Census: Same-sex couples should be counted :Bureau says same-sex couples who consider themselves spouses should feel free to check the 'husband' or 'wife' boxes on the census form

David Crary
April 6, 2010

NEW YORK - With strong backing from the Census Bureau, gay-rights activists are urging maximum participation by their community in the first U.S. census that will tally same-sex couples who say they're married - even those without a marriage license.

The move has drawn fire from conservatives, who complain that it's another step toward redefining marriage.

For the first time, the bureau has deployed a team of professional field workers - about two-dozen strong - to reach out to gays and lesbians. Monday, the bureau unveiled its first public-service videos encouraging gay Americans to mail in their census forms.

"What I tell folks in the bureau is that this is a powerful, important part of American society," said Tim Olson, a Census Bureau assistant division chief helping to oversee the campaign.

"We have to reach out and engage this part of the population. Anything less than that is a failure," he said.

Only the District of Columbia and five states - Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Vermont and Iowa - have legalized gay marriages, starting with Massachusetts in 2004. But the Census Bureau says same-sex couples in any state who consider themselves spouses should feel free to check the "husband" or "wife" boxes on the census form, rather than "unmarried partner."

The bureau's willingness to count gay marriages - despite a federal law that denies legal recognition to any of them - has been hailed as a historic milestone by gay-rights leaders.

"It's humongous," said Jaime Grant, director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force's Policy Institute.

"Our opponents are rightfully concerned, because it does lend an air of legitimacy to our marriages," Grant said. "It's another way of weaving us into the fabric instead of continuing to see as outsiders."

Some conservatives have complained the eventual count of same-sex unions will be legally inaccurate while serving as ammunition for gay-marriage advocates.

The census forms do not inquire directly about sexual orientation, and some gay-rights activists have complained that this means single gays - as opposed to those with live-in spouses and partners - have no means of gaining collective representation through the census.

Olson said an act of Congress would be needed to add a sexual orientation question to the form, and some activists are already planning a campaign to achieve that. In a first step, a campaign called "Queering the Census," activists are distributing stickers for gays and lesbians to attach to this year's forms on which they can identify themselves as gay, lesbian, transgender or bisexual.

In the previous census, in 2000, the Census Bureau tallied 600,000 same-sex couples who were cohabiting across the country. In initial planning for the 2010 census, federal officials indicated that same-sex married couples would be tallied as unmarried partners who lived together, not as wedded spouses. But those plans were changed in part because of intensive lobbying by gay-rights groups.

"We pushed for that change because we want to be seen and heard and represented as part of our country," Christine Quinn, the openly gay speaker of the New York City Council, told a news conference Monday.

Also at the news conference were actor George Takei, a former member of the TV cast of "Star Trek," and his husband, Brad Altman, who married in California in 2008 when same-sex marriage briefly was legal there.

"We pay taxes, we vote, we serve in the military and yet we don't have equality," Takei said. "To get that equality, it's very important for us to be identified. This is what the census is going to do."