Richard Florida first made his name by suggesting that cities with large

Published 7:00 am Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Richard Florida first made his name by suggesting that cities with large numbers of gay people had higher housing values. Today at the Daily Beast, he’s taken that homo-homeowner line of inquiry to its next logical stop, ranking the Top 20 Gayest Cities in the Country. Seattle, says Florida, is fifth. But before you go celebrate/get angry/resolve to move, you might want to take a look at the man’s methodology.Florida’s metric is gay men and women who live together. If you’re gay and single, you don’t count. Which, as Gawker explains, would account for the unthinkable omissions of Atlanta and New Orleans, and Miami’s unthinkably low ranking of 20th (behind Ithaca!).It’d be more appropriate to call the list the Top 20 Cities Where Gay People Co-Habitate or the Top 20 Cities Where Gays Are Most Domesticated. Alas, accuracy ain’t got nothin’ on a pithy headline and search engine optimization.