Queer the Census

No, I don't mean don't send it in; I mean send it in with the message to Count. Everyone.

John Nichols in The Nation:

The Constitution mandates that Americans be counted.

But that doesn't guarantee that every American has always counted equally -- or, for that matter, been counted for who they are.

That's something to remember on this National Census Day (April 1), when the decennial process moves into full gear. This is a moment at which to fill out the form and to ponder what is missing from it.

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Throughout this country's history, civil rights, feminist and social justice groups have advocated for an expansion of the Census to count all Americans. These are essential struggles toward making the Census what it can and should be: a true picture of the United States, taken every ten years, which can be used to assure that representative government really is representative, that resources are distributed equitably and that Americans are counted into -- not out of -- the republic.

One of today's great struggles is to assure that LGBT Americans count.

While the Census that is now being completed will be the first that makes it possible for married same-sex couples to be counted, the Census fails for the most part to recognize LGBT individuals and families.

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The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, which campaigned to assure that this year's Census counts married same-sex couples, has now launched a "Queer the Census" campaign to assure that the next Census -- and, equally importantly, that interim Census estimates and other federal surveys -- will accurately count LGBT individuals and families.

The campaign is encouraging Americans (members of the LGBT community and straight allies) to attach a pink sticker on the back of the census envelope that asks the U.S. Census Bureau to count everyone. So far, more than 100,000 stickers have been requested from the "Queer the Census" website, where they can also sign the Task Force's petition to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and to the U.S. Census Bureau. The petition seeks an expansion of the Census in future years to ask whether responders are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender.

"The data collected affects issues critical to everyone -- like our health care, our economic stability and even our safety," says the Task Force's Nipper. "Tens of thousands of people are queering the census and telling the federal government that it's time to count us all."

MSNBC host Rachel Maddow is blunter.

Her blog declares: "We're Here, We're Queer, Count Us!"

Read the whole thing, then send for your sticker to Queer the Census.