LGBT leaders eye changes for 2020 census count
The 2010 census count has yet to begin but LGBT leaders and demographers are already pushing for changes to the 2020 census.
LGBT advocates would like to see the next decennial count include questions about people’s sexual orientation and gender identity. There is also an effort under way to see that the federal population count breaks out figures on how many legally married same-sex couples there are in the U.S.
"One thing that is really significant to our community is visibility," said Rebecca Rolfe, executive director of the LGBT Community Center in San Francisco, during a forum last week census officials held with local LGBT leaders. "The census works on a very long time frame. We need to organize now for the 2020 census."
Census officials are already at work prepping for the 2020 count. What questions to include on the forms and how same-sex couples will be counted will all be determined years before households are asked to fill out the census. And only Congress can approve changes to the census.
"If we want to change things in 2020 we need to start working now when we have a supposedly friendly president and supposedly friendly Congress," said Geoff Kors, Equality California executive director.
The National Lesbian and Gay Task Force has launched the Web site http://www.queerthecensus.org and is circulating an online petition aimed at changing the census forms in 10 years.
As the site states, "It’s crazy - the U.S. Census Bureau wants an accurate count of everyone in the country - but there’s no question in the survey that asks if you are lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender. You read that right: LGBT people are basically invisible in the survey that is supposed to reflect the diversity of America’s population - and that’s a big problem."
Married LGBT couples will also be invisible in next year’s census. As the Bay Area Reporter reported last week, next year’s census will only count how many same-sex couples there are in America, irregardless of their relationship’s legal recognition. The decision not to break out figures for married same-sex couples was made during President George W. Bush’s second term, and federal officials cited the Defense of Marriage Act as the reason they could not release the data.
At the urging of LGBT advocates, the White House and the census bureau worked out a compromise where census officials will release the data to demographers eight months after the official count is turned over to the president so that they can then determine the number of married LGBT couples.
"The census has acknowledged this is a problem and is trying to figure out in the future how to count all the different forms of gay legal couples," said Gary Gates, an out demographer with the Williams Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law.
Next: 565,000 same-sex couples in the U.S.
