U.S. Cities with greater gender equality have more progressive sexual orientation laws and services

For decades, American legal scholars have speculated that discrimination against lesbians and gay men in the United States represents a special case of sex discrimination that reinforces sex stereotypes and inequality between men and women. The present research analyzes recent documentation of the progressiveness of sexual orientation laws and programs across 386 cities in the United States, to determine whether it is related to one manifestation of gender discrimination, the male-female wage gap. The results show that cities with a smaller gender wage gap tend to have more progressive sexual orientation laws and programs, a finding that holds true even when controlling for plausible third variables such as the city's religiosity and conservative political climate. The findings show that the speculation of American legal scholars concerning the gendered nature of LGBT rights has basis in empirical reality.