March 6, 2000

GAY COUPLES AIM TO BE COUNTED

By STEVE FRIESS
Staff Writer

The census form puzzles Dana McHenry and Georgia Duffy. Two months ago, on a yacht floating in the Intracoastal Waterway off Fort Lauderdale, the women wed. They'd been together for five years, each had borne a child from the same sperm donor, and now their minister had blessed them as 50 relatives and friends looked on.

So when the question is posed by the U.S. Census Bureau later this month as to how they are related to one another, they're not sure which answer they'll give.

Should Duffy check the "husband/wife" box when asked how she's linked to McHenry? Perhaps the Census Bureau considers them "housemates" or "unmarried partners" since gay marriage is not legal anywhere in the United States? Or maybe the second woman should be lumped into catch-all categories of "other relative" or "other nonrelative?"

"How do I know what the government wants from me here?" asked Duffy, 43, of Wilton Manors. "The best answer is `unmarried partner,' but we feel we're more married, more committed than Bill and Hillarytaken, but it's far more pronounced this time, thanks to a decade of unprecedented strides for acceptance of homosexuality in American culture. Gay marriage is constantly in the news nowadays, and same-sex couples, many of whom would never have dreamed 10 years ago of telling the federal government the nature of their relationship, are now clamoring for a clear way to do so.

"It really does show how far we've come that we even want them to know who we are," said McHenry, 40. "Ten years ago, I was trying my hardest not to let anyone know I'm a lesbian. Now there's nobody I wouldn't tell."

Two gay advocacy groups say they have an answer. They're launching next week a nationwide publicity blitz, dubbed "Out the Census," to urge gay couples to use the "unmarried partner" category.

The ad, which organizers expect to appear in South Florida's The Weekly News and other gay papers in major cities, beckons same-sex pairs to "make your family count." It notes that identifying as "unmarried partners" will help demographers learn "who we are, where we live, what we earn, how we vary by race and ethnicity and how many children we have."

Since the Census Bureau doesn't ask respondents to state their sexual orientation, the "unmarried partner" choice is the only way any gays can be counted, said Paula Ettlebrick of National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Policy Institute in New York. While some couples who view themselves as married may be bothered by selecting the "unmarried" choice, Ettlebrick warned that if gays answer as "housemates/roommates" or in one of the "other" categories, they won't be counted as couples.

"We're used to not being included on government forms when there's anything related to families," Ettlebrick said.

Census officials agree this category will produce a count of same-sex couples, even though it was actually created in 1990 to count unwed heterosexual couples and their children. Bureau analyst Jason Fields said the fact that same-sex couples can be counted is "a side benefit" because the bureau itself has no use for data on gays.

"There are no federal programs tied to being gay or lesbian," Fields said. "That's why we don't ask about it, because the purpose of the census is to help guide how federal funds are distributed. There has to be a legislative need for the information in order for it to be asked."

But the bureau was forced to confront the same-sex issue this year anyway. In 1990, some gay couples checked off the "husband/wife" box for the second partner and indicated on another question that there were "now married," answers that caused census computers to change the sex of the second man or second woman to make sense of the information.

That result, which created an inaccuracy in the count of heterosexual couples, needed to be corrected, Fields said. Thus, if a gay man checks "husband" this year, the census computer is instructed to change his response to "unmarried partner" instead, Field said.

Gay advocates say a more accurate count of gay couples could offer a snapshot of the status of the gay movement. The data might show a dramatic increase in the number of openly gay people or it might show the incomes of gay couples are lower than that of heterosexuals because of employment discrimination, said Institute for Gay and Lesbian Strategic Studies director Lee Badgett, Ettlebrick's colleague in this push.

"If we knew more about those things, we might care more about them," said Badgett, an economist who for years has worked to debunk the notion that gays and lesbians are more affluent than heterosexuals.

Yet while Badgett and Ettlebrick wish the 2000 Census asked directly about sexual orientation, as the British and Canadian censuses do, other gay advocates fear the outcome would be an undercount that might fuel opponents to homosexuality.

"So few people feel comfortable saying their sexual orientation until there is anti-discrimination legislation," said Wayne Besen of the Washington D.C.-basedot that many of them after all.'"

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