Survey: Salt Lake City ranks 7th highest for LGBT population

Salt Lake City (AP) — Salt Lake City, the capital of politically and socially conservative Utah, ranks seventh-highest of the nation's top 50 metropolitan areas for the percentage of adults who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender, according to a national survey.

The Gallup survey, released Friday, found 4.7 percent of the city's residents identify as LGBT. San Francisco ranked highest at 6.2 percent, while Birmingham, Alabama, ranked lowest at 2.6 percent.

Gay rights leaders say Salt Lake City's ranking may surprise only those who live outside Utah, where The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is based.

"When I meet people elsewhere and they find out I'm from Salt Lake City, they are always so concerned and say, 'Your job must be so hard,' " Troy Williams, executive director of Equality Utah, told The Salt Lake Tribune. "They don't realize what a gay-affirming and gay-friendly city Salt Lake City has become."

In 2009, the city approved an ordinance protecting LGBT residents from discrimination in housing and employment. The city is home to a large, annual Pride parade and festival, and its mayor has flown the rainbow flag at the local government building in a show of support for the LGBT community.

"Salt Lake City has been very proactive and progressive in LGBT rights," Pam Perlich, a senior research economist at the University of Utah's Bureau of Economic and Business Research, told the Deseret News. "We're known in Salt Lake as a welcoming place."

Perlich stressed that the survey doesn't measure how many LGBT people live in the city, but how many people identified themselves that way. "All of these surveys underreport when people don't feel safe" revealing their orientation, she said, adding the numbers could actually be higher.

Republican Gov. Gary Herbert this month signed a bill protecting LGBT residents statewide from housing and employment discrimination while also creating exemptions for religious organizations and protecting religious speech in the workplace. He also signed a measure allowing government officials to refuse to marry same-sex couples for religious reasons but requiring a county clerk's office to designate someone to marry all couples if the clerk opts out.

Gallup's survey of 374,325 adults was conducted between June 2012 and December 2014. A minimum of 3,000 people were surveyed in all but two of the metro areas, and none had a margin of error greater than plus or minus 1 percentage point.

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The Gayly – March 22, 2015 @ 11:05am.