Originally published by Ruth Schubert, Seattle Post Intelligencer, July 11, 2001

VASHON ISLAND — Randy Marinez didn’t move here because he thought it was “gay-friendly.”

It was the sense of community, the rural cadence of the land, the breezy ferry ride to downtown Seattle, that drew him and his partner to the island 12 years ago.

What Marinez didn’t realize was that those same qualities, combined with Vashon’s famous live-and-let-live attitude, have drawn so many gay and lesbian couples that the island has the highest percentage of same-sex partner households of any community in the state.

Higher, even, than Seattle.

According to U.S. Census figures released yesterday, 95 of the 4,139 households on Vashon, or 2.3 percent, were headed up by gay or lesbian couples in 2000. In Seattle, gay and lesbian couples represented slightly less than 2 percent of all households.

“It’s a comfortable place to be comfortably out,” said Marinez, whose growing family includes partner Francisco Marinez and adopted 17-month-old twins, Marisol and Luther.

Many of the couple’s friends are gay, including the children’s godmothers, a lesbian couple who live down the street.

To Juliette King, one of the godmothers, the numbers are no surprise.

“I have noticed that the island’s full of lesbians,” she said. “We joke about that.”

But it’s the acceptance they feel in the community at large that makes all of them want to stay.

“It’s rural but not redneck,” said Richard Tucker, who lives on the island with his partner, Jim House.

“Here, you’re neighbors. You know the people in the community,” Tucker added. “They care how you’re doing out here.”

There are still far more gay and lesbian couples in Seattle’s Capitol Hill, Madison Valley, Madrona and Central Area neighborhoods than on Vashon Island. In some Seattle census tracts, same-sex partners make up more than 5 percent of all households. But Seattle as a whole ranks second in the percentage of gay couples.

The Bryn Mawr-Skyway community south of Seattle is third.

Despite the label Capitol Hill sometimes gets, the people who live there are far too diverse to peg the neighborhood as a “gay ghetto,” said Jeffrey Hedgepeth, a grants manager at the Pride Foundation who has lived with his partner on Capitol Hill for 13 years.

“The people who are attracted to Capitol Hill or who have stayed on Capitol Hill are people who are very used to gay people,” Hedgepeth said. “It’s just a very easy life here. I have not had in my immediate neighborhood here any sense of being unwelcome.”

The number of same-sex partners counted in the 2000 Census is far higher than in the 1990 Census, but the numbers aren’t comparable. Some gay men and lesbian women said on the census forms that their partners were “spouses.”

Ten years ago, those spouses were changed to something completely different, such as “relative,” whereas this time spouses were counted as unmarried same-sex partners.

In addition, a couple of prominent national advocacy groups sponsored a campaign last year encouraging gay and lesbian couples to “Make Your Family Count” by identifying themselves as unmarried partners on the census forms.

“Our community is 100 times more organized than it was in 1990,” said David Elliot, communications director for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, one of the organizations that sponsored the media campaign.

The increased visibility of gay and lesbian families, Elliot said, could translate into more political clout.

As one local example, Washington state last year began offering same-sex domestic partner benefits, making it one of only nine states to do so.

Rep. Ed Murray, who represents Capitol Hill and is an openly gay member of the state Legislature, says that gays and lesbians increasingly are concerned with issues that affect them as couples and parents.

“There’s been a shift beyond the typical civil rights issues to issues having to do with schools and families,” Murray said.

For more than a decade, the Safe Schools Coalition of Washington has worked to increase awareness of anti-gay harassment in the schools and to make schools more welcoming places for same-sex couples and their children.

“The number of gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender parents with children being served in the public schools has increased dramatically,” said Beth Reis, co-chairwoman of the coalition.

Washington state also is home to the nation’s first Gay Lesbian Parent Teacher Student Association, which formed two years ago.

And a group of women is starting a summer camp, Camp Ten Trees, with one session for gay, lesbian and questioning youth and a second for children of sexual minority parents.

Although there are same-sex couples in every county in Washington, nearly half live in King County, followed by Pierce and Snohomish. While a lot of same-sex couples say they didn’t choose where they live based on the presence or absence of other gays and lesbians, there is comfort in numbers.

“I would not want to live outside of King County as a lesbian mom,” said Louisa Peck, who has a 2 1/2-year-old son with her partner, Joell Parks.

Living in Ballard, Peck said, she feels pretty confident that schoolteachers have dealt with same-sex parents before and isn’t as concerned that her son, Keno, will be harassed.

Jim House can name at least five other gay couples on his street on Vashon Island. When he first moved from Burien to live with his partner in November, though, House worried about what small-town life would be like for a gay couple.

“I had the idea that rural meant intolerant,” he said.

It didn’t take long for House to discover that he was not alone.

“The one thing that really surprised me was there was an enormous amount of people at the gay New Year’s Eve party at the VFW hall. I had no idea there were that many gay people on the island.”