2010 Census Will Not Count Same-Sex Married Couples

The U.S. Census Bureau has announced that it will not include counts of the number of legally married same-sex couples nationwide, due the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act.

The Census Bureau followed the same procedure for the 2000 census, and it does not plan to change in 2010 even though courts in Massachusetts and now California have ruled gay men and lesbians can marry lawfully.

"This has been a question we've been looking at for quite a long time," said Martin O'Connell, chief of the Census Bureau's Fertility and Family Statistics Branch. "It's not something the bureau could arbitrarily or casually decide to change on a whim, because our data is used by virtually every federal agency."

The Census Bureau is not falsifying people's responses, O'Connell said, because the bureau will retain people's original census responses.

This is absolutely insane. Of course, it is very possible that Sthe offensive sections of DOMA will be repealed in 2009 so that the Census can count and reflect reality instead of a politically motivated fantasyland where same-sex legally married couples do not exist.