Respondents to the 2020 census will be able to state whether they are part of a same-sex couple for the first time in the survey’s history.
A Census Bureau spokesperson confirmed the change to NBC News, telling the news outlet that “as our population and communities change, so do their needs. To better collect more detailed data about types of coupled households, the Census Bureau expanded the single response option of ‘husband or wife’ or ‘unmarried partner’ to the two response options of ‘opposite-sex husband/wife/spouse’ and ‘same-sex husband/wife/spouse,’ and ‘opposite-sex unmarried partner’ and ‘same-sex unmarried partner’.”
The spokesperson also added that the 2015 Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage in the U.S. “furthered the need” to include same-sex couples in the census.
LGBTQ advocates hailed the move as a win but said they hoped the census will also start to count LGBTQ individuals.
Meanwhile, Meghan Maury, who is the policy director at the National LGBTQ Task Force and a member of the Census Bureau’s National Advisory Committee on Racial, Ethnic and Other Populations, told NBC News that adding the same-sex option to the relationship question is a “step in the right direction but nowhere near what we’d love to have one day.”
The Census Bureau had already announced that it’s not going to be asking individuals about their sexual orientation or gender identity.
The 2020 census came under a rain of fire after President Donald Trump’s administration announced that a question on citizenship would be included. Democratic states sued the administration over the question only days after it was announced, saying that it would lead to an undercount of residents who live in certain states.
The 2010 United States Census was taken via mail-in citizen self-reporting, with enumerators serving to spot-check randomly selected neighborhoods and communities. As part of a drive to increase the count’s accuracy, 635,000 temporary enumerators were hired. The population of the United States was counted as 308,745,538, a 9.7% increase from the 2000 Census.
Be the first to comment