Facebook Releases Data Indicating Roughly 4% Of U.S. Adults Are Openly LGB

Facebook Research released a report showing how Americans are using Facebook to come out as LGB (revealing some kind of same-sex attraction). The report indicates that there are differences over time and geography.

Currently, more than 6 million Americans have come out on Facebook (based on the criteria used in Figure 1). Since we only consider those who have expressed a same-gender attraction or list a custom gender on their Facebook profiles, it is likely that this figure is an underestimate of the total number of “out” Americans. Strikingly, of those who are out on Facebook, approximately 78% made this change to their profile since the beginning of 2012. While this figure may be somewhat conflated by growth in the number of people on Facebook, the sheer magnitude of this increase suggests that the LGBT movement has made significant strides in recent years.

The map at the top of this post shows that New York and Nevada are two states where people are more likely to be out as LGBT online.

Facebook's Rainbow Pride Filter Goes Viral

First the White House, now 26 million Facebook users! A pride filter initially created by two interns during a Facebook hackathon allows users to modify their profile pictures to include a rainbow filter in recognition of LGBT Pride. Apparently 26 million of Facebook users have since done so.

Mashable analyzed the viral phenomenon:

According to the company, the rainbow filter was built by two interns during an internal hackathon the rainbow filter was built by two interns during an internal hackathon recently. After it became a hit within the company, the interns worked with a larger team to add the tool to the site before Pride weekend and the SCOTUS ruling. 

The tool was added to the site just as Facebook shared for the first time that more than 6 million of its U.S. members identify themselves as gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender or gender non-conforming. Meanwhile, nearly 1 million have joined a Facebook group in support of the LGBTQ community.

I  liked the idea so much I joined the movement myself, as you can see at the top of this post. If you want to change your Facebook profile picture, just go to facebook.com/celebratepride

GRAPHIC: Age Gap In Same-Sex Couples Generally Greater Than Straight Couples'

Five Thirty Eight did an analysis of the average gap in ages between couples, and included male-male and female-female pairs in their data set (which was taken from Facebook). The results are interesting, because there is a significant difference:

Using anonymized data from U.S. users who say they are in relationships, Facebook found that the average age difference in gay couples tends to get bigger the older people get. Those in their early 20s have an average age difference in their relationships of about two to three years, but once people get into their 40s, that average age gap increases to about seven years. The age difference increases for older male-female couples, too (shown in red below), though not by as much. (Remember, this is self-reported data from people who make their relationship status public on Facebook.)

Any thoughts about why this age gap among gay and lesbian couples increases with age? The age gap between me and my Other Half is 37 months (just over 3 years), but we are in our forties so we are clearly outliers.

Happy Valentine's Day (Weekend)!

Facebook Broadens Gender Options For 150 Million Users

Interesting news! Facebook announced a new option for users based in the United States to customize their gender on their Facebook profiles "About" section. I was able to change my facebook profile so that it says "cisgender male."

The Williams Institute, a think tank based at the University of California, Los Angeles, estimates there are at least 700,000 individuals in the U.S. who identify as transgender, an umbrella term that includes people who live as a gender different from the one assigned to them at birth.

The change at Facebook drew dozens of appreciative postings on the company's diversity website, although there were some pointing out the need to change relationships beyond son and daughter, and asking for sexual preference options.

The move by Facebook represents a basic and a yet significant form of recognition of the nation's growing transgender rights movement, which has been spurred by veteran activists and young people who identify as transgender at younger ages. The Human Rights Campaign last year found that 10 percent of the 10,000 lesbian, gay, bisexual transgender youths it surveyed used "other" or wrote in their own gender terms.

Will you change your gender identity on Facebook?

Hat/tip to Wonder Man

New $3M Prizes For Mathematics Announced!

Interesting news! There is going to be a new $3 million-dollar prize for advances in Mathematics, similar to the high-profile Breakthrough prizes that have been announced in Life Sciences and the Fundamental Physics prize. The funds for these prizes are coming from technology billionaires who are trying to raise the social status of people who work in the area of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).

