Where Have All The Gay People Gone?

There is an interesting phenomenon sweeping the gay community these days. Although there is a lot of discussion and conjecture as to what is going on, to date no one has quite been able to put their finger on it. That phenomenon, quite simply is, 'where have all the gay people gone?'

You may be confused, telling yourself you know where they all are - they're in the gay villages all throughout urban centers across the world. The reality is that they are not… at least not in the numbers that we have seen in the 80's and 90's, when gay life really came into its own. During that time numbers were high in several national gay publications and multiple local gay newspapers in regions such as Los Angeles, New York and even Louisville, Kentucky. In the late 90's, the GLBT websites hit the scene, with PlanetOut.com, GayWired.com and Gay.com taking an early lead in what had become a global phenomenon in its own right. This phenomenon, the rise of the Internet, affected gays & straights in an almost equal fashion.

Today, we have several GLBT radio stations, both online and over the airwaves. We have 2 specific GLBT television networks in the US, here! Networks and Logo; and most consider Bravo to be the next in line in terms of 'gayness' for its feature shows including Project Runway, Kathy Griffin's Life on the D-List and the pioneering Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. It has been Bravo and so many of the other more mainstream networks, newspapers, magazines and movies which have progressively educated and made being gay or lesbian almost a non-issue, especially to the younger generations. In some ways, the real pioneers for mainstream acceptance of gays & lesbians have been the hit show Will and Grace and MTV's The Real World. They brought gay and lesbian people into the households of millions without being overt, preachy and in-your-face. They have helped to debunk many of the stereotypes people had been carrying with them about gays and lesbians from generation to generation.

So it should come as no surprise that our younger generations, the Millennials or Generation Y [defined as individuals born from the late 1970s to the early 1990s], look at someone being gay as a non-issue. This is a change from a decade ago when folks who considered themselves hip and cutting edge found having gay friends made them 'cool.' It is this new-found sentiment, currently manifesting itself even today in the California and Massachusetts gay marriage initiatives, which should cause anyone marketing to the gay & lesbian community to take a step back. One needs to understand this new, current landscape of changing attitudes, changing buying habits and even more importantly, changing 'social' habits.

So Where Did They Go?

It is this 'social' aspect that is most poignant and easier to see in a wide variety of examples today, if we know where to look. First, gay bar owners are lamenting from coast to coast that gays and lesbians are no longer frequenting their bars the way they used to 10 years ago. Their first target to blame is the Internet, where they have come to the conclusion that if a gay man wishes to 'hook up', what used to be the exclusive realm of gay bars has now migrated to sites such as Gay.com, Manhunt.net, Adam4Adam.com and other similar sites.

It can be argued that these gay bars are seeing a drop in attendance based upon the fact that their reason to exist is becoming diminished year to year by the changing attitudes of society today. What we are seeing is not that the under-30 crowd is not going out… what we are seeing is that they are going to more alternative-oriented clubs spread out all throughout their cities. At these clubs they can actually party and hang out with their real friends rather than feel pressured to go to a gay bar and try to make new friends just because they are gay. It is in these more alternative clubs and bars that gay & straight people mix much more freely than they did 10 years ago. One can also see them pouring out on the streets at 2:00 am after the clubs have closed and be pleasantly surprised that the straight guys are not seeking out and picking on the gay guys. A decade ago, this was a real fear for anyone, gay or lesbian, who went into an environment such as this and wanted to just 'be themselves.'

In the September 2007 Entrepreneur Magazine article entitled '10 Businesses Facing Extinction in 10 Years' [http://www.entrepreneur.com/extinction/index.html and found in audio by NPR here http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2008/04/25/gay_bars/ ], quotes range from 'It's a busy weekend night at a gay bar in Los Angeles,' 'Actor Jason Dottley says gay bars don't just cater to a gay clientele anymore,' and 'The scene has become a lot more mixed.' Jerry McHugh of Community Marketing, Inc. was quoted as saying 'Generation X people and Generation Y people are less concerned about gay-exclusive socialization, and they're more interested in a more-diverse environment. ' McHugh says that for gay boomers, bars used to function like community centers.

Another interesting phenomenon related to the social migration of gay and lesbian people is the 2000 Census figures, which for the first time counted same-sex individuals living together in a household. Armed with this information, it was 'discovered' that many gays & lesbians 'moved' to the suburbs. Previously it was always assumed gay men and lesbian women congregated in the safety of modern urban environments. Most people realize today that this was no discovery at all… these gays & lesbians have always been living in the suburbs. It was a combination of two factors that allowed this fact to come to light… the actual counting of same-sex households in a national census, and the growing comfort of these suburban gays & lesbians to 'out' themselves to the census taker.