Culture

This Is Why The Erasing of LGBT Americans On The 2020 Census Matters

Counted Out

LGBT will not feature on the 2020 Census as a category. This official prejudice matters for both practical and symbolic reasons.

opinion
articles/2017/03/29/this-is-why-the-erasing-of-lgbt-americans-on-the-2020-census-matters/170329-teeman-lgbt-census-2020-tease_rbmhzm
David McNew/Getty

Erasure is not an uncommon thing for LGBT people to experience. For millennia—with same-sex behavior and trans identity variously legally proscribed or forbidden, or punishable and stigmatized—it suited societies and religions to make LGBT people as invisible as possible.

And, to escape detection and persecution, many LGBT people chose to collude...

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