Legally married gay couples won’t show up as such in the official once-a-decade tally in 2010, Census bureau representatives said Thursday.
Citing “statistical problems related to the development of the 2010 census form and the evolving legal state of same-sex relationships,” Census officials have concluded that including married gay couples in the overall snapshot of household marital status could yield an inaccurate number.
Instead, same-sex married couples will be added into the category for unmarried partners, just as they were for the 2000 census.
Because same-sex marriages were not legal in any U.S. state a decade ago, the 2010 census is the first for which the bureau has wrestled with how to count married same-sex couples. In June, at the direction of the White House, census officials announced that they would make the attempt, reversing an earlier decision made under the Bush administration.
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The agency plans to make the data on same-sex couples who described themselves as married available on a state-by-state basis.
