WaPo Slams U.S. Census Bureau for Upholding Federal Marriage Law
A Washington Post article today quotes three people who oppose the U.S. Census Bureau's decision not to recognize as marriages same-sex marriages in
Same-sex couples who have been married legally in
Post reporter Christopher Lee quotes Diane Curtis, a woman married to another woman in
U.S. Representative Barney Frank of
Lee goes on to devote three paragraphs to arguments against the decision raised by Gary Gates, a demographer at the UCLA School of Law and author of the Gay and Lesbian Atlas. Lee quotes Gates: “It limits our ability to get quality information. . . . In 2000, the census could very legitimately make the argument that with a same-sex couple, someone couldn't [legally] be a husband or wife. And so they were making an inaccurate response accurate by changing them to an 'unmarried partner.' The situation now is different. You are changing potentially accurate responses to inaccurate responses.”
Lee's sop to balance is a statement by Peter Sprigg, vice president for policy at the nonprofit Family Research Council: “We believe that marriage is intrinsically the union of a man and a woman.” He continues, “The reason marriage is a public institution in the first place is that it brings together men and women for the reproduction of the human race and to encourage mothers and fathers to cooperate in raising to maturity the children produced by their union.”
Lee concludes by returning to the
Julia Seward is an intern at the Culture and Media Institute, a division of the
