BREAKING: Trump Administration Removes LGBTQ People from 2020 Census
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Expectations that the 2020 census might start including LGBTQ subjects were raised and then quickly dashed on Tuesday after the U.S. Census admitted that it had "inadvertently" included "sexual orientation" and "gender identity," in a long-awaited report outlining new categories for the survey. In response, GLAAD's CEO, Sarah Kate Ellis, branded the move as a "systematic effort on behalf of the Trump administrationn to erase LGBT people."
Last year, various federal agencies urged the Census Bureau to include sexual orientation and gender in their data as it was crucial to their role in enforcing the law. The survey, which has been conducted every ten years since 1790, includes a wide range of questions designed to gather data on everything from languages spoken to household plumbing facilities. The current census, however, only allows for a snapshot of same-sex households, but Democrats in Congress had pushed for more specific questions around sexual orientation and gender identity to improve results. The logic was simple: With more focused questions law makers would be better equipped to ensure appropriate legislation to improve the lives of LGBTQ citizens.
Although the Supreme Court, in 2013, struck down the Defense of Marriage Act, paving the way for the census to change the way it tracks same-sex households, the White House has sent yet another powerful signal that it considers LGBTQ concerns as frivolous.
Meghan Maury, Criminal and Economic Justice Project Director of the National LGBTQ Task Force released a statement:
"Today, the Trump Administration has taken yet another step to deny LGBTQ people freedom, justice, and equity, by choosing to exclude us from the 2020 Census and American Community Survey. LGBTQ people are not counted on the Census—no data is collected on sexual orientation or gender identity. Information from these surveys helps the government to enforce federal laws like the Violence Against Women Act and the Fair Housing Act and to determine how to allocate resources like housing supports and food stamps. If the government doesn’t know how many LGBTQ people live in a community, how can it do its job to ensure we’re getting fair and adequate access to the rights, protections and services we need? We call on President Trump and his Administration to begin collecting sexual orientation and gender identity data on the American Community Survey as soon as possible and urge Congress to conduct oversight hearings to reveal why the Administration made the last-minute decision not to collect data on LGBTQ people.”
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I'm puzzled by this message. How many LGBTQ people do you think would identify themselves as LGBTQ in a census? I think very few. Supposedly 35% of the population is either gay, lesbian, or bisexual. I can just imagine someone filling out the census forms and saying "oh honey, by the way.. did I mention that I'm bisexual?" or "hmm.. I have 5 kids.. I'm sure one of the girls is a lesbian, I caught the twins in a 69 the other day, and uncle Floyd was jacking off in the bathroom with a copy of GQ magazine.."
I don't think the laws should be any different than if there were 100 or 100 million LGBTQ in the country.You have a good point, but I don't think it is realistic.
In a way, it reminds me of an incident from roughly 15 years ago in which someone got ahold of a CD containing the identities of people who are HIV+… and they published it!
Expectations that the 2020 census might start including LGBTQ subjects were raised and then quickly dashed on Tuesday after the U.S. Census admitted that it had "inadvertently" included "sexual orientation" and "gender identity," in a long-awaited report outlining new categories for the survey. In response, GLAAD's CEO, Sarah Kate Ellis, branded the move as a "systematic effort on behalf of the Trump administrationn to erase LGBT people."
Last year, various federal agencies urged the Census Bureau to include sexual orientation and gender in their data as it was crucial to their role in enforcing the law. The survey, which has been conducted every ten years since 1790, includes a wide range of questions designed to gather data on everything from languages spoken to household plumbing facilities. The current census, however, only allows for a snapshot of same-sex households, but Democrats in Congress had pushed for more specific questions around sexual orientation and gender identity to improve results. The logic was simple: With more focused questions law makers would be better equipped to ensure appropriate legislation to improve the lives of LGBTQ citizens.
Although the Supreme Court, in 2013, struck down the Defense of Marriage Act, paving the way for the census to change the way it tracks same-sex households, the White House has sent yet another powerful signal that it considers LGBTQ concerns as frivolous.
Meghan Maury, Criminal and Economic Justice Project Director of the National LGBTQ Task Force released a statement:
"Today, the Trump Administration has taken yet another step to deny LGBTQ people freedom, justice, and equity, by choosing to exclude us from the 2020 Census and American Community Survey. LGBTQ people are not counted on the Census—no data is collected on sexual orientation or gender identity. Information from these surveys helps the government to enforce federal laws like the Violence Against Women Act and the Fair Housing Act and to determine how to allocate resources like housing supports and food stamps. If the government doesn’t know how many LGBTQ people live in a community, how can it do its job to ensure we’re getting fair and adequate access to the rights, protections and services we need? We call on President Trump and his Administration to begin collecting sexual orientation and gender identity data on the American Community Survey as soon as possible and urge Congress to conduct oversight hearings to reveal why the Administration made the last-minute decision not to collect data on LGBTQ people.”
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For my part, I don't know why I'd want to give this information to the Federal government. They've done enough illegal snooping (i.e. without probable cause) already, without my handing this stuff to them too.
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Friendly reminder that the Trump administration is going to do everything in their power to gerrymander the entire country into the ground in order to eliminate any sort of remaining shreds of that pesky "democracy" that the right so despises.
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Who can be surprised about this?
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Friendly reminder that the Trump administration is going to do everything in their power to gerrymander the entire country into the ground in order to eliminate any sort of remaining shreds of that pesky "democracy" that the right so despises.
That is sort of true… but not in the way you stated it.
Historically, the democrats have gone to extreme lengths to justify absurd gerrymandering, usually by promoting minority groups.
The corrupt gerrymandering is already in place.
Trump will work to eliminate these bizarre gerrymandered districts - which is a form of "gerrymandering" itself.
How dare Trump make things fair! Darn him anyway! :cry2:
