The Great Canadian Gay Migration?

I was reading the newspaper this morning, and I came across a reprint of this gem, entitled: One Son's Choice: Love or Country? A lot of it isn't news: because gay people can't legally marry in the U.S., they can't file joint taxes, get health care through each other's jobs (generally) and can't inherit estates without paying taxes. But San Francisco, where I live, isn't exactly a terrible place to live if you're gay: (I was nice enough to spare you the photo in our largest newspaper that showed a guy gagged and tied to a lightpost for fun.)



But the woman who wrote this Newsweek piece, well, her son isn't down with San Francisco. He's moving to Canada. And apparently, he's not alone:
"Sadly, I suspect that Cameron is not the only one thinking of leaving. Type "gay migration" and "Canada" into any search engine and you will find hundreds of articles and blogs by current and potential Canadian immigrants."

So, at the risk of having the internet monitors at my company fire my ass, I typed "gay migration" and "Canada" into google. Here is what I got:

1. Great Gay Migration of 1812 (gay Quebecois cowboys? who knew?)
2. The Newsweek article above
3. Canada Bracing For Onslaught Of Gay Americans (joke site)
4. Canada May Be Haven for GLBT Couples (Nov. 2005)
6. ‘Get thee to a big city: sexual imaginary and the great gay migration’
8. Gay migration to rural Tasmania may have reached its high tide mark

Go through the next few pages of results, and in 95% of the articles, "gay migration" and "canada" don't appear together, and most of the articles are about people moving to San Francisco. Basically, there's no big rush to pack up the Castro and move it to Vancouver. It's a big deal to move to another country, and there aren't a lot of people rushing to do it because of perceived tax advantages and de jure as opposed to de facto acceptance, any more than Democrats are becoming Canadians because they hate the president. And besides, Canada is the place where I learned that it's ok to refer to people as "ret*rd", "f*ggot" and "stupid French-Canadian." It was only in the "less enlightened" United States that I really had to reconsider my usage of these words.