ORLANDO, Fla. — The 2020 census questionnaire drove Scout crazy. With no direct questions about sexual orientation and gender identity, it made him feel left out of the U.S. head count.
Among LGBTQ people, the census only asked about same-sex couples living together, and Scout didn’t live with his partner. So to compensate, he hounded his gay, cohabiting neighbors in Providence, R.I., to respond and provide at least some visibility for the community.
“I was stalking them to fill out the census form because mine didn’t make a difference,” said Scout, a transgender man who uses one name. “There’s no question I’m absolutely made invisible by the census.”
This could change soon. Recognizing the difficulty of persuading people to reveal information that many find sensitive, the U.S. Census Bureau is requesting $10 million to study how best to ask about sexual orientation and gender identity. The results could provide much better data about the LGBTQ population nationwide at a time when views about sexual orientation and gender identity are evolving.
“Change is in the air,” said Kerith Conron, research director at the UCLA School of Law’s Williams Institute, which researches these issues. “It’s exciting.”
The Census Bureau’s request comes as President Joe Biden declared June as LGBTQ “Pride Month,” and as U.S. passports now offer an “X” in addition to “M” or “F,” for non-binary or intersex individuals. It is taking place as some Republican-dominated state legislatures restrict what can be discussed about sexual orientation and gender identity in schools.
“We are seeing that numbers matter when politicians are demeaning and conducting culture wars against people,” said Gina Duncan, a transgender woman who advocates in Orlando with Equality Florida.
As the nation’s largest statistical agency, the bureau sets an example for how other agencies and businesses ask these questions, she noted.
The $10 million would be spent over several years to fund Census Bureau field tests of different wording and placement of questions that would appear on its annual American Community Survey.
The bureau is particularly interested in examining how answers are provided by “proxies” such as a parent, spouse or someone else in a household who isn’t the person about whom the question is being asked.
Other federal agencies already ask about sexual orientation, primarily in health surveys with respondents answering for themselves. The much more widely circulated Census Bureau surveys tend to rely on proxies more.
Wording and design matter because they can affect accuracy.
A confusing layout on the 2010 census form led some census takers to misreport the genders of opposite-sex couples, falsely inflating the number of same-sex households. Studies also have shown that some transgender people are more likely to leave gender questions blank or check both “male” and “female.”
Some respondents might not want to share such personal information or may be unsure of how to answer. And some proxies might not know the sexual orientation and gender identity of everyone in their household.
The federal statistical system is unable to provide high-quality information about sexual and gender minorities without improving and expanding data gathering on this topic, the Census Bureau said in its 2023 budget submission. “This research can help us measure the growing and diverse LGBTQ population in the United States,” a Census Bureau statement said.
