Anyone walking through the Dupont Circle neighborhood the other night would have found themselves fighting for sidewalk space with the hundreds of spectators — many of them straight — who had gathered to watch the 17th Street High Heel Race, an annual sprint for drag queens who tear down the block in heels. And when I tried to make plans a few weekends ago, I found most of my friends were booked solid because they were attending one of two huge gay-themed events: the Human Rights Campaign annual black-tie dinner, featuring Jennifer Lopez as the main event; or the Miss Adams Morgan drag pageant, which is such a large production it takes over the Washington Hilton.

When our federal district is measured against other cities with large gay populations, a comparison that experts say is better than comparing to states, it still ranks at the top of the list. Gary J. Gates, who studies census data for the Williams Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles, reports that Washington has 18.1 same-sex couples per 1,000 households. That places it eighth among cities with populations larger than 250,000.

Sorry, New York, but you have only 8.75 same-sex couples per 1,000 households. In Manhattan alone, it’s higher, at 16.7, but still not higher than D.C. The top three are San Francisco (30.3 per 1,000), Seattle (23) and Oakland (21). The numbers capture only those who acknowledge being in a same-sex relationship.

Every gay man or lesbian I spoke to for this article had a horror story about what it was like working in the closet, fearing they would be found out. It was only during the Clinton years that the White House finally ended the decades-long practice of denying security clearance to people known to be gay or lesbian. That meant in order to be considered for many high-level jobs involving access to classified information, gays and lesbians had to concoct a web of lies about their personal lives.

Steve Elmendorf, a Democratic lobbyist who worked on Capitol Hill for years, described how he and his gay friends had to make sure they all gave the same references to government agents investigating their backgrounds, an insurance policy so that if the question of their sexual orientation came up, they could be certain no one unpredictable would spill the truth.