CHICAGO — Kayla Bates knows the 2020 census is important, but filling it out will mean yet another form that won’t allow the 30-year-old to correctly self-identify.
“If you identify as a woman, imagine that you had to pick that you are a man on forms,” said the Elgin, Ill., resident, who is nonbinary transmasculine. “It’s just not what’s true, but it’s what we are forced to do. It’s not what I want to be known as, it’s not what I want to be called, it’s not what I want to be identified as. There’s not an option to pick anything else.”
For the first time, the 2020 census will allow people living in the same household to mark themselves as same-sex partners or spouses. But although advocates have pushed for decades for a full count of the LGBTQ community, the census still won’t ask or collect information about how many people living in the United States identity as nonbinary or about their sexual orientation.
By March 12, households across the country will be able to fill out the 2020 census questionnaire by mail, phone or internet. The stakes are high in Illinois, as the numbers will be used to determine how federal money is distributed and the size of each state’s congressional delegation.
Since at least the 1990s, the National LGBTQ Task Force has pushed for more census questions that would capture the size of the LGBTQ community in the U.S., said Meghan Maury, the organization’s policy director.
“We know that if we don’t have the data about our communities, it’s hard to build political power,” Maury said. “It’s more difficult to get access to the support and services that we need, and it’s really a charter to enforce civil rights protections if there is actual data about LGBTQ folks.”
During the 2010 census, the task force launched a campaign to push back against the lack of data collected about the community. It sent out “Queer the Census” stickers that people placed on the envelope with their questionnaires. The sticker allowed a person to identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or as a straight ally.
In 2016, 75 members of Congress asked the Census Bureau to include questions about sexual orientation and gender identity in the next American Community Survey, according to the bureau’s website. But the movement toward the inclusion of the questions seemed to stop when the White House administration changed from Barack Obama to Donald Trump, Maury said.
In a Pew Research Center survey from 2018, many people in the U.S. still didn’t think that social media profiles or government forms should include gender options besides male and female. The study showed 56% of people surveyed did not think there should be more options, while 42%were in favor.
Timothy Olson, associate director for field operations for the Census Bureau, said in a recent interview that the federal agency along with other agencies have done enough research on how to ask questions about gender and sexual orientation without it hampering an accurate count.
However, the bureau would need a specific request from another federal agency or be mandated by law to add such questions to a future form, he said.
“I’m not the politician that makes that decision,” Olson said.
In 2018, California senator and former Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris introduced the Census Equality Act, which would have required the collection of data on sexual orientation and gender identity in the bureau’s decennial count and surveys. However, the bill never advanced.
Data about LGBTQ residents could be helpful in challenging discriminatory practices and will be important when it comes time to uphold future nondiscrimination legislation on the state and federal level, Maury said. In Illinois, the Human Rights Act prohibits discrimination in housing, financial institutions, public accommodations and at work.
For local organizations doing census outreach, it can be difficult to convince someone to engage in the process when their full identity isn’t being taken into account, said Kim Fountain, chief operating officer at the Chicago-based Center on Halsted, an LGBTQ-focused community center.
“You see a trend or a pattern of this administration trying to erase LGBTQ lives with data,” Fountain said. “This is just one in a series of decisions that were made that are trying to either erase our identity or make it more difficult for us to thrive in this world.”
Fountain said the center is still encouraging people to participate in the census, offering a place to fill out the census form, host a town hall and include information about the census in safe sex kits that are already distributed.
At Equality Illinois, the group started to share information about the census at its recent gala and will partner with other organizations to do outreach, said CEO Brian Johnson. In addition, they plan to send information about the census through their email lists and social media.
“The only way that LGBTQ people are going to be identified as LGBTQ people is if we are in a same-sex marriage and we respond affirmatively to that,” Johnson said. “But we know that it is still critical that we are counted. LGBTQ people have multiple identities and we want to be counted in as many of those identities as we can.”
Soon to be released by YWCA Metropolitan Chicago is a public service announcement that’s geared toward the LGBTQ community and includes Mayor Lori Lightfoot, Chicago’s first openly gay mayor.
Regan Sonnabend, the census project director for YWCA Metropolitan Chicago, one of the regional groups given state funding to do census outreach to local LGBTQ people, said the group sees the collection of data on same-sex couples as a step forward that could one day lead to more census questions about the LGBTQ community. She’s heard from the outreach groups the YWCA is working with that filling out the census has become an “act of resistance,” particularly because the LGBTQ community overlaps with other groups like immigrants.
“(There’s) this concept of completing the census because it’s a right and it’s something that you could fight for,” Sonnabend said.
Gender identity and sexual orientation are just part of someone’s identity, Fountain said. Some are also immigrants, some have disabilities, some are military veterans, some live below the poverty line.
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Aisha Davis, a board member for Affinity Community Services, said the social justice organization that focuses on the Black LGBTQ community has been trying to get information out about the census in the weeks leading to the start of the count. Like Fountain, Davis has tried to stress to people that being LGBTQ is just one part of a person’s identity.
“If we don’t count ourselves or get counted, especially in the areas that we live, there is less likelihood for us to have accurate representation in Congress especially for Chicago and the state of Illinois,” Davis said.
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Guy Stehley, 62, of Chicago, is the founder of an online group for gay fathers. Although the census will allow those with same-sex partners to identify themselves, Stehley said that won’t include someone like him who isn’t in a relationship.
“I’m not living with anybody right now, but I am gay, so I’m not going to be counted in that aspect,” Stehley said.
Bates had known about the census but they hadn’t thought about how it affected their identity as LGBTQ. Bates had read about the proposed citizenship question and the worries of immigrant communities, and also had concerns about how people in prison are counted.
“I’m part of the LGBTQ community and trying to lift up my own marginalized community, and, you know, would love to pull up other people as much as I can,” Bates said.
After moving to the suburbs, Bates recently started organizing what is planned as Elgin’s first pride parade later this year. Bates isn’t sure how many people in Elgin identify as LGBTQ, but a count of the population could be a good thing.
“I think there are a lot more of us than most cis people realize,” Bates said. “There are a lot more people who identify as a nonbinary gender, and they might start to think about that a little more, and I think that’s a good thing.”
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