A recent article in New York Times has highlighted the LGBT community’s ongoing struggle to legally recognize same-sex couples in the 2010 Census and other federal surveys. The U.S. Census Bureau plans to edit the 2010 Census responses of same-sex couples who are legally married in California, Massachusetts or any other state. The Bureau is responding to the Federal Defense of Marriage Act and other mandates that have been recently proposed.  The LGBT community will be reported as "unmarried partners,'' rather than married spouses, in census tabulations.

The Census Bureau is required by the Constitution to conduct an inclusive count of the nation's residents every 10 years. The Census Bureau does not ask about sexual orientation, but it does ask people to describe their relationships to others in their household. If a respondent refers to a person of the same gender as their "husband/wife" on the 2010 census form, the Census Bureau will automatically assign them to the "unmarried partner" category. Legally married same-sex couples will be indistinguishable in census data from those who chose "unmarried partner" to describe their relationship.

According to Martin O'Connell, chief of the Census Bureau's Fertility and Family Statistics Branch

"This has been a question we've been looking at for quite a long time.”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."

A report by David M. Smith and Gary Gates of the Urban Institute states:

To date, the U.S. Census Bureau has only released counts of gay and lesbian coupled households, but as more information is released, we will be able to determine the number of children living in these households, income, racial profile, home ownership and other important demographics. These facts will help us dispel stereotypes and present a fuller, more accurate picture of the gay and lesbian family in America

Even though the Census 2000 undercounted the total number of gay or lesbian households; 1,202,418 gay and lesbian partners in committed relationships, were counted.

Urban Institute’s key report findings may provide a different dynamic to conventional marriage to policy makers:

• 601,209 total gay and lesbian families were reported by the 2000 U.S. Census. 304,148 gay male families and 297,061 lesbian families.
• In 1990, the U.S. Census Bureau reported 145,130 total gay and lesbian families. 81,343 male, and 63,787 female. The 2000 numbers represent a 314 percent increase.
• Gay and lesbian families live in 99.3 percent of all counties in the United States compared to 1990 when gay and lesbian families reported living in 52 percent of all counties. In 2000, only 22 of the 3,219 counties in the United States reported.
• The Human Rights Campaign estimates that the 2000 U.S. Census count of gay and lesbian families could be undercounted as much as 62 percent.

According to O'Connell,
“We're not destroying data; we are keeping that data,". "We are just showing the data published in a way that is consistent with the way every other agency publishes their data."

Any way the Bureau plans to handle counting gays in future census’ is vague at this point. P