Ahead of Saturday's Stonewall Uprising 40th anniversary, Census Bureau officials announced last week that same-sex married couples will be counted as such for the first time in next year's census. The Obama administration’s decision overrules a Bush-era policy that claimed counting gay married couples would violate the Defense of Marriage Act. The shift represents an important first step toward fulfilling the White House's pledge that the upcoming census will be a “fair and accurate count of all Americans.”
Besides ideological objection to counting gay couples, there are tactical reasons Republicans continue to fight Democratic attempts to modernize the census. The 1990 census, which used a traditional door-to-door headcount, missed over 8.4 million people (mostly African Americans) and double-counted another 4.4 million (mostly white). So the Clinton administration proposed that future censuses use statistical sampling, a much more accurate, much less expense method for determining the size of the population. Republicans have fought tooth and nail against sampling since a 1997 RNC memo warned that adjustments that would accurately count poor, minority, and non-English speaking citizens could cost Republicans 24 House seats. A Supreme Court decision later ruled out the use of sampling to apportion House seats, but Republicans continue to resist even the smallest changes.
More broadly, the GOP seems committed to a strategy of spreading fear and suspicion about the census. Case-in-point: Rep. Michele Bachmann’s comment last week that her family will refuse to answer census questions next year because of concerns about ACORN’s role in collecting data. Refusing to answer census questions is, of course, illegal and can result in a $5,000 fine.
This posturing has serious consequences. Uncounted citizens are denied their fair share of congressional representation, Presidential electors, and their slice of the $300 billion in federal aid that is allocated according to census numbers. Given the groundwork laid by the Bush administration, it's unlikely that Obama will able to change much about the 2010 census. But the decision to formally recognize gay married couples in the census isn't nothing, considering that the opposition has made the census such a stalking horse.
--Marie Diamond
Marie Diamond is a summer 2009 Prospect intern.