The New York Times reports:

Starting next year, the Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics, as it will be called, will join the Fundamental Physics Prize, which Mr. Milner established in 2012, and the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences, which he set up a year ago in partnership with Sergey Brin of Google, Mr. Zuckerberg and Jack Ma, a Chinese entrepreneur, and their families. Each winner or winning team gets $3 million, making the awards the richest in science (this year’s Nobel Prize winners, for example, are each winning or sharing $1.2 million). 

[...] 

All the prizewinners are eligible to win again, but in the meantime they will help judge future contests. For the new math award, Mr. Milner and Mr. Zuckerberg, in consultation with experts, will choose the first winners. Mr. Milner declined to say how many mathematicians would be chosen, but there could be quite a number of windfalls in store: for the physics price, there were nine inaugural winners.

This sounds like a good idea to me but not everyone agrees. Professor Peter Woit of Columbia University is one such critic:

Even if the Milner-Zuckerberg prize does end up focused on the best mathematics research, I still think the whole concept is problematic. The US today is increasingly dominated by a grotesque winner-take-all culture that values wealth and celebrity above all else. While mathematics research, like the rest of academia, has been affected as a star system has become increasingly part of the picture, this field has been somewhat immune to celebrity culture. While people typically think that what mathematicians do is perfectly respectable, they don’t understand much about it and aren’t especially interested. Milner and Zuckerberg want to change this by turning mathematicians into celebrities, but I don’t see any reason to believe this is going to lead to better mathematics.

Woit's main issue with the prize is that he thinks the money could have a better use if directed somewhere else. That may be true, but although I support and defend his right to express his beliefs, it really seems like another example of someone external to a process making an observation about someone's decision to approach a problem in a particular way and critiquing it because what is being done doesn't align with how the critic sees the world or their goals. 

To me, the critic should promote their vision, unless they can make a compelling case for the idea that the activity they are critiquiing will actually have a deleterious impact on some universal good.

I don't think Woit's criticism does that. What do you think, do you think the $3 million Breakthrough Prizes in Mathematics will do more harm than good?

NY-18: Openly Gay Congressional Candidate Sean Eldridge Announces

Sean Eldridge is the male spouse of Chris Hughes, the openly gay co-founder of Facebook who bought The New Republic last year and was the architect behind Presidential candidate Barack Obama's campaign website BarackObama.com in 2007. Eldridge has been rumored to want to run for Congress from New York State for quite awhile. Eldridge is 27 years old and probably best known in LGBT circles as the former Political Director of Freedom To Marry, the campaign to win the freedom to marry nationwide

Bizarrely, if elected, he would be the second, not the first openly gay guy named Sean who is a Congressman from New York. Sean Patrick Maloney was elected in 2012 to represent the 18th Congressional District of New York. There are currently 7 openly LGBT members of Congress, 6 in the U.S. House and Wisconsin's U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin.

This week Eldridge indeed announced that he is running to represent the 18th Congressional District of New York, in a curious video where he mentions his family (but not the fact that he is married to a man) and touts his supports for abortion rights and small business. It's not clear if this would count as "straight-washing" but it does appear a little odd to this openly gay viewer.

Then again maybe we are now living in a world where the fact that you are gay will not be brought up or of interest to the general public during a political campaign. I seriously doubt it. After all, he is running against a Republican incumbent Congressman (named Chris Gibson).

With his husband's hundreds of millions of dollars at his disposal Eldridge should be able to make the race for the 19th District competitive, at the very least.

Hat/tip to BuzzFeed

Saturday Politics: President Obama Highlights Need For ENDA On Social Media

President Barack Obama posted on Twitter  and Facebook last night a link to the above image of the 29 states that right now have no statewide legal protections against being fired for being lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. The name of the pending federal legislation that would protect LGBT people everywhere in the United States from employment discrimination is called the Employment Non-Discrimination Act or ENDA and it is expected to come to a vote in the United States Senate by the end of the year. However, it is not expected to become law any time soon because the measure is opposed by the vast majority of Republicans, especially those who are in control of the United States House of Representatives.

