The Geography Of Civil Union Households

Geographers and social scientists more generally have studied and located the lives of gay men and lesbians for well over 20 years now. However, the particular visibilities and invisibilities of gay life that geographers have mapped have only been possible if scholars created their own data, either by way of interviews ormanipulating census data so as to create surrogates for gay and lesbian households. The move throughout the United States and several Western countries to solemnize gay and lesbian relationships through civil union, marriages, or domestic partnerships has also created a new source of data by which to track and map particular kinds of gay and lesbian lives. By way of an example, this article seeks to map the lives of gay men and lesbian women who undertook Vermont civil unions in 2000. The results show that very little geographical difference exists between the lives of homosexual and heterosexual coupled households throughout the United States.