Census Bureau Appoints Task Force’s Policy Counsel to the National Advisory Committee on Racial, Ethnic, and Other Populations

WASHINGTON, DC, Oct. 3, 2014 — The U.S. Census Bureau announced yesterday the appointment of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force’s Policy Counsel Meghan Maury to the National Advisory Committee on Racial, Ethnic and Other Populations.

“We are delighted to learn about Meghan’s appointment to the Census Bureau’s National Advisory Committee, which advises the federal agency on how to improve data collection methods to ensure that demographic information accurately depicts the nation’s diverse populations,” said Rea Carey, Executive Director, National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.

The Task Force’s ground-breaking 2012 campaign QueerTheCensus urged the US Census and other federal surveys to count LGBT people and to include questions that would allow LGBT people to show the true diversity of our communities.

“Without accurate data about LGBT populations, it’s difficult to advocate effectively for changes in law. And while the committee has been successful in including same-sex couples in the decennial Census, accurate data on the majority of LGBT people is still not being collected. We look forward to working with the Census Bureau to integrate sexual orientation and gender identity demographic questions into Census surveys and to push the agency to spearhead an interagency task force that will integrate these questions into all data collection instruments put forward by the government,” Meghan Maury said.

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