Houston — gay friendly city or gay friendly *for Texas*?

I grew up in Clear Lake and later Webster. I’m 29 and I moved away 11 years ago first to Austin and eventually to CA where I’ve been for 7 years, circumstances dictate that I have to move back to Texas. I’m a regular person, single no kids, and although I don’t have the vibe of “President of the Cher Fan Club” or “YouTube makeup artist” I do think the fact that I am gay is quite apparent, and frankly I would greatly prefer to live in an environment where it wouldn’t matter if someone went to go buy cigarettes at a gas station at 11pm in sequins and eyeshadow.

I have a few friends from high school that still live in the area and they say that it’s fine and that although Texas as a whole could use some work, I have nothing to worry about in Houston. That said, these are people who grew up in suburban Houston and have been in Texas for their whole lives and I wonder if it’s telling that all of the people that I spoke to that live in Houston live in/near Montrose or Houston Heights and when I asked for neighborhood recommendations that’s what I got. When I was growing up we would go hangout in Montrose and it seemed like the coolest, gayest place on Earth but after moving away I realized that it was not any cooler or more gay than an average neighborhood in a big city that isn’t in the South, and even if it was it’s an area of maybe a square mile or less. Even Austin, which has a reputation of being extremely progressive, was particularly friendly outside of a small area when I lived there a decade ago.

I’m not trying to make it like San Francisco, the state of California or anywhere in this country is great on actual acceptance and safety for gay people, and ultimately I don’t really have a choice in moving back at this time in my life but I want to prepare myself for if I am going to have to think about my sexuality with regards to where I might want to live, how I act etc in a way that was the norm for me as a younger person but that hasn’t been a thing for me for most of my adult life.