Here's the exact tweet:

It's 2013, and millions of LGBT Americans still lack basic protection from discrimination under the law. http://t.co/sMoKVqELMV #ENDA
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) September 6, 2013

It is interesting to see the President (or more accurately, the president's outside organizing arm, called Organizing for Action) using social media to call attention to and promote ENDA in this way.

Hat/tip to Joe.My.God

26yo Gay Spouse of Facebook wiz eyes Congress

Sean Eldridge last made news when his marriage to Chris Hughes, a co-founder of Facebook, was featured on the front page of the New York Times last year. Eldridge, 26, was the political director of FreedomtoMarry.org until July 2011 and a Democraic political activist since, while Hughes, 29, recently re-launched The New Republic to great fanfare with an in-depth interview with President Obama.

Now comes word that Eldridge wants to follow in the footsteps of openly gay Congressman Sean Patrick Maloney (NY-18) and challenge sitting Republican congressman Chris Gibson in New York's 19th Congressional District. Presumably, Eldridge will have access to some of the estimated 500-million-dollar fortune of his husband. Eldridge has filed the necessary paperwork that allows him to further explore a run for Congress.

According to the filings, Eldridge, a Democratic activist and the head of an investment firm, will be seeking a House seat in New York's 19th District, currently represented by Representative Chris Gibson. Gibson, a two-term Republican and former West Point professor, was reelected in November by a margin of 53 percent to 47 percent. But the 19th District also broke for Obama; it is one of the dozens of vulnerable districts Democratic strategists are gunning for in 2014 in an effort to reclaim the House.

It will be interesting to see how serious Eldridge is about running. If he wins, that would most likely make New York the first state with two openly gay Representatives in Congress. (Of course, Wisconsin currently has a openly gay Congressman in Mark Pocan and an openly lesbian Senator in Tammy Baldwin.)

Facebook and Same-Sex Marriage: Happy Together

Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes (left) and former Freedom to Marry
political director Sean Eldridge were married this weekend at home in Garrison, NY

Lots of news combining Facebook and gay marriage today. First comes the news that one of Facebook's founders, Chris Hughes, got married to his longtime boyfriend Sean Eldridge at their home in Garrison, NY.

From the marriage announcement in yesterday's New York Times:

Mr. Hughes (left), 28, works from New York, Garrison and Washington as the publisher and editor in chief of The New Republic magazine. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard. He founded Facebook with Mark Zuckerberg, Dustin Moskovitz and Eduardo Saverin. Mr. Hughes also led the online organizing for Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign. He is the son of Brenda Hughes and Arlyn Ray Hughes of Wilmington, N.C. His mother retired as a mathematics teacher at Newton-Conover High School in Newton, N.C. His father retired as a sales manager at the Snyder Paper Company in Hickory, N.C. 

Mr. Eldridge, 25, is the founder and treasurer of Protect Our Democracy, an advocacy group based in Garrison that seeks campaign finance reform. He is also the president of Hudson River Ventures, an investment firm in Garrison. He was until July 2011, the political director of Freedom to Marry, a group that advocates same-sex marriage. He graduated from Brown.

Congratulations to Sean and Chris!

In other Facebook and gay marriage news today it was announced that the social media behemoth will include new icons that will allow users to indicate that their relationship status is that they are married to someone of the same sex. Last year Facebook made news when they added options like "in a civil union" and "in a domestic partnership" as possible relationship status selections.


GLAAD reports:

Facebook has rolled out a new feature providing additional recognition for its users who are married to a person of the same sex. Now these users who have indicated on their Facebook timeline that they are married will be recognized by new same-sex marriage icons, rather than the marriage icon used for straight married couples.

Of course, one of the first questions that comes to mind is "does anyone still use Facebook?" But besides that, this is an excellent demonstration that the good guys continue to win the ongoing kulturkampf over LGBT equality as one of the most visible companies in Silicon Valley (and really, the world). Facebook has previously demonstrated its bona fides on the side of LGBT equality by releasing an It Gets Better video by their employees, taken active steps to stop bullying and recognizing LGBT pride through a Facebook "hack."

