Census Bureau Doesn't Count Same-Sex Marriages

Many Californians applauded the state Supreme Court decision to allow same-sex couples to marry. Hundreds more raced to have their partnerships officially recognized by the state. But now, same-sex newlyweds in both California and Massachusetts are facing a different battle: being counted.

The U.S. Census Bureau, reacting to the federal Defense of Marriage Act and similar mandates, will edit responses from same-sex couples who marry legally in California and Massachusetts for the 2010 census, changing their responses from "married" to "unmarried partner." The move has infuriated some LGBT civil-rights groups.

"This is not an acceptable way to count same-sex couples," says Gary Gates of the Williams Institute, a think-tank at UCLA's law school, which tracks LGBT-related public-policy issues. "I don't think it's appropriate to alter potentially valid responses with limited evidence. This makes visible people invisible."

Other organizations, such as the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR), have also expressed their dismay with the decision. "To have the federal government disappear your marriage I'm sure will be painful and upsetting," says Shannon Minter, legal director for NCLR. "It's shameful."

So what's really going on?

The Census Bureau defines a "family" as two or more people related by birth, adoption or marriage. While this has traditionally been between men and women, now that both Calif. and Mass. permit same-sex marriage, many feel this definition will skew the numbers. 

"This has been a question we've been looking at for quite a long time," Martin O'Connell, chief of the Census Bureau's Fertility and Family Statistics Branch, told the San Jose Mercury News. "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."

While the bureau does not plan to falsify information, it will automatically assign a respondent who refers to a person of the same gender as their "husband/wife" on the 2010 census form to the "unmarried partner" category.

"We're not destroying data; we are keeping that data," O'Connell said. "We are just showing the data published in a way that is consistent with the way every other agency publishes their data."

But this is precisely the problem marketers such as Bob Witeck face. "This is a gross misrepresentation," says Witeck, the CEO of Witeck-Combs Communications. "In marketing, we try to get closer to the data to get the true picture to better serve the needs of people."

However, Witeck is hopeful. The fate of legislation relies heavily on who takes the White House in November. Says Witeck, "I am hopeful that a new president and a democratic Congress can 'fix' this."