The Census is one of those all American rituals like barbecues on the Fourth of July or blaming fretting that some new group or foreigners is plotting to take over the country [your pick: Arabs, Chinese, Japanese, ect...].

The American Constitution mandates a Census every decade for purposes of redrawing Congressional districts in accordance with population shifts. And as federal aid to counties and states has increased, the Census has become more important as states seek to make sure they get their fair share out of a federal budget of $3 trillion. In the 2002 Census, New York City is reported to have lost out on $850 million because of residents going uncounted.

It is understandable that many people would go uncounted in a nation as large as America both in demographics and geography [the 2010 Census will cost $14.5B and employ 140,000 people], but for the past few Censuses there has been one group of people whom are demanding to be counted but simply ignored unlike no other group: gay couples.

Gay couples, regardless of one’s views on the matter, are becoming an increasingly more prominent [relatively to their past position] in American life. But they have been purposely neglected by the Census which not only refuses to acknowledge them but actually seeks to negate them.

In the 1990 Census, for example, gay couples that filled out their Census as being in a same-sex relationship actually had one of their partners changed into the opposite sex and then counted as a heterosexual relationship under the pretext that the Census filler made a mistake.

In the 2000 Census, gays who wrote married had their status changed to unmarried. In this regard, the Census committee was actually engaging in proper correction since gay marriage did not exist in any American state then. Not even civil unions were legal.

But that reality has changed. Gay marriage in now legal in six American states, most of them in New England. 10% of gay couples are married or in a civil union.

For the first time, the 2010 Census will count gay couples as they define themselves making this Census the first Census to federally recognize gay marriage.

The federal recognition, of a sort, of gay marriage may lead to a more open debate about gay marriage in American politics as many politicians, supportive or not, realize that gays are demanding to be counted as everyone else in society and that gay marriage is no longer just a fringe nuisance of liberal America.

Source: Counting them in The knock on the door