Hat/tip to kenneth in the 212 and joe.my.god.

Facebook Adds "Civil Union" and "Domestic Partnership" Options

This is an interesting cultural advance. Facebook has decided to add two more options to "Relationship Status": in a civil union and in a domestic partnership.

The 600 million user social networking behemoth made a small change to its ‘Relationship Status’ drop down box today, and in doing so recognized ‘In a civil union’ and ‘In a domestic partnership’ as valid choices in the way one can report their personal relationship on the site.

[...]

Starting in Denmark in 1989 and spreading to some 30 plus countries, the concept of civil unions was created to ensure that same-sex couples received the same rights, benefits, and were subject to the same legal responsibilities as opposite-sex couples. The concept is highly controversial with both supporters and detractors for what is commonly referred to as gay marriage, the former believes it does not grant rights equivalent to marriage and thus holds them at a second lesser status, the latter holds that civil unions legitimize a type of relationship that should not be sanctioned by the state.

It should be noted that there are numerous states which have the option of civil unions and domestic partnerships: Illinois, New Jersey,  California, Washington, Oregon, and Nevada with Hawaii and possibly Colorado joining the list soon.

Of course, marriage equality is the law in Vermont, Massachusetts, Iowa, Connecticut and the District of Columbia with Maryland and possibly New York joining this list soon.

CA-GOV: 25 Random Things About Jerry Brown

Attorney General Jerry Brown posted his "25 Random Thing About Me" on his Facebook page. According to the LA NOW blog, his staff claims that Brown typed up the list and posted it himself, without staff input.

1. I got my first dog 13 years ago, a black Lab named Dharma.

2. At Yale, I took “Psychiatry and the Law” from Anna Freud, Sigmund’s daughter. I also studied Roman law.

3. In 1958, I took vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. Later, Pope John XXIII dispensed me from these obligations.

4. I took marriage vows for the first time 3 years ago.

5. I practiced Zen meditation under Yamada Roshi and Father Enomiya-Lassalle in Japan.

6. My official portrait as Governor was quite controversial and the legislature refused to hang it. My Father said if I didn’t get a new one, I could never run again. It is now hanging and I am still running.

7. I am not fond of Mediterranean fruit flies, or of Malathion. Both are bad.

8. I dislike shopping.

9. I started 2 charter schools in Oakland, the Oakland school for the Arts and the Oakland Military Institute.

10. When governor, I decided not to have an Inaugural ball and my inaugural speech was 7½ minutes. For the inaugural dinner, we went to Man Fook Lo, a Chinese restaurant in the produce district of Los Angeles. It was once a favorite of Mae West.

11. I am a part owner of a ranch in Colusa County. It belonged to my Great-grandfather.

12. I worked with Mother Theresa in India at the Home for the Dying.

13. I’ve been duck hunting with Chief Justice Warren, but not with Vice President Cheney.

14. I sued Richard Nixon’s lawyer for helping the President cheat on his income tax.

15. I like arugula and broccoli.

16. On my honeymoon, my wife and I canoed down the Russian river.

17. I was a cheerleader at St. Ignatius High School.

18. I knocked my opponent to the canvas in a 3 round boxing match at Senior Fight Night.

19. My favorite cereal is Flax Plus Multibran.

20. My first car was a 1941 green Plymouth. My most famous car was a 1974 blue Plymouth.

21. I own a colt 38, given to me by my father.

22. I went to Bangladesh as a CARE ambassador.

23. I hiked to the top of half dome. My first trip to Yosemite was when I was 4.

24. The first time I became Governor, I followed an Actor (Ronald Reagan).

25. My maternal grandfather was a San Francisco Police Captain. My paternal grandfather ran a poker club in the Tenderloin.

If there were any questions about whether he wants to be the next Governor of California, see numbers 6 "I am still running" and number 24 (Clearly if Brown became Governor again in 2011, he would follow another Republican actor, Arnold Schwarzenegger).