U.S. Census Allows Toeivah Couples in N.J. to Identify Themselves as Married

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censusWith New Jersey among the 45 states that do not recognize toeivah marriage, toeivah residents have never been able to legally identify themselves as a married couple. Now, for the first time, they will have the opportunity to call their union a marriage in an official government document.

In a policy shift experts say could radically reshape demographic profiles of the toeivah community, the U.S. Census this year will let toeivah couples label themselves as husband or wife even if their relationships are not recognized by law.

The change will appear on Census forms due to be mailed out next week. The forms do not explicitly recognize civil unions, which are legal in New Jersey. Instead, the documents offer one of two boxes for toeivah couples – “husband or wife” or “unmarried partners.”

The census bureau plans to leave it to responders to characterize their own relationships.

“We have a policy of self-identification,” said Igor Alves, a media specialist with the agency. “If they want to put husband or unmarried partner, that is up to them. We basically want to tally what they select.”

The new policy took effect last summer, when the Commerce Department released a legal opinion that argued the federal government could tabulate and release toeivah marriage data under the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act.

In the last decennial count, officials re-coded toeivah husband or wife answers to “unmarried partners,” since no state in the country recognized toeivah marriage at the time.

Since then, the legal landscape has changed. Five states – Iowa, Connecticut, Vermont, Massachusetts and New Hampshire – and the District of Columbia now allow toeivah couples to legally marry, leaving census tabulators in a new bind.

“The truth is that the number of kinds of legally married couples in this country is a very complicated situation,” said Gary Gates, a demographer with the University of California, Los Angeles. “How do you keep up with that?”

Despite the form’s inflexibility, Gates believes the census effort will offer a rich source of data about how toeivah couples describe themselves, as well as their family structure.

The Census will release a special report about its data on toeivah  couples next year, Alves said.

{NJ.com/Noam Amdurski-Matzav.com Newscenter}


6 COMMENTS

  1. Well, of course, we have to thank the wicked state legislatures and/or the wicked state supreme courts in the states of Iowa, Connecticut, Vermont, Massachusetts and New Hampshire and the wicked administration of the Washington, DC section, and all the numerous wicked toeiva activists who have been repeatedly attempting to push toeiva so-called “marriage” in many other states — especially in California, New York, and New Jersey — for making toeiva so-called “marriage” into such an issue of the day.

    Now, we can also thank the super leftest liberals who now control the different sections of the federal (national) government for this new further level of recognition — now by the federal (national) government — of toeiva so-called “marriage,” Rachmana Litzlan!

  2. R”L, the slippery slope has started! We must throw out ANY politician, regardless wether they are Orthodox/Shmorthodox, black yarmulka, white yarmulka, that supports or doesn’t speak out against the toieva marriage!!! We have a race now for the council seat vacated by Simcha Felder and one of the “Heimisha” candidates has said on the record that “he won’t thwart the will of the people if they want toieva marraige”! Shrecklach!

  3. To Comment #2. from “Term limits”:

    You noted an extremely excellent important point. That is the bizarre phenomenon of politicians who are classified as being “frum” and/or “conservative” and yet betray the frum-conservative view when the moral/social-abortion/Toeiva issues are brought up. Either, they try to avoid talking about these subjects, or they openly go along with the liberal positions on these issues.

    Such politicians who are “frum” Yidden, of course, are faced with a severe problem of how can they support items that the Torah so strongly condemns??? They certainly do answer this charge, using arguements like:

    1.) “Regardless of what our Torah says, we cannot force our views on everyone else!”

    2.) “The Torah itself gives several lieniencies for abortion!”

    3.) “We cannot discriminate in any way at all against Toeiva people, because how would we like it if people were to discriminate against us as Jews!”

    These “answers” are all “Pilpulim Shel Hevel”!!

    These “answers” are all “arguments that are completely baseless and worthless”!!

    To say that, because of a few lieniencies, the Torah really does APPROVE of abortion, is as totally ridiculous as saying that because of certain things that are permitted on Shabbos for Pikuach Nefesh, the Torah does not really care about Shabbos!!

    The issues of Toeiva have nothing whatsoever to do with discrimination of people for who they are; rather, they are about that ALL people, whoever they are, cannot do bad things!!

    The issues of Toeiva “rights” that we have been faced with are not about us forcing anything on them, but rather that we do not want them to FORCE US to have to accept them!!

    Furthermore, I will say it quite bluntly: “With what our Torah says, we ARE supposed to put that view on everyone else!!” Our task here is to bring the Light of G-D into the world! By our good example of what we ourselves do, and by our good example of what we teach and proclaim, we are to guide and inspire and show the world’s other peoples to accept and adhere to the Divine rules of basic human goodness.

    When, Chas V’Shalom, we — and even the “we” of us who say that we adhere to the Torah — fail to do that, it is a terrible Chillul HaShem. It is an extremely terrible Chillul HaShem, especially when faced with very numerous numbers of non-Jews who, with their own reverence and respect for many of these moral principles that the Torah teaches, ARE strongly against abortion and ARE strongly against the whole Toeiva rights garbage!!!

  4. This phenomenon of “Liberal Republicans” is an extremely big problem. They term themselves “Fiscal Conservatives”; in other words, on economic issues, they promote the Republican conservative philosophy of lower taxes, less government regulation of business, less government charity programs, etc. However, on social-moral issues, either, they try to “avoid the subject,” or they actually do embrace most of the full liberal agenda.

