Is Michigan a good place for gay people to live?

Detroit is heaven for gay people! Flint too!

We're going to Traverse City area. I think we'll be fine.

Let's go ice fishing. We'll hang out in the shanty I got from my dad and I'll tell you everything.

Grand Rapids has a large gay community.

[quote] In 2012, The Advocate magazine named Grand Rapids one of the "Gayest Cities in America."

I don't live in Michigan but I voted anyway, because it's Michigan! Who would want to live there?

I'm from Grand Rapids. The gay Mecca of Michigan is an hour southwest from GR, Saugatuck. It's pretty wonderful. Very good gay clubs, some for cruising, some for showtunes, some for brunch.

Traverse City, and the Grand Traverse region, is amazingly beautiful. I hope to retire there some day. Lots of things to do in the area, though not all that many specifically gay. The places to go are Art's in Glen Arbor for dinner (they don't take credit cards), which is down the street from Cherry Republic for all your touristy crap. On the other side of Glen Lake is the Sleeping Bear Sand Dunes, which is an amazing climb if you are in shape, though there is a scenic drive if you aren't. Up the coast is Leland for Fishtown, at the tip of the Leelanau Peninsula is Northport. Don't be surprised to run into Tim Allen or Mario Batali there. The lighthouse is great for a picnic. Back towards TC there is a casino in Peshawbestown, but if that is your thing there is a much better one to the east of TC. Suttons Bay has some good restaurants and some good stores including Bahles, where you think you just dropped into an old Judy Garland movie like In the Good Old Summertime or Meet Me in St. Louis. In TC there is a gay bar, but it's somewhat tragic. Better to try a craft brewery or one of the restaurants on the main drag.

I commuted to work in Detroit from the east coast. I knew the job wasn’t going to last more than a year. I was glad to leave. Dated a guy who lived in Royal Oak. He was nice. Royal Oak was interesting. Winter sucks. The republicans suck.

Coolest things ever about metro Detroit. Seeing Mayer Hawthorne play a small theater in Royal Oak. Wandering through the Henry Ford. Visiting Motown studio. Eating dinner with my boyfriend at La Dolce Vita on Woodward.

Overrated - coneys

R6 I waited table decades ago in Northport and waited on Tim! I will be eventually living just outside the village of Omena on M-22. Family legacy cottage is on Omena Point

R8, I spent my summers at Sugar Loaf growing up, worked at Good Harbor, did a show at the Bay Theater, and then later ran a store in Northport for about 8 months (long story).

Saugatuck is like the midwestern version of Provincetown or Palm Springs, sort of.

R10 Suck and Fuck, if I recall

Also, Grand Rapids has gay people in part because it's traditionally been a big furniture design center, and companies like Herman Miller are still there (as far as I know).

anyone here ever visit Arnie's Funland waterpark?

Cranbrook!

R13 The one in GR? I did. My older brother worked there.

R7, I used to live in Royal Oak. We are in agreement about everything.

R7–how far was your commute?

I grew up in Midland, MI. It's a nice place to be from, but I would never live in MI again. Actually, I wish I had been raised in the PNW.

Madonna's brother Christopher recently moved back to Royal Oak from LA.

I would live in Ann Arbor if I moved back.

Ann Arbor is the only place I’d live if I moved back. It is a great small city, but it is small.

Birmingham and Grosse Pointe would be close seconds. Not gay, but upscale with good dining, bars, architecture.

The weat coast is more affluent than the east coast. It is just plain scary the further north you go. Traverse Coty are pretty but conservative. I grew up in Michigan and still don’t understMd what goes on in the upper peninsula. It’s a different country.

Sorry, meant Bloomfield Hills anove, not Birmingham.

Kristen Bell used to work at the TCBY on Woodward in Royal Oak

Grand Rapids is bible-belty in parts and has a whiter than white feel compared to Metro Detroit. Lived there for a year--didn't care for it. Saugatuck is fine for a weekend--that side of the state is filled with Chicagoans on vacation.

Ann Arbor is nice, but yes, small. My mother lives there. It is a college town and liberal, but not sure I could live there.

I lived in Royal Oak and now Grosse Pointe. I miss living off Woodward if that makes sense.

