U.S. Census Now Recognizes Same-Sex Marriages
U.S. Census Now Recognizes Same-Sex Marriages
The decision to count same-sex marriages in the national census repeals an earlier decision made under the Bush Administration. Before now, the Defense of Marriage Act had prevented the federal government from recognizing legal, state-mandated same-sex marriages. However, on Friday, June 19th, 2009, the White House stated that the Defense of Marriage Act doesn’t prohibit the federal government from gathering this information.The forms themselves do not require any changes, with boxes for genders of people living in the households and self-reported statuses of relationships such as “husband”, “wife” or “unmarried partner”.
