"I think The Advocate did pick a set of cities that sort of demonstrated, at a city-level, some of the broader trends that we're seeing," Gates said in a telephone interview. "The counts of same-sex couples are growing dramatically higher in more conservative parts of the country. And my read of that is that it is, perhaps in large part, due to acceptance of lesbian and gay people is starting to move beyond the coasts in the U.S."
Living in tulsa as a same sex couple is an exercise in contradictions. On the one hand, we've never had a problem getting an apartment together, and our landlords have always been welcoming. We have occasionally run into discrimination in leases- having to put down two application fees instead of just one as a straight couple would - but actually our current apartment manager didn't make us do that. We're a little concerned about what kind of legal hoops we'll have to go through when we want to buy a house, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. The main complaint we all have is that we have no legal relationship, and in order to build a legal relationship, we'll have to pay a lawyer and sign a whole lot of complicated paperwork - whereas a straight couple just gets married.