    One of their reasons for doing this is so that they will not be viewed as being “extreme” and will thus be able to get support of “middle of the road” voters. This strategy does not work. It was right after the 1996 election; the Republican candidate, former Senator Robert Dole had run a very weak campaign, mostly on the issue of lower taxes, and had thus lost very badly to the Democratic candidate, former President William Jefferson Clinton, who thus easily won re-election. I well remember sitting at the Shabbos evening Seuda at the home of the Chabad Sh’liach in Boulder, Colorado, and we were chatting about the recent election. The Sh’liach remarked that this strategy of the Republicans is foolish; no matter how liberal they are going to make themselves, the liberals are still never going to vote for them! What is going to happen though, is that by them avoiding the “substance” issues, they are going to loose the support of the conservative people who would have voted for them!

    While the issues about the economy – about “parnassa” are, of course, extremely, extremely important, in certain ways, the “other” issues (of morality, strong military defense, etc.) are much more important!

    The talk show host of the radio program “The Savage Nation,” Michael Savage, who is severely critical of this problem, put it quite bluntly. In a tone that was obviously making fun of this Republican liberal business, he mimicked the (fiscal) Republican line:

    “WE REPUBLICANS ARE FOR SMALLER GOVERNMENT! TAX CUT!! TAX CUT!! YEAY-AY-AY-AY TAX CUT!!!!”

    So Mr. Savage angrily retorts:

    “I DON’T GIVE A HOOT ABOUT A ‘TAX CUT’!!!! ALL THAT I CARE ABOUT IS THE SAFETY OF THIS COUNTRY!!!!”

  5. Over and over again, Michael Savage stresses that he is NOT one of these people who say “Republican ‘good,’ Democrat ‘bad’”; instead, he calls himself “AN INDEPENDENT CONSERVATIVE.” If there is a Democrat who comes forth with something strong and good — obviously better than a weak minded wishy washy Republican — he will go for him!!

    He is severely annoyed at Republican politicians who have the attitude that they can be as liberal as they want, because us conservatives have “nowhere else to go” and will thus be compelled to always still vote for them. “JUST BECAUSE YOU HAVE AN ‘R’ IN FRONT OF YOUR NAME MEANS WE ALLWAYS HAVE TO VOTE FOR YOU???”

    In the 2000 and 2004 elections, he did support President Bush. At the same time though, he was heavily critical of many of his policies, which he said were really that of a liberal Democrat!

    To add to the sarcasm, he related: “In the Jewish religion, there are different groups: The ‘Orthodox’: they do everything in the Bible! Then, there are many different levels of observance, until you get all the way down to the ‘Reform’: that’s like ‘Christianity’ — without a cross!!” (Then he explained what this parable is referring to.) “The Republican Party; (Senator) ‘Barry Goldwater’: he is my idea of a good solid Republican! Then (though,) you have a (Governor Nelson) ‘Rockefeller’ (type) Republican. But now, we have (President) George Bush: he is really a ‘Liberal Democrat’ — with an ‘R’ in front of his name!!!”

  6. Such a phenomenon understandably causes people like Savage to be extremely cynical about our political process and to thus exclaim that we have a “choice” between the “Demo-crans” and the “Republi-crats”!!

    Savage uses the parable of a choice between “Diet Coke” and “Diet Pepsi”: They are BOTH terrible poisons!!

    Many people even say much further: that both political parties are really just two parts of one group of behind the scenes sinister governmental controllers, who are manipulating events and government actions in such away as to eventually establish a one government tyrannical dictatorship over the entire world!!

    [In California, there is a great organization that is attempting to fight off the onslaught of the Toeiva and abortion people. Its name is: “Campaign for Children and Families”; its web site is: “SaveCalifornia.com”; its president is Randy Thomasson.] I once heard Mr. Thomasson speak on a radio show when it was still in the middle of the primaries of the 2008 election. Regarding the election decisions that people make of choosing “the lesser of the evils,” Mr. Thomasson exclaimed: “THE LESSER OF THE EVILS — IS STILL EVIL!!!” And the Bible that says that we are not supposed to do any evil! (Of course, he quoted his Christian “side” of the Bible; L’Havdil, though, we well know of numerous P’sukim of our Torah and statements of Chazal that empathetically state that we must certainly keep far away from all bad things!)

    Then, with his fullest sarcasm, he asks everyone, what would we all do if the following political scenario would have developed in the course of the 2008 election: (Like actually happened) the Democrats put up Senator Barak Obama. However, Senator Hillary Clinton, instead of JOINING WITH AND SUPPORTING Obama (like she actually did do), she would go and JOIN WITH THE REPUBLICANS!! (And because she would maybe be in favor of some kind of tax cuts, the Republicans let her into their party.) Then, not only does she join the Republican Party, she actually wins enough of those primaries and becomes THE CANDIDATE of the Republican Party!!

    So in the big national election itself, it would have been Senator Barak Obama against Senator Hillary Clinton!!

    So, Mr. Thomasson asks: “What would you do??” “Would you say to vote for Hillary Clinton, because we have to ’stop Obama’??” “What would you do???”

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