(CNSNews.com) -- The U.S. Census Bureau has changed its interpretation of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) to allow it to tabulate same-sex couples who self-identify their union as a marriage, even though DOMA prohibits legal recognition of same-sex unions as marriages.

Prior to the Obama administration, the Census Bureau said that DOMA prohibited the Bureau from tallying homosexual couples as being married. The Bureau plans to issue a report on its same-sex married data that is separate from its nationwide census report.

“What we agreed to do in 2010 is that since some people are answering that they are a same-sex couple who considered themselves to be husband and, and married and the same gender, we will produce a report that shows how many people checked off that box,” Burton Reist, assistant director for communications at the Census Bureau, told CNSNews.com.

The DOMA, which was passed by Congress and signed in law by President Bill Clinton in 1996, defines marriage as a legal union between one man and one woman for purposes of all federal laws, and says that states need not recognize a marriage from another state if it is between persons of the same sex....