LGBT culture in New York City New York, geared toward the LGBT community, is located in Hell's Kitchen. Brooklyn is home to a large and growing number of same-sex couples. Same-sex marriages in New York were legalized on June 24, 2011 and were authorized to take place beginning 30 days thereafter. The Park Slope neighborhood spearheaded the popularity of Brooklyn among lesbians, and Prospect Heights has an LGBT residential presence. Numerous neighborhoods have since become home to LGBT communities. Elmhurst and Jackson Heights, Queens, are focal hubs for the transgender community of New York City. Astoria has an emerging LGBT presence. Queens is also becoming a
Jackson Heights, Queens to move in by the 1940s and blacks by 1968. Beginning in the 1960s, an influx of newly immigrated residents came into Jackson Heights, at the same time that existing residents were leaving for suburbs due to white flight. Hispanic immigrants moved in by the 1970s. By then, white residents who remained in the neighborhood wished to eliminate the stigma of Jackson Heights being an ethnically diverse neighborhood, often defining its border as Roosevelt Avenue, because crime had started to increase in the area. By the mid-1970s, South American organized crime groups in Jackson Heights, often peddling drugs, gained national