Census Bureau Flip-Flops on Defense Of Marriage Act; Says They Will Count Self-Identified Homosexual Couples as 'Married'

The U.S. Census Bureau has changed its interpretation of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) to allow it to tabulate same-sex couples who self-identify their union as a marriage, even though DOMA prohibits any federal agency from recognizing same-sex unions as marriages. 

Prior to the Obama administration, the Census Bureau said that DOMA prohibited the Bureau from tallying homosexual couples as being married. The Bureau plans to issue a report on its same-sex married data that is separate from its nationwide census report.

 

"What we agreed to do in 2010 is that since some people are answering that they are a same-sex couple who considered themselves to be husband and, and married and the same gender, we will produce a report that shows how many people checked off that box," Burton Reist, assistant director for communications at the Census Bureau, told CNSNews.com.

The DOMA, which was signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1996, defines marriage as a legal union between one man and one woman for purposes of all federal laws, and says that states need not recognize a marriage from another state if it is between persons of the same sex.

 

Through the 2000 Census, if two individuals of the same gender checked off that they were married, the Bureau would edit their response and designate them unmarried partners for the "purposes of federal statistics," which, according to Reist, will continue to be the norm because DOMA remains the law of the land.  

 

Nevertheless, Reist said that for the 2010 count, the Census will produce a separate report comprised of the unedited data of homosexual couples who self-identify themselves as married, which is contrary to the Bureau's original interpretation of DOMA.

 

According to the Associated Press, then-Census Bureau Director Steven Murdock on July 17, 2008, said the agency was unable to count same-sex couples as married because it was "restricted" by DOMA.

 

That same day, The Washington Post reported that Census Bureau Spokesman Stephen Buckner told them in an e-mail that the marriage law "requires all federal agencies to recognize only opposite-sex marriages for the purposes of administering federal programs."

Reist said that a separate report on same-sex couples is a result of "the fact that throughout the history of the Census Bureau the way we tabulate data, the way we ask questions, has evolved to accurately reflect changing social norms."

"We actually started producing this report already," he said. "We've done it twice on the American Community Survey."

The American Community Survey is the Census Bureau's annual tabulation based on a sample of the population, not a nationwide count.

Before now, the Bureau has never put together a separate report on same-sex couples who consider themselves married based on data from its nationwide count.

 

In regards to tabulating the sexual category of transgender individuals who self-identify their sexual orientation, Reist indicated that the Census will rely on their response regardless of its validity.