Department of Commerce
officials said Friday that they would release the raw data
collected on married same-sex couples in the 2010 Census as a
way to more accurately reflect the marriage status of LGBT
people.
Up until now, the
Census Bureau software has recoded any individual in a same-sex
couple who reports that he or she is a husband or wife as an
'unmarried partner.' Although the Obama administration
announced in June that officials would look for ways to
accurately count same-sex marriages, the coding process and the
software that reads the forms when they come back still reflect
the former policy.
A Commerce Department
aide said Census preparation takes almost 10 years and
the software would not be able to be altered in time for the
once-a-decade count.
"It's a very
long process to plan everything, test the questions, and test
the software -- all of which happened under the last
administration," the aide said.
As a fix, officials
decided to release the raw data on married same-sex couples
before that data is processed and tabulated by the
software.
The Census Bureau's
first priority will be to report population data in late 2010
and early 2011 for the purposes of apportionment and
congressional redistricting.
"Later in 2011,
the Census Bureau will release detailed tabulations from the
2010 Census, including counts from the relationship
question," said a statement from the Commerce Department.
"A footnote will indicate that there are no same-sex
couples included in the husband/wife relationship category. At
the same time, the Census Bureau will release counts from the
relationship question, by state, that show the unedited data
[that is, which do not recode same-sex couples who report
themselves as husband/wife]."
The Bureau
will start producing reports on the data in 2012, and
according to the statement, "the Director has determined
that one of these special reports will focus on the question of
how same-sex couples report their relationships and what the
unedited data reveal about this issue."
Census Bureau data is
used and analyzed by governmental agencies, university
researchers, and individual statisticians. The aide said that
those entities, not the Bureau, would be responsible for
determining which data they utilize in their research.
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