The U.S. Census Bureau should be demanding more information about “gender identity,” leading liberal lawmakers said Wednesday, asking for more probing questions to get at the increasingly complex family dynamics in America.

“Many federal data collection instruments gather respondents’ race, ethnicity, sex, marital status and other personal demographic information. However, most of these instruments do not include direct measures of respondents’ sexual orientation or gender identity,” Rep. Raul Grijalva and Sen. Tammy Baldwin said in a letter they led, and which was co-signed by dozens of their Democratic colleagues.

In particular, they asked that the American Community Survey, which is the bureau’s continuing method for taking the pulse of the country in between the decennial counts, be changed to include specific questions about how Americans describe their own identities.

The lawmakers said they would then be able to craft laws better tailored to improve the situations of gay, lesbian, transgender and bisexual people.

They said some other federal agencies already try to find those sorts of numbers, including the Labor Department, which queries orientation for purposes of family medical leave, and the Justice Department, which tracks the identity or orientation of crime victims.

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