You Mean to Say There Are Poor Gay People?

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Shhh, don’t tell our advertisers, but maybe gay men and women aren’t the affluent, loaded-with-disposable-income, immune-to-the-recession rich kids everyone assumed! A new study suggests the gay characters on Brothers & Sisters, Will & Grace, The L Word might — gasp! — misrepresent the financials of queers. Not even Suze Orman can save us.

As Queerty‘s own readers have shared, we’re looking at a bleak picture just like the rest of the country.

Now UCLA’s Williams Institute, which studies gay issues, has a new study out saying across the board, GLBTers can be just as bad off as anyone else. In fact, relays USA Today, “lesbian couples are more likely to be poor than married heterosexuals, and children of same-sex parents are twice as likely to live in poverty as those of traditional married couples.”

Uh oh. We can just hear the right-wing latching on to this as evidence why children belong in “traditional” homes.

Or, view it this way: “Same-sex partners are more likely to be poor because they lack such safety nets as a spouse’s health insurance coverage and Social Security survivor benefits.”

Of course, methodology is important here. “The report is an analysis of the most recent data on same-sex unmarried partners from the 2000 Census and two smaller surveys that include questions on sexual orientation. Together, it argues, they debunk ‘a popular stereotype (that) paints lesbians and gay men as an affluent elite.'”

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