A few years back when the tourism bureau of my small town decided to host a gay pride festival some people got very angry. Offended by gay pride parades they’d seen on the news, they didn’t want THOSE people marching through our town. Fortunately, the only thing that outstripped their moral indignation was their stupidity; there was no parade. It was a small festival, in one corner of town.
Among the less stupid, but still questioning citizens of my town, however, one thing kept coming up: Why is the city using tax dollars to create and promote a gay pride festival? I was asked to speak to this issue in front of the city council, and I said simply this: “In the rainbow flag, perhaps the most important color is green.”
The council -- and the newspaper -- liked that phrase a lot. Six years later the festival is going strong, and people still remind me of that phrase all the time. (Maybe my words are more memorable when I’m not wearing a dress.)
It is well-known in the marketing community that LGBT people have a lot of money. “They earn more, save more, have less debt and are better prepared for retirement,” including an annual income 20 percent higher than the national average.(1) Throw in a net difference between lack of debt and greater savings of about $10,000 per person, and that’s whole lot of money to spend attending gay pride festivals in little towns on the beach.
Largely, this is due to DINKs. No, not the thing I can call my students when I want to tell them they’re being nummies without getting sued. (Actually, you can’t even say “DINK;” it’s “failing to maximize your potential.”) DINKs are people with “Double Income, No Kids,” and among the LGBT population, there’s 18 percent more of them than the population at large.(2)
Getting into actual dollars, the numbers are impressive there, too. “The total buying power of the U.S. lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender adult population for 2012 is projected to be $790 billion.”(3) Or, put another way, that’s enough to buy every LGBT person in America a BMW convertible so they can star in their own gay pride parade. (And I invite all of them to come to my town; I’ve always wanted to have that parade.)
The problem is, numbers without context have no meaning -- and neither I’m finding do a lot of these stories about LGBT wealth.
Yes, the buying power of the LGBT community is closing in on $1 trillion dollars. But so is the buying power of Asian-Americans, a minority group roughly the same size as the LGBT community.(4) Is this still a lot of money? Of course it is, and whether Asian or LGBT, that’s still more buying power than many other minority communities.
But just as people wouldn’t presume every Asian out there is rich, assuming it of the LGBT community is equally unfair. Why is the assumption, then, that this is true?
People, unfortunately don’t read much beyond what they need -- including people trying to make their case in front of the city council. It’s like when you’re writing a report for school. You become one of those Hollywood marketing people who looks for just the quote they need to prove a point. (“Lindsey Lohan gives a performance like nobody else!”)
In both the articles I cited above they basically beg you NOT to assume this means everyone is rich. Perhaps it’s possibly flawed data: “The community has a long history of insufficient research, and criticism of what research there is.(2)”
More likely it’s a complete misunderstanding of just what the data means: “Buying power is not the same as affluence or wealth and there is no hint that same-sex households are more affluent than others, which is little more than a stereotype. We have seen research from economic research that strongly suggests that gay men may earn slightly less than their heterosexual counterparts, for instance.”(3)
I’d say it’s more than a suggestion.
A 2012 study “found that LGBT people are poorer than the population at large: 35 percent of LGBT adults have incomes of less than $24,000 a year, compared to 24 percent for the general population.”(5)
Inside the data there are other figures that back really bring this home: “The poverty rate for women in same-sex couples (7.6 percent), (is) higher than the poverty rate for women in different-sex couples (5.7 percent)... Another conclusion is that children of LGB parents are especially vulnerable to poverty. With a poverty rate of roughly 20 percent among children living with gay parents, they are almost twice as likely to be poor as in married opposite-sex couple households.”(6)
Why is there this discrepancy between what people perceive of LGBT wealth and what’s actually happening? Naturally, some people think it’s a conspiracy.
“If we're all really rich and privileged, then our gripes really don't matter… if we're trying to not be shot in the street just for being gay, or burned to death at a 'friend's' house. Or witch-hunted by the government. In short, the myth (of LGBT wealth) helps the people who are trying to oppress us,” says one LGBT rights blogger.(7)
And here I thought I was just advocating for a gay pride festival.
In all fairness, I have no doubt that some people do use these numbers to continue the oppression of LGBT people. And it doesn’t help when the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court calls those supporting LGBT rights, “politically powerful,” implying that we aren’t oppressed enough to warrant equal rights protection.(5)
I prefer to think, however, that this issue is like so many things: There is no clear cut answer. The fact I cited before the city council is true: “same-sex couples in which both partners work do indeed have higher median household incomes than straight couples in which both partners work.”(5) Indeed, these couples have been good for my town’s economic base.
But it’s what I’ve failed to notice when I’m before the city council that paints a more complete picture. The majority of LGBT people I know are not DINKs. I’m sure not. I make an average income, I’m saddled with debt and what I have in my savings account only corresponds to five digits if you let me count the ones after the decimal point.
These are the people I know and I’ll try not to forget it.
References:
1) CNN Money: Gay people earn more, owe less
http://money.cnn.com/2012/12/06/pf/gay-money/
2) Commercial Closet: How Much Do Gays Earn?
http://www.commercialcloset.com/common/news/reports/detail.cfm?Classification=report&QID=5426&ClientID=11064&TopicID=384&subsection=resources&subnav=resources
3) Wisconsin Gazette: LGBT buying power equals $790 billion
http://www.wisconsingazette.com/breaking-news/lgbt-buying-power-equals-790-billion.html
4) Los Angeles Times: Asian American consumers: Nearing $1 trillion in buying power
http://articles.latimes.com/2012/nov/20/business/la-fi-mo-asian-americans-nielsen-consumers-20121120
5) Huffington Post: No, LGBT People Are Not Richer Than Straights
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ben-francisco-maulbeck/no-lgbt-people-are-not-ri_b_3322306.html
5a) For the complete study…
Gallup Politics: Special Report: 3.4% of U.S. Adults Identify as LGBT
http://www.gallup.com/poll/158066/special-report-adults-identify-lgbt.aspx
6) The Williams Institute: The Truth about Gays and Money
http://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/headlines/the-truth-about-gays-and-money-2/
7) Daily Kos: The 'rich gays' myth, one more time
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/11/22/1039046/-The-rich-gays-myth-one-more-time