STATUS: Anti-relationship recognition constitutional amendment

TAKE ACTION: State advocacy groups are working toward fairness for all of Ohio's families by overturning a constitutional amendment that prohibits relationship recognition for same-sex couples in the state.

HISTORY: In 2004, anti-gay forces in Ohio pushed through State Issue 1, a constitutional amendment that excludes same-sex couples from marriage - and bars them from attaining any other form of family status in the state.

Some cities in Ohio - including Cleveland, Toledo, Columbus, Dayton and Cincinnati - offer domestic partnership registries for same-sex couples, which provide some of the protections that the freedom to marry affords.

GROUPS ACTIVELY WORKING ON MARRIAGE:

• Equality Ohio is a statewide organization that envisions an Ohio where everyone feels at home, living in families and communities where equality, diversity and inclusiveness are universally valued, and where government protects all people and responds to their needs, regardless of sexual orientation and gender identity or expression.
• Freedom to Marry Ohio is a statewide organization working to end the exclusion of same-sex couples from marriage. 
• Freedom to Marry is the campaign to win marriage for same-sex couples nationwide.
• Human Rights Campaign is the United States' largest national lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender civil rights organization. 

POLLING DATA: A growing majority of Ohio residents support marriage for same-sex couples. A September 2012 poll shows that 52 percent of voters now think marriage should be legal, as opposed to 37 percent who say it should be illegal. In 2004, nearly two-thirds of Ohio voters - 62 percent - supported a constitutional amendment defining marriage as "only a union between one man and one woman." (Washington Post, September 2012) 

NUMBER OF SAME-SEX COUPLES: According to The Williams Institute's analysis of the 2010 U.S. Census, 19,684 same-sex couples are living in Ohio, representing 4.3 same-sex couples per 1,000 households.