The US Census Bureau has announced it will not recognize the thousands of same-sex couples that are expected to be legally married in California and Massachusetts in the 2010 Census. The Census Bureau, citing the federal Defense of Marriage Act, plans to edit the 2010 Census responses of legally married same-sex couples and list them as “unmarried partners.” Shannon Minter of the National Center for Lesbian Rights said, “To have the federal government disappear your marriage, I’m sure, will be painful and upsetting. It really is something out of Orwell. It’s shameful.”