The State of Unions

If you haven’t been following the news or getting updates from various gay rights groups, you may have not noticed that these past few months have been something of a renaissance of same-sex civil unions and domestic partnerships – they’re cropping up everywhere, and state legislatures and governors are actually taking them seriously. They’re not ideal (see: practical issues of civil unions in New Jersey)* but goddamn they’re helpful. Speaking as someone whose aunt’s partner** is having serious health issues -- the context in which the lack of marriage rights affects gays and lesbians most seriously – this is something that makes me very happy, for all that I am critical of the institution of marriage.

A recent summary, for your information:

Past years:

Connecticut – CUs (2005)
California – DPs (2005)
Maryland – governor vetoed DP bill passed by legislature(2005)
Maine – DPs (2004)
Massachusetts – Marriage (2004)
Vermont – CUs (2000) ***
Hawaii – ‘reciprocal beneficiary registration’ (1997)
New York City – DPs (1997)
Washington D.C. – DPs (1992) ****
San Francisco – DPs (1989)

2006-2007:
New Jersey CUs
Washington – DPs to go into effect in June.
New Hampshire – CUs (today!) (gov. still has to sign, but he says he will)

Keep your eye on:
Oregon - DP (bill has to pass only one more chamber)*****
New York - SSM (Spitzer says he’ll introduce legislation in weeks to come)******
Maryland - SSM (courts)
Rhode Island - CUs (bill submitted)
Illinois - CUs (bill recommended to be voted on by house – soon?)

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* Times Select - fyi students, did you know you can get it free? Go here.

**I’d call her my aunt as well, since they’ve been together as long as any of my other aunts and uncles by marriage, but I wasn’t raised to call her 'Aunt ----' and starting now just sounds weird. That’s probably not a good reason, but it’s hard to call someone who you’ve only gotten to know in an adult context, ‘aunt’. So for the sake of struggling with heterosexism, let’s call her my aunt, but know that due to heterosexist forces in my childhood that I can’t gloss over, I don’t add an ‘Aunt’ before her name when I refer or talk to her.

***Same-sex marriage legislation introduced in 2007.

**** barely – they’re not allowed to spend any money on the program, and at least the UK doesn’t recognize them as equivalent to civil partnerships.

*****It’s a civil union bill but people threatened to throw hissy fits if they were called civil unions, so they changed it to domestic partnerships in name only and all of a sudden everyone is peachy-keen with it. And they say what you call it doesn’t matter… I suspect when it passes (it’s looking pretty likely) this will have very serious consequences of inequality for queer Oregonians, but at least they’ll have a platform upon which to fight for more, unlike now where all we have is a constitutional same-sex marriage ban and an anti-discrimination bill (which, however, is an excellent bill).

******this probably won’t amount to anything any time soon, but it sounds like Spitzer is actually pushing for marriage as opposed to CUs and DPs, since New York is not one of the many states with the constitutional bans. It could probably get by the house, but almost certainly not the senate.