Louisville has the 11th highest rate of people who identify as lesbian, gay, bi-sexual or transgender among the 50 largest metropolitan areas in the U.S., according to a Gallup survey released Friday.
Louisville's rate also beats out major neighboring cities including Cincinnati, Nashville, Indianapolis and St. Louis and Columbus, Ohio.
The New York Times calls this survey the "most detailed estimates yet about where people who identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender live."
The survey puts Louisville's 4.5 percent LGBT population behind major cities such as Los Angeles, Portland, Ore., Austin and Seattle.
San Francisco topped the list with a 6.2 percent LGBT population rate.
Louisville is one of small handful of Kentucky cities that has adopted a fairness ordinance, protecting LGBT and other people from discrimination. The city's tourism agency also recently announced it will be working with community partners to find ways to attract more LGBT visitors.
The city also ranked high on a study last year by the Human Rights Campaign that seeks to measure equality for LGBT issues.
More than 374,000 interviews were conducted for the survey between June 2012 and December 2014, according to Gallup.
"This is the largest ongoing study of the distribution of the LGBT population in the U.S. on record, and the first time a study has had large enough sample sizes to provide estimates of the LGBT population by MSA," Gallup said.
In all but two cities (known in research as Metropolitan Statistical Areas) there were at least 3,000 interviews.
Here is the list of the top 50 cities from Gallup's survey:
