NO LGBTQ CATEGORY INCLUDED IN CENSUS PROPOSAL FOR 2020
WASHINGTON — The U. S. Census Bureau said Wednesday that it mistakenly proposed counting LGBTQ Americans and has since “corrected” the proposal to remove the gender and sexuality category.
Gay rights groups — including some in Chicago — quickly declared that it was another sign that President Donald Trump was reneging on a campaign promise to protect them.
Kim Fountain, the chief operating officer of Center on Halsted in the city’s Lake View neighborhood, said the bureau’s statement is part of a trend of the Trump administration “chipping away” at LGBTQ gains.
“What it demonstrates is that [ the census data] is not important to them or that it is for some reason objectionable — and either way, it hurts our community, ” Fountain said.
The bureau’s statement came a day after the agency sent Congress its proposals for the subjects to ask Americans about categorizing themselves in the 2020 census and an annual survey.
The proposal “inadvertently listed sexual orienta- tion and gender identity as a proposed topic in the appendix,” the agency said in a statement. “This topic is not being proposed to Congress for the 2020 census or American Community Survey. The report has been corrected.”
Copies of the appendix reviewed by The Associated Press show the bureau proposing a subject called “sexual orientation and gender identity.” The subject did not appear in a subsequent copy. Subjects are more general than questions, which will be submitted to Congress next year.
Gay rights groups said that suggests the subject was to be included at one point in the long process and was later rejected. The Census Bureau would not comment on that question Wednesday.
The bureau counts Americans according to race, gender and other characteristics that help lawmakers decide how to dole out taxpayer money for government services. The census taken every decade has collected data on same- sex couples since 1990, according to its website. But activists say that method provides inaccurate numbers.
“If the government doesn’t know how many LGBTQ people live in a community, how can it do its job to ensure we’re getting fair and adequate access to the rights, protections and services we need?” said Meghan Maury, Criminal and Economic Justice Project Director, National LGBTQ Task Force.
Fountain echoed those concerns.
“The census is national data, and so they have the power to go out and collect huge amounts of data that almost no other entity has,” she said. “And it’s reliable. It’s data that has been collected for decades.”
Fountain pointed out that the previous administration had suggested a range of LGBTQ data for the 2020 census. By disregarding those proposals, “they are not going to be accurately representing our community,” Fountain said.