Map of the Week: Same-sex marriage in Toronto

RENE JOHNSTON/TORONTO STAR

Map: Same-sex marriage, women

Map: Same-sex marriage, men

They came to City Hall from Oklahoma, Hawaii, Labrador, northern Alberta and West Virginia. Some walked a short distance from downtown condos.

Two came from Cambridge Bay in the distant Arctic one February day when it was –41 with the wind chill back home. Two more came from Alliance, Nebraska, a tiny place where the nearest city is Cheyenne, Wyoming, three hours away. 580 came from the neighbourhood around Church and Wellesley.

They walked into the rotunda, filled out the paperwork and were handed an Ontario marriage licence.

When two men from South Riverdale married on June 10, 2003, it had only become possible that morning. For 344 Texans - 133 lesbians and 198 gay men - issued marriage licences in Toronto from 2003 to the present, it won't be possible any time soon.

Ontario doesn't distinguish between same-sex and opposite sex couples in its marriage statistics, but the City of Toronto does. Date, sex and partial postal code data for same-sex couples married in Toronto were released to the Star recently under access-to-information laws, opening the door to a large amount of new information about the over 5,500 gay and lesbian couples married here since June, 2003. Once again, thanks to the Star's Andy Bailey for helping to make sense of the data.

The data sheds light on the different neighbourhood patterns of Toronto's married lesbians and gay men, and also where people who came to the city to be married from across Canada and the United States came from.

From June 10, 2003 to May 5, 2009, the final date covered in the data the City sent us, 5,564 same-sex couples were issued marriage licences in Toronto. 2,326 marriages were of lesbians, and 3,238 of gay men.

Often, the members of the couple had different addresses, so the maps track individuals. It's a bit disorienting to track couples by the individuals in them, but we couldn't come up with an alternative.

5,435 individuals came from Toronto, 899 from Canada outside the city, and 4,651 from the United States. The remainder could not be identified by a Canadian postal code or U.S. zip code, though a handful were obviously British.

Married lesbians are most common in M4Y, Church and Wellesley's postal code, and in the east end – Riverdale, South Riverdale, Leslieville, the east Danforth and the Beaches. Rates are also high in the U of T area, Cabbagetown and Roncesvalles.

Married gay men are most common in M4Y, and in the neighbourhoods to the south. Rates are also high in the east downtown generally, the U of T and the neighbourhood to its west, South Riverdale and Rosedale.

Looking at the top U.S. cities represented, based on the first three digits of the zip code, gay men were weighted more to the South and California, while lesbians came more from communities in New York State and the Midwest.

The men's top 10 list includes Washington, Fort Lauderdale, Dallas, Houston, San Francisco, Atlanta and Miami, while the women's top 10 list includes Brooklyn, Philadelphia, Madison, mid-Long Island, Rochester, Columbus and Detroit. New York, Chicago and Minneapolis are on both lists.

Population density data shows that U.S. lesbians married here came from more rural communities, and gay men from more urban ones.

Perhaps not surprisingly, most gay and lesbian Massachusetts residents married here did so before a court ruling in October, 2003 brought in same-sex marriage in that state. Only three people from Vermont, where same-sex couples have had legal recognition since 2000, were married here in the entire period, and one of them married a Toronto resident.

This chart shows monthly totals of Toronto residents married in same-sex couples since June 2003. May of 2009 is incomplete. We see a dramatic spike in June of 2003, then annual spikes after that in June. There is also a spike in January of 2006, which I can't account for: (update: see reader comment below)

Here is the same chart for gay and lesbian U.S. residents married here. In their case, the 2003 peak came more in July and (more so) August. The number of American same-sex couples married here has been gently declining, presumably because of the increasingly liberal climate on the issue of same-sex marriage in several U.S. states. There does seem to be a drop-off after Massachusetts allowed out-of-state same-sex couples to marry there in mid-2008.

The great majority of Canadian gay men and lesbians from outside Toronto married here were from the 905 and elsewhere in Ontario. Two couples came from Nunavut. Here is the breakdown, based on the first character of the postal code:

Comments

[Dr. Barry W. K. Joe]

"There is also a spike in January of 2006, which I can't account for..."

You must recall that Canada was in the throes of an election campaign, with the Liberals under fire for the sponsorship scandal and Harper's Conservatives threatening to re-examine same sex marriage should they be elected in January 2006 (January 23 if I recall).

My husband of 19 years and I decided that the risk of losing our right to marriage was great indeed, given Harper's right-wing rhetoric. Although we had planned a summer wedding in our garden, we wanted our marriage to be solemnized before the Conservatives might take power, so we in essence were forced to move up the date.

Indeed, the Liberals lost the election and Stephen Harper became Canada's Prime Minister in February.

Could politics explain in part the spike in same-sex marriages for January 2006?

[Jason Northway-Frank]

I haven't a clue how the city can claim to maintain these statistics. When I was married in 2006, there was no "box" on the form to indicate gender. In fact, I had to be listed as "bride-groom" because the form was offensively out of date. How is it the city comes to know which marriages are same-sex and which aren't when there is no official data upon which to draw? If you wouldn't mind, please add two more men to M4C. I don't feel like we were counted.

[Mark]

I looked at the maps - I can't believe you didn't wince at coloring a postal code dark green if there were two or more couples from there who got married, but light green if it was only one. You simply don't have enough data to bother generating a map.

[pcain]

The colours indicate rates per 1,000. In M4K on the women's map, for example, dark green reflects 78 individuals.

[epic]

wtf is "far side" going on about?

[john]

Gay marriage appears to be a rare social phenomenon. It does not seem like most gays and lesbians are embracing the institution. They seem to have rejected it. Toronto has one of the highest concentrations of gay people in North America and in fact the world, and less than 6,000 total marriages? The same is true of other jurisdictions with gay marriage and domestic partnerships. In Spain, Massachusetts, England etc.. there is rush to the alter for the tiny minority of gay couples in long term marriage like relationships and then that drops off. In Holland only 6% of gay couples get married and gay marriage has been legal 10 years.

[G.W. Kierstead]

The Harper government should NOT support the Gay Pride Parade in Toronto or anywhere else.