Census 2000: A Small Step for GLBT-kind

by Kendra Henson

When the 2000 Census questionnaires hit the streets in March, don’t expect it to include a question about sexual orientation.

Unlike their northern counterparts, who will inquire about sexual orientation for the first time in the 2001 Canadian census, the US Census Bureau will not be asking GLBT community members to stand up and be counted — at least, not as non-heterosexuals.

The closest to such an opportunity GLBT folk can expect to find is a question about marital status that allows “unmarried partner” as a response.

But even that option, which only applies to the partnered and co-habitating, is not much of a concession. The “unmarried partner” response is listed in the “non-relative category.

Despite that invisibility, Census Partnership Specialist Carol Nepton said the census is vital in other ways.

Census information is used to assist communities with getting state and federal funding for roads, hospitals, schools, etc. In 1998, approximately $81 billion dollars from federal funding grant programs was distributed using formulas from census data. Nepton estimates that between $800 to $1,200 per person in a community is granted based on census statistics.

“This makes it extremely important for the Census to be filled out by every person so that everyone gets counted,” said Nepton.

The census, taken every ten years, is distributed to every household in the U.S. The questions for Census 2000 were selected by a review of the 1990 Census, consultations with federal and non-federal data users, and by conducting tests.

Questions cover topics such as housing, utilities, employment, and income to assess social and physical characteristics of population, and physical and financial characteristics of housing. Only sworn Census Bureau employees see questionnaire responses.

Census data is released as state population counts to the President on or before December 31, 2000. These numbers are used to reapportion the seats of the U.S. House of Representatives.

The Census Bureau provides states with race and ethnic data by April 1, 2000. Other data will be released periodically from June, 2001 through September, 2003.

The census does ask other seemingly hot-button questions about race and Hispanic origin; in fact, race questions have appeared since the first census in 1790. The Census Bureau has said it uses those statistics for policy decisions, promotion of equal employment opportunity, and assessment of racial disparities in health and environmental risks. Questions on Hispanic origin are used for enforcement of bilingual election rules under the Voting Rights Act, monitoring and enforcement of equal employment opportunities, and for programs at the community level.

The bureau also points to efforts to count folks who live in “non-conventional housing” such as homeless shelters, beaches, soup kitchens, underpasses, campgrounds, etc. One population that was recently brought to officials’ attention is the “couch surfer” teens, who, said Nepton, “are quite often teenagers in the gay and lesbian community.” However, the census does not actually record their GLBT identity itself.

How and whether the census, a federal undertaking, would have to change to accommodate domestic partnerships and/or same-sex marriage in the 2010 Census is not yet known.