and a place to live. "If you poison the environment with anti-inclusive rhetoric, these people will turn away," Florida says.
This means that gay men and lesbians are the canaries in the New Economy coal mine. If gay people can survive in a place, then so will high-tech workers -- the people with the ideas and talents that are now making economies grow.
Beneath the surface
The technology industry has realized the importance of diversity in satisfying the most important ingredient for their economic success, and its leaders are demanding these values be extended to our politics. "These industries don't come to me and say, 'We want you to be conservative on issues of choice or issues of sexual orientation or issues of diversity,'" says Ron Sims, chief executive of Washington state's King County, which includes Seattle. "They are saying to me, 'We want you to be out there talking about being an inclusive society, fully participating in a new global period.'"
But what about regions not benefiting from the New Economy? In those places, the push for diversity is not a priority. Take Seattle, again. Business leaders in Washington state pushed a statewide proposition in 1997 that would ban discrimination based on sexual orientation. It passed in Seattle and King County. It was voted down in the rest of the state.
As diverse and open places surge ahead, others are left behind -- the rural, the uneducated, the blue-collar worker, those in Old Economy industries. Bubba was not invited to the New Economy, and Bubba understands the slight.
These days, political fights split more often down the New Economy/Old Economy divide than between left and right or Republican and Democrat. Gay rights, women's rights, globalization vs. protectionism all split along this economic divide as much as the ideological divide.
"When I look down at what is the political powder keg--I think, this is it," says Richard Florida of the divide between old and new. "It's simmering beneath the surface in California; it's simmering beneath the surface in Seattle. My guess is it's simmering beneath the surface in Texas. And I don't think either political party has sorted this boy out."
------- Bill Bishop is a regular contributor to IntellectualCapital.com and a senior writer at the Austin American-Statesman in Texas.