美国国家公共电台 NPR 2020 Census Will Ask About Same-Sex Relationships

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DAVID GREENE, HOST:

So the federal government has revealed the questions for the 2020 census¹. And for the first time, couples living together will be asked whether they are in a same-sex or opposite-sex relationship. NPR's Hansi Lo Wang reports on what this change means for the LGBT community.

HANSI LO WANG, BYLINE²: Since 1880, the U.S. census has asked about how people living together are related. But it never had a checkbox that could fully³ define one of the most important relationships in Wendy Becker's (ph) life.

WENDY BECKER: I got married to Mary Norton (ph) in 2006.

WANG: And before they tied the knot, Becker remembers having to choose boxes on forms that could never quite describe their long-time relationship, like once in a hospital where a woman asked her...

BECKER: Married, single, divorced, widow? And I said, I understand what the categories mean. But I've been with my partner for 15 years, and none of this fits me. And I remember being so upset when she checked single.

WANG: Becker says that's why she's excited to be part of the practice run of a 2020 census that's taking place right now in Rhode Island's Providence⁴ County. People living there, like Becker, can choose from new relationship categories the rest of the country will see in two years, including same-sex husband or wife or spouse⁵ and same-sex unmarried partner.

BECKER: It really normalizes our experience on an American government form so that everybody looking at it and everybody filling it out sees that we exist.

GARY GATES: Groups often don't count until they are counted.

WANG: This is Gary Gates.

GATES: Formerly⁶ the research director at the Williams Institute at UCLA.

WANG: And a consultant⁷ for the Census Bureau on collecting data about lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. He says the bureau has tried to count how many same-sex couples live in the U.S. before. It's put out numbers from 2000 and 2010 after matching up responses about a person's sex and relationship. But Gates says sometimes people accidentally checked off the wrong box for their sex.

GATES: Even if only a few different-sex couples make an error where they appear to be same-sex couples, it's a large enough problem that it, for lack of a better word, contaminates the same-gender⁸ couples sample.

WANG: That's why Gates says to get a more accurate count in 2020, the bureau decided¹⁰ to spell out categories for same-sex and opposite-sex relationships. But whatever the tally⁹ ends up being in 2020, it may not include Ronald Lewis (ph).

RONALD LEWIS: Correct. I'm not in a relationship unless something changes before I, like, fill out the form - yeah.

WANG: Lewis lives in Providence, R.I., and is openly gay.

LEWIS: I personally would be comfortable giving that information out.

WANG: But on the 2020 census form, there won't be a place for Lewis and other single LGBT people to indicate their sexual orientation¹¹. That means for now, there are no reliable national data about how many LGBT people live in the U.S. that can inform public policy.

LEWIS: If this is about how resources are spent or given to communities - and we are talking about the LGBTQ community, not everyone is married or in a relationship.

WANG: And Cecilia Chung says not everyone identifies as male or female.

CECILIA CHUNG: I am the senior director of strategic projects at Transgender Law Center.

WANG: And back in 2010, Chung says she mailed back her census form with a sticker attached.

CHUNG: It's pink. And it has a couple of boxes. One box is asking sexual orientation. And the other box is asking gender identity.

WANG: And those are the questions, Chung says, she hopes to see on a future census form with categories that reflect a wider range of identities.

CHUNG: If we don't have the proper labels when we try to look at the picture, there will be a lot of missing pieces, like jigsaw¹² puzzles.

WANG: In 2020, Chung says, even with same-sex couples recognized on the census, there'll be a lot of other people in the LGBT community missing from the picture of America. Hansi Lo Wang, NPR News, New York.

(SOUNDBITE OF TYCHO'S "EPOCH")