Stand Up and Be Counted - No, Not You Homos

You know that cute family down the street? The one with the 2 kids, the minivan, a dog, a cat and a turtle, the one who brought the great potato salad to last year's Fourth of July block party? The one with two Daddys?

It's not a family. Not according to the United States Census.

Good news, homophobes: The 2010 Census is going to make homosexuals disappear. Well, OK, they will still exist, just not officially. That's because the census will neither ask about sexual orientation nor recognize gay marriages, civil unions and domestic partnerships. Married same-sex partners with a child won't even be considered "families." The U.S. Census Bureau simply isn't interested in a person''s "lifestyle," explains spokesperson Cynthia Endo, "This is all about the numbers" -- and gay people just don't count.

As Salon commenter Firefly points out, this is about far more than prurient interest in people's personal lives.

Are they even mildly interested in how this counting method might be skewing statistics concerning single parenthood, out-of-wedlock birth and poverty, for instance? Or who's caring for children not living with their biological parents (since many foster/adopted kids are actually with family members and their partners). I'd want to know, if it were my money going to address problems associated with those conditions.

Oh, wait, it is my money...and yours. We all have a stake in this, whether or not we're gay. The government is knowingly miscounting and producing a false report on the condition of our population. It's not even self-serving (which would imply that there's some sort of financial interest in not counting, but they may very well be costing the government money by not knowing these things); it's just stupid.

All due respect to Firefly, it's way fucking worse than stupid; it's undemocratic, unconstitutional and inhumane.