Some 50,000 Gay Couples Lied About Being Married Last Year

When the 2010 census collects (publicly released) stats on same-sex couples, expect a whole class of Americans to finally be represented. But until we have that data, we have the Census Bureau’s tally from 2008. And those figures revealed nearly 150,000 “marriages” to be declared — some 50,000 more than the Bureau estimates actually took place under official (read: legal) auspices.

In ’08, only four states had legal same-sex marriage: Massachusetts, Iowa, Connecticut, and California (haha, remember that?); other states recognized civil unions and domestic partnerships. So why the disparity? ‘Cause we’re lying, y’all!

Or at least fibbing. The only reasonable conclusion is that many gay folks reported themselves to be married because they considered themselves to be, even if no state government recognized them. Which makes sense, since: “In 2007, 341,000 out of 753,618 total same-sex couples reported being in a marriage relationship, even though only about 11,000 marriage licenses had been issued in the country. The numbers were even higher for 2005 and 2006; about 390,000 each year reported being in a same-sex marriage out of nearly 780,000 reported gay couples.”