Just filled out our census form. It’s really quite brief, because there are only 2 of us in the house (plus the cat).
And then it struck me that the form asks for Person #1’s gender, as well as the relationship of Person #2 to Person #1 (for which one of the choices is “husband/wife”), and Person #2’s gender.
So in theory, anyway, the Census Bureau could track the number of same-sex marriages in the U.S. (the self-declared ones, anyway; nowhere does the form ask whether any declared marital relationship complies with the laws of the couple’s state of residence).
Any guesses as to whether the Census Bureau has any plans along those lines? That would be…interesting.
There’s a movement called Queer the Census which wants LGBT people to be represented in the census. From what I have been told from queers on the ground, is that the Census Bureau under Obama really does want to know how many same-sex marriages or same-sex couples living together there are in the country.
In previous censuses, the data editing practice in the cases where there were two people of the same sex reported as spouses was to change the sex of one of them. (I don’t know how they chose who to change.) For the 2010 census, they are going to continue to do that AND they are going to release the unedited data.* The Census Bureau is currently hard at work trying to establish the best ways to change the form for the 2020 census to accurately determine which people are in fact same sex spouses. It’s going to be fascinating!
Also, notice that there is an option for “unmarried partner” that is often used by same sex couples.
My knowledge is second hand. A colleague of mine is working on the 2020 project.
*Why edit the data? Because people are crappy at filling out forms. You’d think it wouldn’t be so hard to check male or female, and yet, it’s a problem.
We (a same-sex couple) chose the “married” option because we are married in Massachusetts, and in our own state we are legally registered “domestic partners,” an option that does not appear on the census form. None of the census’s options were more accurate than “married.”
Oh, God. Wait until the teabaggers find out about this. The census allows gay people to say they’re married? Clearly part of Obama’s Communist/Kenyan/atheist plot to destroy American and persecute Christians and take away our guns.
It certainly sounds more practical and realistic than the “unrelated = having sex” assumption some LGBT group in Spain took a few years ago. They decided that any home where two or more legally-unrelated(1) people lived together represented a romantic relationship between the inhabitants, thus leading to counting every student-filled apartment to be counted as an orgy and every old lady with an in-house caretaker to be counted as a lesbian couple. Never had Spanish students had so much sex!
ETA: (1) = relationship up to 2nd degree. So for example, I’m legally related to my brothers (2nd) but not to my nephews (3rd). This affects, for example, inheritance tax.