Last Two Census Counts Edited Out Gay/Lesbian Couples; Gay Groups Hope it Doesn't Happen in 2010

The U.S. Census is supposed to chronicle the changing American demographic. But, because of the infrequency of the count — every ten years, its reflection of the social fabric has always been slightly delayed. For the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community especially, this delay has been particularly counterproductive to describing its population. The Census questionnaire asks the relationship of all members of a household to each other, as well as their sex. In the 1990 Census, when members of same-sex couples would mark that they were married to a person of the same sex, the data readers would edit the responses to reflect the status of a heterosexual married couple - by changing the sex of one of the respondents. In 2000, same-sex couples who reported themselves as married would have their status changed to un-married. The tabulation of this edited data essentially recorded misguided statistics about married, and even non-married, same-sex couples. Full Story from SDNN: http://www.sdnn.com/sandiego/2009-10-31/politics-city-county-government/gay-community-hopes-for-accuracy-in-census-2010

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