The US's Most Gay Friendly Cities Of 2013?

Well we're back from the holidays at last! To give us a good kick off to 2013, I thought I'd share the article published by The Advocate of the gayest cities of 2013! They used some pretty interesting criteria for this list.

This is how they judged the cities -

THE CRITERIA
LGBT elected officials
According to Victory Fund;
1 point for each federal, state, and local official in office or elected in 2012
+
HRC Corporate Equality Index 100s
1 point for each company located in a city
+
Concerts by Scissor Sisters, Uh Huh Her, Girl in a Coma, and cast of Glee
1 point for each stop since 2009
+
Fabulous shopping
1 point each if a city has Whole Foods, West Elm, or Pottery Barn stores
+
Transgender protections
1 point for every jurisdiction with laws prohibiting discrimination, according to National Gay and Lesbian Task Force
+
Gay rugby
1 point for each team
+
Bisexual resource groups
1 point per organization, according to BiNetUSA
+
Roller Derby
1 point for each league
+
Marriage equality
5 points

Some of the criteria I don't completely understand, like Roller Derby, Gay Rugby, and the concerts. I'm not totally sure how important those are in a gay-friendly community, but I think overall they had a good mixture of serious and fun criteria to decide what cities made the list.

The top 25 gayest cities in the US are as follows -

1. Tacoma, Washington

2. Springfield, Massachusetts

3. Spokane, Washington

4. Washington D.C.

5. Seattle, Washington

6. Salt Lake City, Utah

7. Eugene, Oregon

8. Madison, Wisconsin

9. Atlanta, Georgia

10. Minneapolis, St. Paul (Twin Cities), Minnesota

11. Oakland, California

12. Providence, Rhode Island

13. Colorado Springs, Colorado

14. Salem, Oregon

15. St. Louis, Missouri

16. Scottsdale, Arizona

17. San Francisco, California

18. Anaheim, California

19. Richmond, Virginia

20. Long Beach, California

21. Peoria, Illinois

22. Denver, Colorado

23. Cincinnati, Ohio

24. Fort Lauderdale, Florida

25. Sacramento, California

Not everyone will agree with this list, and that's totally OK! But I still think it's cool how they are ranked and which ones made the list! My hometown is actually #3 ! I found that really exciting! :)

If you want to read the whole article and see what was wrote about each city, you can find it here - http://www.advocate.com/print-issue/current-issue/2013/01/09/gayest-cities-america-2013