Same-sex couples grow in U.S. west, south: study

By Ed Stoddard

DALLAS (Reuters) - The number of couples who claim to be in a same-sex partnership has risen dramatically in conservative bastions of America such as the South and western mountain states, according to a new study released on Friday.

Such demographic trends could have political implications especially for the religious and conservative wing of the Republican Party which has used opposition to same-sex marriage and related "wedge issues" to get its flock to the polls.

The report by the Williams Institute for Sexual Orientation Law and Public Policy at the UCLA School of Law found that the number of reported U.S. same-sex couples had quadrupled to nearly 780,000 nationwide between 1990 and 2006.

Using U.S. census numbers taken every decade as well as recently released data from the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey (ACS), it found that by far the fastest growth was in areas associated with conservative politics and values.

The increase in same-sex unmarried couples who identified themselves as such in these surveys increased by a rate over 600 percent in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana -- 22 times faster than the region's general population growth.

The east south central states of Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi and Tennessee saw a combined increase of over 800 percent while the mountain states of Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, New Mexico, Montana, Utah, Nevada and Idaho had an increase of almost 700 percent over that 16-year period.

"The U.S. population is moving south and west but this growth tells that it is not just a case of migration. It tells you that same-sex couples are being more open and visible," said Gary Gates, a senior research fellow at the Williams Institute.

"It may be a case that more same-sex couples are willing to indicate this on government surveys so among other things what these data are capturing at least retrospectively is the size of the closet," he told Reuters by phone.