US Census To Divorce Gay Marrieds
Gay City News
By Andy Humm
July 17, 2008

Same-sex couples who mark their 2010 census forms as married will be converted to "unmarried partners" by the US Census Bureau, which cited the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, a federal ban on recognition of same-sex marriages, to support the decision.

Gary Gates of the Williams Institute told the San Jose Mercury News, "I think it's bad form for the census to change a legal response to an incorrect response. That goes against everything the census stands for."

Martin O'Connell, chief of the bureau's Fertility and Family Statistics Branch, told the paper, "It's not something the bureau could arbitrarily or casually decide to change on a whim, because our data is used by virtually every federal agency."

The 2000 census did start counting same-sex unmarried partners and revealed that they were living in virtually every county in the country.

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