Marriage versus Civil Unions, Domestic Partnerships, Etc.

Definitions

What do these terms mean?

CIVIL UNIONS: Civil unions exist in only four places: Vermont, New Jersey, Connecticut, and New Hampshire. Vermont civil unions were the first to be created, in 2000, to provide some legal protections and responsibilities to gay and lesbian couples at the state level. Cobbled together as both the state and the nation were just beginning to engage in a conversation about the inherent unfairness of legal discrimination in marriage, civil unions have since proven to be ineffective, a separate but unequal status (pdf) that often heightens the need for access to both the tangible and intangible protections that only marriage can afford. The protections and responsibilities do not extend beyond the border of the states in which the civil union was entered, offer murky access to separation laws, and no federal protections are included with a civil union.

DOMESTIC PARTNERSHIP: Domestic partnerships are a form of union under which gay (and sometimes non-gay) couples in some states or regions can formalize their partnerships. California offers the most comprehensive domestic partner laws in the country. Oregon's domestic partnership law went into effect February 2008. However, as with civil unions the status remains a separate and unequal legal compromise which does not apply when a couple travels out of state, and offers no federal protections. Outside of California and Oregon, a hodge-podge of domestic partner laws (statewide/district-wide in Washington, Maine, and the Discrict of Columbia) and registries offer a wildly varying selection of protections and responsibilities which can change from zip code to zip code. Many domestic partnership registries offer no rights or protections at all and simply serve as a written acknowledgment of a couple's commitment to each other.

RECIPROCAL BENEFITS: Reciprocal benefits, a set of specific state protections, only exist in Hawaii. They were created in 1997 to give some protections to same-sex couples after Hawaii rushed through a constitutional amendment to enshrine the exclusion of committed same-sex couples from marriage in response to a court ruling which insisted that such exclusion was unconstitutional. Such benefits include medical visitation and property rights, but are extremely limited compared to the responsibilities and protections, both tangible and intangible, that come with marriage.

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