More than 250,000 LGBT couples have married in America in the first 10 years of marriage equality, meaning more than half a million married Americans are in gay or lesbian marriages.
The U.S. Census Bureau originally reported in 2012 there were 182,000 same-sex married couples in America, but after conducting the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2013 American Community Survey that number was found to be 252,000.
This new statistic was discovered due to the U.S. Census Bureau typically categorizing people who reported being in same-sex marriages into the same category as unmarried couples who were living together. The results released in May from the 2013 survey finally differentiated the two making it clearer of how many LGBT couples there really were in the U.S.
This number comes a decade after the first same-sex couples were allowed to legally marry in the U.S. in May 2004 in the state of Massachusetts after the November 2003 ruling by the state Supreme Judicial Court found the same-sex marriage ban unconstitutional.
