Yet one more reason why DOMA should be repealed. Now we can't even be counted in the census. Ridiculous.
2010 Census Will Not Recognize Same-Sex Marriage Responses
The U.S. Census Bureau will actively edit the responses of same-sex couples on the 2010 Census, classifying all legally married same-sex couples as ‘unmarried partners.’
“We are just showing the data published in a way that is consistent with the way every other agency publishes their data,” Martin O’Connell, chief of the Census Bureau’s Fertility and Family Statistics Branch, told the San Jose Mercury News Sunday.
The Census Bureau will be operating under the 1996 federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which “instructs all federal agencies only to recognize opposite-sex marriages for the purposes of enacting any agency programs.” According to O’Connell, the Bureau has not encountered any federal agency that tracks data on legally married same-sex couples.
Reached for comment by The Advocate, Gary Gates, senior research fellow at UCLA’s Williams Institute, believes that this situation “demonstrates an unintended consequence of the Defense of Marriage Act.” The Census Bureau, which enjoys a “well-deserved reputation as the gold standard of data collection,” now finds itself “forced to change legal and accurate responses to inaccurate responses,” Gates said.
http://www.advocate.com/news_detail_ektid57638.asp