The U.S. Census Bureau is rethinking how questions about sex can be asked. People have opinions.
Dozens of health officials, civil rights groups, individuals and companies have spoken out for the first time about how the statistical agency should ask questions about sexual orientation and gender identity in its most comprehensive survey of American life.
An Associated Press review of 91 written public comments posted last month found them largely supportive of the proposed additions, but not without constructive criticism.
The proposed questions aimed at people aged 15 and over will be tested sometime this year. If they receive final approval, they would be the first to ask directly about these topics in the American Community Survey, which already asks about commute times, internet access, family life, income, education level, disabilities and military service, for example.
Many who submitted public comments said the proposed questions will provide a better understanding of the diversity of LGBTQ+ people in the United States at a time when state lawmakers are limiting discussion of LGBTQ issues in public schools and are working to expand the possibilities of Restrict LGBTQ people. transgender people to change their driver’s license and birth certificate.
“Currently limited data sources are in stark contrast to the numerous policy debates and legislative efforts focused on these populations,” said Gary Gates, a retired demographer who studied LGBTQ+ issues at UCLA.
However, Gates objected to wording that would allow someone to answer, “Straight, that’s not gay” for the question of sexual orientation.
“The phrase is patently offensive,” Gates wrote. “Not being gay is hardly an accurate definition of a heterosexual identity. … Why emphasize that they are specifically not gay? It is simply not an adequate description of pure identity.”
The questions should reflect the ever-changing language describing sexual orientation and gender identity, especially among young people, and some non-English speakers may not understand terms like “heterosexual,” said David Ernesto Munar, president and CEO of Howard Brown Health, which provides health care. healthcare services for the LGBTQ community in Chicago.
Others lamented the lack of categories for people with intersex traits or who are asexual or pansexual. Intersex is an umbrella term for a number of conditions in which internal or external sex characteristics do not exactly correspond to typical male or female bodies. Asexual people do not experience sexual feelings, while pansexual people are attracted to people of all genders.
Rene Coig objected to respondents being asked their gender at birth and then their current gender. Asking to respond to the first question as “male” or “female” is alienating to transgender people who may not want to be identified with those labels, said Coig, a doctoral candidate at the University of Washington.
Others were discouraged that the gender issue separated transgender as a category from male, female and non-binary, rather than including the options of transgender man or transgender woman.
“It could imply that they are not ‘masculine enough’ or ‘feminine enough’ to select the male and female categories, and are instead a third category of ‘transgender’ distinct from the male and female categories,” said Amy Leite Bennett, an official with Hennepin County Health and Human Services in Minneapolis.
The current questions in the American Community Survey only capture same-sex couples who live together, through questions about family relationships, which by some estimates is only about one-sixth of the LGBTQ+ population in the US. As a result, the research misses people who are single or do not live together, as well as transgender people.
The only other census survey that asks about sexual orientation and gender identity is the more limited, experimental Household Pulse Survey, designed to measure changes during the COVID-19 pandemic.
People who fill out the American Community Survey form typically answer the questions for the other members of their household in what is called a proxy response. As a result, several public comments raised concerns that parents would not know whether their children identified as LGBTQ+.
Respondents can answer the questions online, by mail, by telephone or through personal interviews. Given privacy concerns, the Census Bureau suggests using flashcards for in-person interviews and using numbered response categories for people who don’t want others in their household to know their answers.
Several Republicans in the U.S. Senate have objected to some of the proposed questions. In a letter last November, Senators Marco Rubio of Florida and JD Vance of Ohio asked Census Bureau Director Robert Santos to drop plans to ask about gender identity, saying it would politicize the survey and risk risk endangering the legitimacy of the data.
The Rutherford Institute, a conservative civil liberties legal group, said in public comments that the proposed questions would violate people’s right to privacy, adding that “many people feel incredibly uncomfortable with providing such detailed private information.”
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Follow Mike Schneider on X: @MikeSchneiderAP.