Many millenials are buying in the city of Detroit. I went to grad school at Wayne State, it was a decent place to live, work and study. No complaints. No gay bar issues.

I love concerts/music too much to live farther away from Detroit. They have excellent live music venues.

My commute was to Southfield. Royal Oak was pretty close. I also liked being close to Ferndale.

R23 is correct. Live music is a major plus. I spent a lot of time in Detroit or Ann Arbor at concerts.

Food was great. I miss Ollie’s Lebanese restaurant in Dearborn. The fattoush and the shish tawook were awesome. The pastries from Shatila were the best I’ve had. My boyfriend was polish so I ate a lot at the Polish Village Cafe in Hamtramck. I love perogies.

I moved to southeast Michigan (Oakland county aka Detroit suburbs) 2 years ago from the east coast. It's definitely still a 'Don't ask. Don't tell." mentality there in many places. Yes, as others have mentioned, there are specific cities that are more open-minded and there are fun places to visit, but it's definitely different than the openness of the east and west coasts on a day-to-day basis. There are an amazing number of Trump supporters and religious people there so it's still awkward when a repairman comes in to fix the furnace and acts strangely when he realizes that you're a gay couple.

Nothing to do with gay, but the Detroit area has the best Lebanese food. Dearborn has the largest concentration of Middle Easterners in the US (and nothing has blown up, and somehow Sharia law has not been implemented).

Michigan is loaded with Trump supporters and Islam. As a person who lives here, I don’t think it’s a safe place to live at all for gay people.

And, I must say, so many focus on Arab Muslims—they should focus on Arab Christians too. They don’t like hays either.

*gays

I'm from Michigan. It's ok for gays but the politics state wide trend anti gay. It can be provincial, people in the Detroit suburbs are very impressed with said suburbs, but it's pretty boring. Imagine living in the suburbs of any major city but with a weak city as an anchor. They don't realize it though, they think it's really cosmopolitan. The city is improving slowly. No public transit to speak of. Race relations can be weird. Car insurance is really expensive. There's a weird anti education streak in the middle class, probably because they were factory workers and they are waiting for those good paying jobs that only require high school to come back. That false hope swung the state to Trump.

On the plus side, land is cheap and Lake Michigan is beautiful. Ann Arbor is nice but it's a college town and you'll pay big city prices to live there. Close to Chicago and Toronto. Traverse City is lovely as is most of upper Michigan. Detroit airport has flights everywhere. If you want to work in auto engineering it is the place to be.

Grand Rapids went for Trump, they are not a liberal city. Betsy DeVos is from there and her family pretty much owns the town.

It’s interesting that Michigan voted for Bernie Sanders, whom is to the left of Hillary Clinton yet the politics veer to towards the anti-gay.

Kalamazoo is actually the most gay-positive city in Michigan. I'd put it ahead of Ann Arbor because of the culture of homophobia that was Tom Monaghan.

Oakland County went from being a suburb to being an enclave where middle class aspiration still lives, but under siege. Pretty much anything bearable in metro Detroit is found there, but it still has plenty of sad and decayed places. It's too bad John Kerfoot took down his Royal Oak video. "Douchebags. Royal Oak. Pure Michigan!"

Are Bernie Sanders voters pro-gay? I ask because if not, it concerns me if Sanders is going to run in 2020 and win the Democratic nomination.

[quote]Grand Rapids went for Trump, they are not a liberal city.

The city of Grand Rapids went for Clinton, just as it did for Obama in 2008 and 2012. It’s the surrounding suburbs and farmland that enabled Trump to take the county by a 2% margin.

The business community, led by the DeVoses, is very Republican but the last two mayors have been very liberal — pro-gay, pro-immigrant, very eco-forward. The annual Pride Festival, once an object of scorn, is now promoted as one of the city’s preeminent community gatherings.

Interesting R35, good to hear things are improving.

Wikipedia does mention "In 2010 Grand Rapids was named the "most sustainable midsize city in the U.S." by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Civic Leadership Center and Siemens Corp. Grand Rapids was chosen over finalist cities Davenport, Iowa and Hoover, Alabama."

This is unfortunate though: "The city is the center of the 3rd Congressional District, currently represented by Republican Justin Amash. " He has an HRC rating of zero.