And the District wasn’t the only city in the region to appear on the list: Arlington came in at No. 10, owing to the presence of the Arlington Gay and Lesbian Alliance as well as bars like Freddie’s in Crystal City and Galaxy Hut in Clarendon.

So how did The Advocate come up with its list? They looked at such things as lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender elected officials; bars on Out magazine’s list of the 200 greatest gay bars in the world (the Duplex Diner and JR’s both showed up on that list); and concerts performed by Mariah Carey, Pink, Lady Gaga or the Jonas Brothers. (You can read more about the scoring here and see how the District fared.).

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This comes less than two months after The New York Times called D.C. “the gayest place in America.” We quibbled with that description at the time, noting the story cited a poll and report comparing D.C. with 50 actual states. And we added that it’s quite difficult to quantify something like the gayest city or metropolitan area, noting that The Advocate had tried and wound up placing the District fourth the last time this list appeared. (It remains difficult to quantify, which is part of why The Advocate’s criteria for its rankings are “totally subjective and constantly changing,” to quote last year’s list.)

Still, this new list does agree with what Jeremy Peters, author of the Times story, wrote in November. Peters noted on Twitter that The Advocate had caught up with his thinking: