Washington, D.C. makes yet another top ten list. A new study names our beloved city as the 8th gayest in the country. Frankly, a couple of us here at DCist thought we were gayer than that.

The study, by Gary J. Gates of UCLA’s Williams Institute, analyzed data on same-sex couples from the 1990 and 2000 U.S. censuses along with that from American Community Surveys (ACS) between 2002 and 2006. Cities and states were ranked based on the number of same-sex couples per 1,000 households. Nearly 13.5 such couples per 1,000 — an estimated 3,520 couples total — live in D.C.; top-ranked San Francisco has 28.72 per 1,000 in comparison. In the state rankings, Vermont takes the top spot with 9.71 couples, while Maryland sits at 13th (7.28 couples) and Virginia at 27th (6.38 couples). If D.C. was a state — and alas, ’tis not — it would easily take top honors. Our 8th place ranking is a two-notch slip from 6th place based on the 2000 census. That ranking was down from 5th in the 1990 census.

One has to wonder about the study’s accuracy, though. Neither the decennial census nor the ACS surveys specifically ask if a household resident is lesbian or gay. Rather, they ask about relationships between the head of household — “Person 1” in the surveys — and each individual resident; “unmarried partner” is among the relationship options. Unless Person 1 lives with an unmarried partner of the same gender, there really isn’t a way to determine whether a household has any LGBT inhabitants. Single gay people appear to have been totally left out.

Photo by hanvnah.