According to just-released figures from the US Census Bureau, Massachusetts has the third highest number of same-sex couples living together in the country, tying with Oregon at 1.2 percent.
Of the other five New England states, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine each came in at 1 percent, Connecticut at .8 percent and Rhode Island .7 percent, according to the US Census Bureau’s American Community Survey.
The only two places with more same-sex “households,” as the Survey described LGBT same-sex couples sharing a roof, are Washington, DC at 2.4 percent, followed by Delaware at 1.3 percent.
The report found some 980,000 same-sex couples living together across the US in 2019, 58% of them married.
Since 2014, the year before the Supreme Court made marriage-equality the law of the land, the number of married same-sex households increased by 70 percent to 568,110, the Survey reported.
“Opponents of marriage equality frequently argued that same-sex couples really weren’t all that interested in marriage. But the large increase in marriages among same-sex couples since marriage equality became legal nationwide offers evidence of the clear desire for marriage among same-sex couples,” Gary Gates, a demographer specializing in LGBT issues, told the Associated Press.
See the AP story for more from the Survey, the first time the Census has gathered and released a more detailed account of same-sex couples in the country.
