Originally appeared March 22, 2000, in the Chicago Free Press.
BY NOW MOST PEOPLE have received the census forms the government wants them to fill out.
I am of two minds about the census. Government interrogatives (viz., "snooping") should be viewed with deep suspicion. Governments are not your friend; government is about social control. The less they know about any of us citizens, the harder it is to interfere in our lives. How often do we need to be reminded that knowledge is power?
But since gays are in large measure an invisible minority, it would promote gay visibility and legitimacy to have more accurate data about gays, lesbians and our relationships. The census is one cheap and convenient way to gather some of that information.
You see the conflict.
So what we have to do is shape our census answer to provide the information we want, but not more.
Even if you want to, though, it is not easy to tell the U.S. Census Bureau you are gay.
If you and your lover live together, Person 2 (you can flip a coin) can indicate in Question 2 of the short form (D-1) that he or she is the "unmarried partner" of Person 1. The Census Bureau recorded 145,000 same-sex couples in 1990, a vast undercount, of course.
Person 2 can also say he or she is the "husband/wife" of Person 1. If the two people are the same sex, the census says it will count them as "unmarried partners." You could also write in "married partner," "lover," "spouse," or the term of your choice in the "Other relative" category, but there is no guarantee those will be counted.
What about gays who do not live with their partner or who have no current partner? Polygamous heterosexual men have a way to indicate all their wives, but single gays have no formal way to indicate they are gay.
So we have to use more creative ways.
Some people who have the long form (D-2) say they plan to answer Question 10 ("What is this person's ancestry or ethnic origin?") by writing in "gay" or "gay American." After all, ethnicity can be interpreted to mean your primary identification. If that is "gay American" then feel free to tell them so.
The late gay scholar Warren Johannson once half-seriously urged gays to call themselves "Sodomite-Americans," arguing that our common spiritual ancestry is the (mythical) city of Sodom. That might be too obscure for census bureaucrats.
However you decide to answer, the point to keep in mind is, as pioneer activist Frank Kameny said recently, "I will define myself to my government; I will not allow my government to define me to me. I am answering the questions, not they. We citizens are the masters; the government are our servants, not the other way round. Never forget it and never let them forget it."
The short form does not ask about ethnicity. But Question 8 asks about "race." Along with "Black" and "White" it offers other options such as Chinese, Vietnamese, Samoan and Korean. But Cambodian (adjacent to Vietnam), Taiwanese and Korean (once again) are listed as ethnicities on the long form, so "race" seems to mean little more than origin or identity.
If so, then gays can justifiably write in "gay" under the heading "Some other race."
That answer might also appeal to liberals who believe the whole idea of "race" is a divisive and reactionary fiction as well as conservatives who dislike treating races differently. Anyone who simply disapproves of the "race" question can write in "human." I have a liberal friend who has done so regularly in past censuses.
As another possibility, you can just write "gay" or "lesbian" in magic marker in big letters across your form and see what happens. Nothing will; it won't get counted. But if many people did that, word world probably leak out to the news media somehow. Remember: "We Are Everywhere," even at the Census Bureau.
Are there disadvantages to collecting data about gays? Perhaps. Many, probably most gays, may not want to say they are gay, so there will be an enormous undercount. Our opponents could use that to argue our political and economic insignificance.
But voter exit polls and marketing surveys are probably adequate as correctives to a census undercount. And each census will show more and more gays as gays are comfortable being open. We have to start some time. It might as well be now.
There are significant advantages to collecting data on gays. It will be fascinating and useful to get information about our numbers, our relationships and our lives.
Economists and political scientists have already made some tentative estimates about gay residential, education, and employment patterns using the scant 1990 data on "same sex partners." With more respondents we will have more reliable data.
Then too, the growth in the number of people saying they are gay would be a rough index of the growth of gays' confidence of social acceptance.
Should we follow the lead of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and urge that a question about sexual orientation be added to the census next time?
Probably not. Census answers are required by law, but some people may fear exposure if they answer honestly. Such people would probably lie and might be wise to do so: the census releases information on a block by block basis.
Could the Census Bureau make the question voluntary? They could but there is no precedent for that and the bureau would probably resist.
But then I plan to resist answering most of the other questions. It is none of their business.