The U.S. Census Bureau recently submitted to Congress its planned questions for the 2020 census, and for the first time ever, the decennial survey is expected to allow respondents to specify that they are part of a same-sex couple.
"As our population and communities change, so do their needs," a Census Bureau spokesperson told NBC News via email. "To better collect more detailed data about types of coupled households, the Census Bureau expanded the single response option of ‘husband or wife’ or ‘unmarried partner’ to the two response options of ‘opposite-sex husband/wife/spouse’ and ‘same-sex husband/wife/spouse,’ and ‘opposite-sex unmarried partner’ and ‘same-sex unmarried partner.'"
The spokesperson said the landmark 2015 Supreme Court decision Obergefell v. Hodges, which legalized same-sex marriage across the U.S., "furthered the need" to revise the survey to include same-sex couples.
Read more at here at NBCNews.com.
