The well-publicized failure of Gov. Ernie Fletcher's campaign to secure a last-minute surge in conservative voters by telling them that Gov.-elect Steven Beshear would recreate Kentucky as a "new San Francisco" marks an important change in both Kentucky and national political strategies.

New analyses of Census Bureau data suggest that this failed "gay card" strategy may in part be a result of a dramatically more visible lesbian and gay population in some of the most conservative parts of the country -- including Kentucky's largest city, Louisville.

Since 1990, the Census Bureau has tracked the presence of same-sex "unmarried partners," commonly understood to be lesbian and gay couples. From an initial count of about 145,000 same-sex couples in 1990, the 2006 data show that this population has increased fivefold to nearly 780,000 couples. The number of same-sex couples grew more than 21 times faster than did the U.S. population.

Kentucky has seen an astounding twelve-fold increase from 862 same-sex couples counted in 1990 to more than 10,300 in 2006. In the same time period, the number of self-identified same-sex couples in other socially conservative Mountain, Midwest and Southern states exceeded a six-fold increase. Compare that with liberal East and West Coast states, where increases have been less than four-fold. Now either there's been a wildly successful gay recruitment campaign, or lots more lesbian and gay couples are "coming out" on government surveys.

Evidence strongly points to the latter. In a 1992 survey by the University of Chicago, 2.8 percent of men and 1.4 percent women identified themselves as lesbian, gay or bisexual. Ten years later, a National Center for Health Statistics study pegged that figure at 4.1 percent -- almost one-and-a-half times more men and three times more women.

At the same time, national support for gay people grows. In the late 1980s, Gallup polls found about 30 percent of Americans thought "homosexual relations between consenting adults" should be legal. A May 2007 poll finds this figure has risen to 59 percent.

Louisville, now home to nearly 2,000 same-sex couples, serves as the bellwether for these changes in Kentucky. Since 2000, the city experienced the biggest percentage increases (151 percent) among the nation's 50 largest cities. As a result, its ranking among those cities for the percent of same-sex couples in the population has moved from 41st in 1990 to 28th in 2006.

While Louisville's increases in same-sex couples are consistent with those seen in other parts of the South, the reasons for the increase are a bit different. States in the upper South have experienced relatively modest population growth, suggesting that most of the increases in same-sex couples are likely a product of more gay visibility among natives, rather than a large-scale migration to the area. In contrast, Louisville has experienced above-average population increases that no doubt include an influx of gay people. Such changes are moving the social and political climate barometer (drawing on those ubiquitous red and blue maps) in a decidedly purple direction.

Kentucky now has five openly lesbian or gay officials, including council members in Louisville and Lexington, the vice-mayor of Lexington and a state senator. That's more than in regional neighbors Tennessee, Alabama and Mississippi combined. Louisville has an ordinance banning discrimination based on sexual orientation, and last year the University of Louisville began offering domestic partner benefits for same-sex couples. And now it looks like the Jefferson school board is about to expand harassment and employment policies to protect gay and lesbian workers. Sounds pretty purple to me.

Closets are emptying in Kentucky and across the heartland, belying the notion that the rights of gay men and lesbians are somehow separate from those of mainstream America. As Americans across the country meet their lesbian and gay neighbors, all evidence suggests that they will become more supportive of gay rights. Politicians beware -- playing the gay card may just assure a losing hand.

Gary J. Gates is a senior research fellow at the UCLA School of Law's Williams Institute and co-author of The Gay and Lesbian Atlas.