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Photo by Sarah Bennett.

Just ahead of Pride Month, consumer analysis firm NerdWallet combined data from three areas to rank the nation’s most LGBTQ-friendly cities and Long Beach sits at a lofty #5.

Three categories were used to combine points to rank each city: the percentage of same-sex households; the Human Rights Campaign Municipality Equality Index (of which Long Beach scored a perfect score 100* late last year); and the number of sexual orientation-related hate crimes per 100,000 residents.

“Long Beach earned the highest possible equality score from the HRC and the city sees fewer LGBT-targeted hate crimes per 100,000 residents than most other places in the country,” the report said. “The Greater Long Beach LGBTQ Center provides education and assistance to the local community in an effort to advocate for equality and fight intolerance based on sexual orientation or gender.”

The cities that ranked higher than Long Beach are: #4, Oakland, and #3, Atlanta, both of which noted lower hate crimes and higher same-sex households than Long Beach; #2, San Francisco, had a higher hate crime rate but a significantly larger amount of same-sex households; and #1, Seattle, which scored better than Long Beach across all areas.

*While every city could only have a maximum score of 100, the Municipality Equality Index included a possible 20 “bonus points” that were added on after; this puts Long Beach’s raw score at 109, only second to Seattle and San Francisco (each at 110); it is unclear if these bonus points were included in the data analysis provided by NerdWallet.

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