The Canadian Press

Posted: Sep 19, 2012 10:46 AM ET

Last Updated: Sep 19, 2012 11:25 AM ET

Married same-sex couple Alisha, left, and Julie walk in a park in Halifax. There has been a huge jump in the number of same-same marriages and common-law relationships since the then Liberal government decided to legalize such marriages in 2005. (Andrew Vaughan/Canadian Press)

Seven years after the federal government gave its blessing to same-sex marriage, it’s clear Canada’s gay and lesbian couples have been seizing the wedding day.

The number of same-sex marriages nearly tripled between 2006 and 2011, while the number of same-sex couples jumped 42.4 per cent during the same five-year period, Statistics Canada said Wednesday as it released a fresh salvo of census data focused on the country’s families and living arrangements.

The agency counted 21,015 married gay and lesbian couples and another 43,560 in common-law relationships — a sizable jump from the 2006 census, which counted same-sex couples for the first time and enumerated 45,345 of them — 7,465 married and 37,885 common-law.

Legalized in 2005

In many ways, the jump in same-sex marriage is hardly surprising, coming as it does during the first full five-year census period to follow the then Liberal government’s decision to legalize gay marriage in 2005.

The law was in response to a series of well-publicized court rulings that declared it unconstitutional to deny gays and lesbians the right to marry each other.

Proving a point, however, was never part of Alisha and Julie’s wedding vows.

The pair, now in their late 20s, who asked that their last names not be published, got married last October in Sackville, N.B., becoming the first same-sex couple to tie the knot in the chapel at Mount Allison University.

“Getting married was never a question, you know, like: ‘Oh, we’re gay. Should we get married?” Julie said.

“It was always that I wanted to get married for having kids, and I wanted to have a family and just be married, you know what I mean? Have that kind of commitment to the person you love and your family.”

“Why wouldn’t I want that?” Alisha added. “Why wouldn’t I want to have everything that straight couples have?”

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Australia does not recognise overseas marriages but acknowledges ‘de facto’ couples

Data from Australia’s 2011 census have been released today and show 33,714 gay couples, 1,338 of whom are married.

The number of same-sex relationships is equivalent to 0.48 per cent of the total number of couples recorded in the survey and has risen from 25,600 in 2006.

For the first time, gay couples had the option of recording themselves as married in the census, though Australia does not legally recognise them as such at the federal level.

1,338 couples said they had married, after the country permitted citizens the necessary certificates to marry abroad in countries which do permit gay couples to wed.

The five-yearly census found male couples slightly outnumbered female couples, by 17,583 to 16,131.

New South Wales had the most same-sex couples in terms of population, with 0.85 percent of couples being gay. 0.75 percent were gay in Victoria, 0.63 percent in Queensland and 0.53 percent in Western Australia.

Australian Marriage Equality national convener, Alex Greenwich, said: “The fact that at least 1338 same-sex couples have gone to the great lengths to marry overseas shows how deeply they value marriage.

“As someone who recently married overseas I understand how painful it is that my solemn vow of lifelong commitment counts for more in a foreign country than it does in the country of which I am a citizen.

“It’s important the Census counts people like me because it shows other Australians that this is not an abstract issue – married same-sex partners are here already and actively being denied rights and recognition every day of our lives.”

He added: “Many married same-sex couples would not be aware they are able to indicate if they are married on the Census, given their marriage is not legally recognised in Australia, so I expect the actual number is much greater.”

Chile: Same-sex couples and the 2012 Census (by Blabbeando)

Nicely done PSA from Chile.

Q.

The government of Chile, for the first time in the nation’s history, will include questions about same-sex partnerships in the country’s census. MOVILH, the leading LGBT rights organization in Chile, has launched a campaign to dispel fears about the census and urge same-sex couples to answer truthfully about their relationship.

http://blabbeando.blogspot.ca/2012/04/count-us-in-latin-american-call-to.html#.T4LoxF0Uyuk

Nice to see (relatively) descent reporting in main stream media.

Q.

An estimated one-quarter of all same-sex households are raising children, according to U.S. Census data, providing one of the first portraits of gay American families.

For the first time ever, the census counts same-sex couples and their children, and as data trickles out state by state, more gay families are being tallied in the South.

Just last week, reports from Hawaii and Alabama — two very different states geographically and socially — revealed that 27 and 23 percent of same-sex couples were raising children, respectively, according to an analysis by the Williams Institute, a UCLA School of Law think tank that focuses on lesbian, bisexual, gay and transgender issues.

Data released today on five more states showed that 28 percent of families in Wyoming are raising children. In California, the percentage is 21 percent; Delaware, 19 percent; Kansas, 26 percent; and Pennsylvania, 20 percent.

The emerging profile of same-sex families comes just as New York legislators are poised to vote on a bill that could legalize gay marriage.

The controversial bill is one vote away from being passed and could make New York the sixth and largest state to legalize same-sex marriage.

Five other states — Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa, Vermont and New Hampshire, as well as the District of Columbia — allow gay marriage. . Advocates say census counts matter in these political debates. They argue that the data is important for understanding their needs and forming policies in the best interest of their children.

“This is the first time it accurately reflects families that have always been there,” said Stuart Gaffney, a spokesman for the gay rights group Marriage Equality USA.

“It’s something we find out when they are lobbying in legislatures like Albany right now and reps say they don’t have someone in their district who it matters to,” he said. “That’s why it’s so critical to show we are in every state, every city and every county in the United States. There are constituents and they need to know we are here.”

Statistics on the children of gay couples have previously been released at the state level, but never in a way that allowed demographers, legislators and gay rights advocates to glean a national picture.

Summaries look at each of the 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico and include detail down to the block or census tract level.

Same-sex couples are identified in households where Person 1 describes his or her relationship with another adult of the same sex as either a “husband/wife” or “unmarried partner.”

New York, according to the census data, has 42,000 sax-sex couples raising 14,000 children. In Hawaii same-sex couples — 4,248 in all — represent about 9.3 out of every 1,000 households, according to the census. Of those, 976 families or 23 percent, are raising children.

In Alabama, there are 11,259 same-sex couples, representing 5.98 couples per 1,000 households in the state. Of those, 3,069 or 27 percent are raising children.

An estimated 42 percent of all heterosexual couples are raising children in Alabama and 42 percent in Hawaii, according to the census.

Hawaii has a substantially larger concentration of same-sex households, but child-rearing by these couples is higher in Alabama.

Higher rates of child-rearing by gay couples is also seen in rural states like Wyoming (28 percent) and Kansas (26 percent).

“Those patterns are not new,” said Gary J. Gates, a Williams Institute demographer who analyzed the data.

“Same-sex couples who live in places with relatively high concentrations of same-sex couples tend to be less likely than other same-sex couples to be raising children,” he said. “Child-rearing among same-sex couples is more common in conservative states like Alabama than in more liberal states like Hawaii.”

Same-sex marriage is not legal in either state. In February, Hawaii passed a legislation allowing civil unions.

In his analysis, Gates adjusted official census figures to account for different-sex couples who “inadvertently miscoded” the sex of a spouse and appeared to be same-sex couples in the data.

This is not the first time the U.S. Census has tabulated same-sex couples — they did it in 1990 and again in 2000 and 2010.

Since 2000, those who identify as “unmarried partners” and others who identify as same-sex “spouses” are lumped in the same category by the census.

In November, the census will separate out the two categories — partners and spouses — and give a first official count of those who identify themselves as husband or wife.

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