The U.S. Census
Bureau will actively edit the responses of same-sex
couples on the 2010 Census, classifying all legally married
same-sex couples as "unmarried partners."
"We are
just showing the data published in a way that is consistent
with the way every other agency publishes their
data," Martin O'Connell, chief of the
Census Bureau's Fertility and Family Statistics
Branch, told the San Jose Mercury News Sunday.
The Census Bureau
will be operating under the 1996 federal Defense of
Marriage Act, which "instructs all federal agencies
only to recognize opposite-sex marriages for the
purposes of enacting any agency programs."
According to O'Connell, the Bureau has not
encountered any federal agency that tracks data on
legally married same-sex couples.
Reached for
comment by The Advocate, Gary Gates, senior
research fellow at UCLA's Williams Institute,
believes that this situation "demonstrates an
unintended consequence of the Defense of Marriage
Act." The Census Bureau, which enjoys a
"well-deserved reputation as the gold standard
of data collection," now finds itself
"forced to change legal and accurate responses to
inaccurate responses," Gates said.
The changes that
will be made to Census responses will make it difficult
to count married couples in states where same-sex marriages
are legal, and impossible for married LGBT couples
with children to be recognized as families on the
Census. According to Census Bureau definitions, a
"family" consists of two or more people related by birth,
adoption, or marriage. "[A married LGBT person will]
get counted as a single parent," Gates said.
"It's shameful," Shannon Minter, legal
director for the National Center for Lesbian Rights,
said of the Census policy. Minter told the Mercury News, "It really is something out of
Orwell." (The Advocate)
