Saturday, May 23, 2009
Forty-eight members of Congress have asked Office of Budget and Management director Peter Orszag to count same-sex couples as “married” in the 2010 Census, rather than as “unmarried partners.”The last time a census was held in 2000, there were no states in which same-sex marriage was legal. However since then, six states,Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa, Vermont, Maine and New Hampshire, have passed same-sex laws that will be in effect by the time of next year’s census. In addition, about 18,000 gay marriages were performed in California before voters there voted to ban them.
In 1996, President Bill Clinton signed into law the Defense of Marriage Act, which prohibits federal recognition of same-sex marriages for any purpose, even if they are legal in any of the states. Supporters of including gay couples in the census argue that counting them is not sanctioning gay marriages, just recording them. Barney Frank, a gay U.S. representative from Massachusetts, states, “We are simply asking the Census Bureau to report the facts as they exist. This should not be controversial."
-David Wallechinsky, Emma Nagy
Lawmakers: Census Should Include Gay Couples (by Kerry Elevald, The Advocate)
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