US Census Will Not Count LGBT Unions
The Examiner
by Jean Stanula
June 16, 2009

In 2000 US Census survey, LGBT couples did not have an option to specify their sexual orientation or their marital status – and no matter how far they’ve come, they won’t have that opportunity in 2010 either.

Because the Clinton era Defense of Marriage Act does not recognize marriages sanctioned by states, and because Congress, by law, must approve the questions for the census no later than two years in advance of the count, no stride that has been made in the past few years, or what will happen in 2009 – can change things.

Because the Census does not track LBGT people or their children, it takes a little bit of a work-around to get the numbers together to track exactly how many same sex couples live in DC. The Williams Institute of UCLA Law has done this by “using data from the U.S. Census Bureau. We compare same-sex 'unmarried partners,' which the Census Bureau defines as an unmarried couple who 'shares living quarters and has a close personal relationship,' to different-sex married couples in the District.”

They found that, “In 2000, there were 3,678 same-sex couples living in the District. In 2005, the almost 33,000 gay, lesbian, and bisexual people (single and coupled) living in the District constituted approximately 8.1% of the total adult population there.”

The study also found that, “according to Census 2000, [these couples] comprise 5.1% of all coupled households in the District, are racially and ethnically diverse, have partners that depend upon one another financially, and actively participate in the District’s economy. Census data also show that 8% of same-sex couples in the District are raising children. However, same-sex couples with children have lower household incomes, on average, and lower rates of home ownership, compared to married couples.”

This news wouldn’t be so devastating if the Census took place every year, every two years, or every five years, but for same sex couples in the District, and every where else in the United States, this means 10 more years of invisibility for almost 4,000 residents of DC and 781,267 LGBT folks nationally. Although same sex couples have resided together in marriage-like relationships throughout history, in the past ten years those couples have gained so much traction – gaining marriage rights in Massachusetts in 2004, Connecticut in 2008, and Iowa in 2009 – yet couples in each of these states who are legally married will not be counted as such on the US Census.

That little survey starts to seem a little worthless when it’s omitting the existence of almost a million minority members of the population, doesn’t it?