Census bureau says 2020 count could include gays

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - The U.S. Census Bureau is making an unprecedented effort to include same-sex couples in next year's national population count, but legally married gay couples won't show up as such in the official once-a-decade tally, bureau representatives said Thursday.

Statistical problems related to the development of the 2010 census form and the evolving legal state of same-sex relationships led Census officials to conclude that trying to include married gay couples in the overall snapshot of household marital status could yield an inaccurate number, said Gary Gates, a University of California, Los Angeles demographer who has been advising the bureau on gay issues.

Instead, same-sex married couples will be added into the category for unmarried partners, just as they were for the 2000 census. But in a marked policy departure, the agency plans to make the data on same-sex couples who described themselves as married available on a state-by-state basis.

"The Bureau has decided to give us the information, but be a little cautious," Gates said.

The decision to develop separate sets of numbers was a compromise position that was "less about politics and more about accurate data," he said.