Gay Guide to Seattle
Seattle protected gay people early and then, unusually for the time, refused to take it back. The city banned employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in 1973 and housing discrimination in 1975, among the first large American cities to do either. In 1978 two Seattle police officers put Initiative 13 on the ballot to repeal both. Anita Bryant's campaigns had just succeeded in Dade County and in Minneapolis, and repeal looked winnable. Seattle voters rejected it by roughly two to one, 63 percent against.
Washington kept that pattern. In 2012 the state approved marriage equality at the ballot box rather than through the courts, one of the first anywhere to do it by popular vote.
Almost everything queer in Seattle sits on Capitol Hill, immediately east of downtown, and most of it along the Pike/Pine corridor. It is dense and walkable in a way the rest of the city is not, and the range is wider than the size suggests: leather and bear bars, lesbian rooms, all-ages and sober spaces, and dance floors that run late.
The hill is compact enough that a night out rarely needs a car. Volunteer Park anchors its northern end, and the neighborhood's older bars sit within a few blocks of newer arrivals rather than being scattered across the city.
Seattle Pride takes over downtown each June with one of the larger parades on the West Coast, and the celebrations spill back up onto Capitol Hill rather than ending at the parade route.