Phew!

Way back in 2000 my itsy bitsy little pipsqueak of a home state was actually a pretty interesting place to be. Vermont had recently become the first state to legalize civil unions, granting same-sex couples access to all the legal benefits of heterogeneous married couples. This was big news, especially in a gubernatorial election year, especially in a state like Vermont, where anything even remotely out of the ordinary can become a front-page sensation.

As one might expect, lots of people were seriously pissed off about the new law. I remember lots of my friends and acquaintances forecasting our culture's impending doom, as though suddenly the streets of Burlington would be swarmed by exceptionally clean men holding hands, making out, wearing cutoff jeans shorts, and talking with lisps. My family received pamphlets in the mail from some sort of anti-queer Vermont Republican coalition, claiming that the law was certain to open the floodgates for homosexual businesses (whatever those are), lewd clubs, more drug problems, RuPaul, and a few other supposedly horrible things, contaminating our otherwise pristine state. They basically said everything they could get away with, short of "THE FAGS ARE COMING! Do you wanna get FAG COOTIES or something??!!!"
The whole scenario was pretty embarrassing. Many homeowners even went so far as to put big black-and-white block-letter "TAKE BACK VERMONT" signs on their lawns or garages, which may as well have just read "I SCREW THE OPPOSITE SEX... IN CASE ANYONE WAS WONDERING."

Needless to say, Vermont didn't really change at all over the next few years. I assume some same-sex couples got civil unions and are happy about it. Some of them probably even got a divorce afterward, or whatever you call the civil union equivalent of a divorce (civil fission? if that's not what they're called, it should be). But basically Vermont went right along being the very beautiful, slightly boring state it's always been. Until recently, however, I didn't actually have any statistical proof to show that for most people, Vermont really didn't change at all. Thankfully, today that all changed when I saw city-data.com's Top 101 Cities, Counties, and Zip Codes List, which has a page showing the Top 101 cities with the largest percentage of likely homosexual households. A grand total of zero Vermont cities made the list. It seems the gay nomads of the world have decided not to universally march on Montpelier, which means we may yet stave off our population's conversion into a bunch of flamboyant George Michael fans after all. I'm sure that would be a nightmare. Or not.


Hat tip to Coyote Blog for the cities list site.