Civil union and domestic partnership vs. marriage: "Separate but equal" is inherently unequal

A few years ago, I worked in the IT department on an HR application for managing benefits. Long before I ever thought about gay rights or marriage equality, I did notice something that bothered me about the whole domestic partnership thing. I could tell that most of those people were gay. So basically, in order to get benefits for you and your partner and their children, you basically have to out yourself to your company. I remember thinking how unfair that was... do the rest of us have to declare something about ourselves at work that some people might find questionable or worthy of discrimination, like our religion or ethnicity? No, absolutely not. And it would be unethical to require it, just as it is unethical that domestic partnership and civil unions even exist as a "separate but equal" substitute to marriage.

For those people who were quoting the California Family Code 297.5 in order to prove that domestic partnerships have all the same rights as marriage, who are neither lawyers nor lawmakers... to pretend that you know anything about the law and its complexities when it comes to this issue, means that you are "bearing false witness." Even if the Defense of Marriage Act were repealed today, this does not mean that domestic partnerships or civil unions will have all the same rights and protections as marriage, even if they do in California. In fact, because civil unions and domestic partnerships are separate legal recognitions altogether, they also have their own definitions and sets of rules, depending on which state you are in, and other countries may not recognize them at all. This means that they are not portable... considering that people may need to travel outside of the state for work or leisure, it doesn't seem all that practical or fair. Furthermore, my husband and I went to the County and paid $73 for a marriage license and $13 for a registered copy of our marriage certificate. In order to ensure that domestic partners have the legal protections of marriage, they would need to pay a lawyer thousands of dollars to draw up those legal documents, and those legal documents can still be challenged in court by disgruntled family members. Because of this, same-sex partners are denied rights and benefits all the time, even as people are arguing that they are "equal".

According to Joanna Grossman, a professor of law at Hofstra University, the only legitimate argument to deny a partner in a civil union "rights" that should be theirs is an argument that also confirms that a civil union is NOT a marriage. Because of laws that explicitly refer to marriage and policies by insurance companies and other entities that explicitly refer to marriage, like the Workers' Compensation Law, civil unions and domestic partnership remain unequal. Every single law, insurance policy, legal statute, etc. would have to need to be rewritten to say "marriage or civil union or domestic partnership" for civil unions and domestic partnerships to be "equal." This isn't going to happen because it would be a huge waste of time and tax payer dollars, and as far as insurance policies go, it's just one more sneaky way not to have to pay out to the families of the insured. It makes far more sense and takes far less tax dollars to ensure equality by legalizing same-sex marriage.

According to research recently published by the Williams Institute, same-sex couples prefer marriage over other legal recognition:

The data from these states also demonstrate that same-sex couples prefer marriage over civil unions or domestic partnerships. While 37% of same-sex couples married during the first year that marriage was made available to them in Massachusetts, only 12% of same-sex couples have entered civil unions and 10% have entered domestic partnerships during the first year in which states have offered these forms of recognition.

I don't blame those people who would rather wait to be married. I wouldn't want to register myself or my loved one in the "gay people" directory at my government office either, after witnessing how serious the prejudice against gay people still is after all these years. Having seen all the homophobes come out during the Prop 8 campaign, I'd be even less inclined now.

/cringe

If I need to spend thousand of dollars to a lawyer anyway to have legal documents drawn up so that my domestic partner and I might even be close to having the same legal protections that an $86 marriage certificate gives to straight couples (with the help of my tax dollars no less), why bother??? Besides, many of us grew up dreaming about finding "the one" and asking, or being asked, the most important question in one's life (and ultimate declaration of love), "Will you marry me?" NOT "Will you register a domestic partnership with me?" I wouldn't want anything less for my fellow human beings.