LITTLE ROCK — Arkansas ranks third in the percentage of same-sex couples who are raising children among the 41 states for which 2010 Census counts have been made public, according to an analysis of the figures released Thursday.
Among Arkansas’ 7,004 same-sex couples, 27 percent have children in the household, according to the analysis of census data by the Williams Institute on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Law and Public Policy at the UCLA School of Law.
Only Alaska and Wyoming had higher percentages, both with 28 percent of same-sex couples raising children.
Gary Gates, a demographer at the Williams Institute and a co-author of the study, said Arkansas’ numbers are typical of Southern states with more rural and socially conservative populations.
“In socially conservative areas, people come out [as homosexual] later in life, and as a result of that, they are more likely to have children earlier in life with a different-sex partner,” he said.
Gates said the numbers thwart a perception “that child-rearing among same-sex couples is usually via adoption, surrogacy or artificial insemination.”
“I caution people to not interpret that as suddenly gay people with kids are moving to the conservative South ... these are people who had their kids and never left,” he said.
Statewide, same-sex couples made up about 6 out of every 1,000 households in the 2010 Census. That represents a little more than half a percent of the 1,147,084 households in the state.
According to the Williams Institute analysis, 4,578 same-sex households, or 65 percent, can be identified as female-female households, while 35 percent, or 2,426, are male-male.
The census numbers don’t reflect whether either person in a household with a same-sex partner is homosexual because census forms do not ask about sexual orientation.
The analysis by the Williams Institute, a think tank that studies sexual orientation through “independent research and scholarship,” used census data released this week along with statistical adjustments to calculate its figures, the study’s authors wrote.
The adjustments didn’t alter overall census counts but allowed for the possibility that male-female couples miscoded the sex of their spouses and were incorrectly included in the census figures as same-sex couples.
It also allowed for the possibility that some same-sex couples weren’t counted “due to concerns about confidentiality” or that neither person in the couple was the head of the household, according to the institute’s website.
Within the state, the census numbers show, same-sex couples were more likely to live in the state’s more populated areas, but those raising children were more concentrated in rural areas.
Same-sex couples made up nearly 10 out of every 1,000 households in Little Rock, the highest rate in the state, according to the analysis. Maumelle, Fayetteville, North Little Rock and Springdale followed with the next-highest rates of same-sex couples per 1,000 households.
About 20 percent of all same-sex couples lived in Pulaski County, though Carroll County had the highest rate of all counties, with 13.37 same-sex couples per 1,000 households.
Eleven of the state’s more rural counties saw higher proportions of same-sex couples raising children. Madison, Van Buren, Jackson, Cross, Lincoln, Grant, Bradley, Lafayette, Little River, Clay and Howard counties all had more than 43 percent of same-sex couples reporting on their census forms that they were raising children.
Overall, 1,904 same-sex couples were raising children, compared with 5,100 who were not.
Randi Romo, co-founder and executive director of the Little Rock-based Center for Artistic Revolution, a homosexual-rights organization, said the numbers make sense.
“You’re more likely to have women remain custodial parents ... and we do see women come out later in life, particularly in a state like Arkansas where there is such a societal pressure to be heterosexual, to marry, to bear children. Those old adages are still very, very true in expectation,” Romo said.
“Even if you live in a very rural area, and you’re lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer identified, that’s your home. And that’s the place that you love. You love all the familiar things about it. ... There’s not a desire to leave inmost cases,” Romo said.
But Romo and Hendrix College professor Jay Barth, who has published research on gay issues, said socially conservative areas such as Arkansas are many times not a same-sex couple’s first choice and may play a role in their deciding to move elsewhere.
“I think there is some evidence that [lesbian, gay, transgender and bisexual] folks tend to migrate to areas that are more hospitable. ... It’s not surprising to have some tendency to why we have lower populations [of same-sex couples],” Barth said.
Of the 41 states for which comparable census data have been released, Arkansas ranks 32nd in the rate of same-sex couples per 1,000 households. So far, Vermont has the highest rate of same-sex couples, with 10.9 per 1,000 households. South Dakota had the lowest so far, with 4.3 per 1,000, according to an Arkansas Democrat-Gazette analysis of the Williams Institute study.
“Socially conservative areas have lower percentages of same-sex couples in their population,” Gates said. “That may be two factors. It could be that there really are fewer couples because people move, or it could be that these are the places where the closet is bigger and so people are more reluctant to identify themselves in these surveys.”
He said he hasn’t found any evidence to suggest same-sex couples may have left the state because of laws banning gaymarriage.
But, Barth said, more “hostile” environments for homosexuals may play a role in same-sex couples’ choices on where to live.
“Arkansas is very high in terms of religious conservatism, and just historically there’s been some connection between that conservatism on religious ground and less comfortable environments for gays and lesbians,” he said.
Barth and others cited public controversy in the past few years over Act 1, a state constitutional amendment passed in 2008 that barred cohabiting unmarried couples, including those of the same sex, from adopting or fostering children, which was struck down by the Arkansas Supreme Court earlier this year. The ban did not exclude single people from adopting or becoming foster parents.
Barth also referred to an amendment to the Arkansas Constitution banning gay marriage that passed in 2004.
Jerry Cox, the executive director of the Family Council Action Committee, a conservative education and research organization based in Little Rock that fought to uphold Act 1, said he doesn’t think it had an effect on the count of same-sex couples.
“I really doubt that the laws passed here in Arkansas had much effect on people’s willingness to fill out those forms one way or the other,” he said.
Holly Dickson, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union in Arkansas, said she believes the state’s laws and public controversy over Act 1 may have led some samesex couples to choose not to identify as such on their census forms.
“It takes a brave LGBT person to come out on their census form when they don’t have equal protection under the law,” she said.
Information for this article was contributed by Aziza Musa of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 08/12/2011