Spending millions of taxpayer dollars in 2010, the Census Bureau will once again not collect data on same-sex couples, even if they are living in the same house with a bunch of their kids playing in the yard. Instead, they will be listed as “unmarried partners.” Want to do something about it? You can start be writing a letter to the bureau’s director. [Count Our Marriages]
Brian Stout
Shame on the Census Bureau. As a strategist at one of the country’s top advertising agencies, I know how important census data is: it’s the very starting point that all other data and metrics flow from that people take seriously. If you’re not in the census data, you don’t exist in society in the eyes of so many corporate decision makers, lawmakers, etc.
Visibility isn’t just about being seen in marches on television, but being accounted for numerically where it matters. Numbers like these are the missing key “hard facts” that would help us make our case in taking a giant leap forward toward equality on so many fronts. It’s unfortunate that more people don’t understand the magnitude of just how much this kind of institutional oppression is holding us back.
Topher
Being gay I am truly frustrated by the lack of inclusion in the census. It is important that we are treated as equal. Being a radical, I actually indicate that I am married on my census form because, in my mind and the state of California, I am married.
Being a pragmatist, makes me question whether we should be pushing for a question about sexual orientation, a sort of GLBTQQA check box, if you will, instead of inclusion in the marriage question. This would make us visible because we could (hopefully) accurately count the numbers of Americans who identify as GLBTQQA. Think about what those numbers could do for us; are we so easy to marginalize because people underestimate our numbers?
nature boy
I was reading a Hawaii blog post about the author getting trained for the census at a local Mormon church: http://damontucker.wordpress.com/2009/04/01/me-and-the-mormons-just-dont-mix-at-times-census-training-at-church/
He writes that they were not allowed to bring caffeine in any form including chocolate to the training session. I wonder how training at a Mormon church ultimately affects the census count of even “unmarried partners?”
Alex
There is exactly one thing that can actually be done about it, which is overturning DOMA. Until then, every last little government agency is legally required to ignore any same sex marriage.