Oklahoma City’s LGBT community has grown in recent years but it remains a relatively small group compared to most other large cities.
A new Gallup poll shows OKC has the eighth lowest percentage of LGBT residents out of the nation’s 50 largest cities. At 3.5 percent of the OKC population, the LGBT community here is slightly larger than Birmingham, Pittsburgh and Houston, cities that are lower on the list.
“Eight of the 10 [cities] with the lowest percentages are in the South or Midwest, the two regions of the country where LGBT identification among adults tends to be lowest and where social stigma toward LGBT people can be relatively high,” wrote Frank Newport for Gallup. “Among the ranked [cities], Pittsburgh has the highest proportion of seniors in the population. Gallup research has shown that LGBT identity tends to be lower among seniors.”
While the LGBT population in OKC is small, the city with the largest population, San Francisco, is not quite double at 6.2 percent. Portland, Austin, New Orleans and Seattle rounded out the top five.
