Cooking the Family Numbers in the 2010 US Census

The constitution requires that the federal government undertake a count of the population every ten years for use in drawing congressional district lines and allocation of seats in the house of representatives and state voting strength in the electoral college for presidential elections.  It is obviously vitally important that this be done as accurately as possible, given the central role the census plays in the allocation of political power in our republican form of government.  That the Bush Administration has been starving the Census Bureau for funds, potentially crippling the ability to collect accurate data in 2010, is one of the lesser-commented-upon scandals of this corrupt and inept administration.

But to move to a census subject more directly related to the usual subject matter of this blog, I just read an article posted yesterday by the San Jose (California) Mercury News, reporting that the Census Bureau has decided that it is mandated by the federal Defense of Marriage Act to ignore same-sex marriages in compiling and publishing its data.  Indeed, Census officials were quoted as saying that if a married same-sex couple indicates on their census form that they are married, the Bureau will "revise" their data to show them as unmarried partners, on the theory that DOMA restricts the Bureau from recognizing same-sex marriages for any purpose, even data collection.

The question was merely theoretical in the run-up to the 2000 census, since same-sex marriages were not available then anywhere in the world.  But today there are thousands of American couples in same-sex marriages, contracted in foreign countries, in Massachusetts since May 2004, and in California since June 2008.  (While the legal status of the California marriages may be questionable if Proposition 8 passes in November, there were already thousands of married same-sex couples living in the US even without taking California into account, prior to June 2008.)  These people are married under the law of the jurisdiction where they married, and, as recent New York developments show, may also be considered married in some other states as well - such as New York couples who married in Canada over the past several years and are now busy litigating over respect for their marriages in New York - usually successfully.

So, these are real marriages and should be counted as such by the census.  Whether they are recognized as marriages under federal statutes for purposes of benefits and entitlements under federal law is a question of whether the Defense of Marriage Act is constitutional.  But a marriage is a marriage, and should be counted as such.  At the very least, Census Bureau officials should not be falsifying submitted census questionnaires by changing entries in order to meet the political agenda of Congress in 1996.  Yet another reason to question the constitutionality and validity of DOMA.

I went on the Census Bureau website directly after reading this article and submitted a comment criticizing their announced position on this.  I hope others will do the same.