Yeah… a once Raleigh native told Washington, D.C.’s Metroweekly magazine that he felt safer in Raleigh, as well as in Boston:

At the same time, Mark Hayes, another local gay man, was finding himself similarly fed up. While Perry is a Washington native, Hayes came to the District about five years ago, having lived in Boston and Raleigh, N.C. His experiences here, he says, indicate a level of entrenched homophobia he’s not experienced elsewhere.

”D.C. is very different,” says Hayes, recalling that he and three friends were recently taunted with shouts of ”faggot” by a passing Lincoln Navigator with Maryland plates as they neared Nellie’s, a gay sports bar, walking along 12th Street NW. ”Even though North Carolina has a reputation for not being as gay friendly, the big gay bar in Raleigh is right downtown. I’m not terrified, but I don’t have the level of safety that I felt in Boston.”

Hayes says he believes D.C. has a ”major problem with homophobia. I think it starts in schools and goes on up.”

I really don’t know how this can be. You’d think, stereotypically, that a larger city — and, in general, a more progressive city — would be a safer place for LGBT folks to live and work. Hayes definitely disagrees. His statement in the latest issue of Metroweekly comes right on the heels of the death of a supposed gay-bashing victim killed near D.C. gay bar BeBar. The Washington Blade has more.