Missourian
Diamond Member
A California domestic partnership is a legal relationship available to same-sex couples, and to certain opposite-sex couples in which at least one party is at least 62 years of age. It affords the couple most of "the same rights, protections, and benefits, and shall be subject to the same responsibilities, obligations, and duties under law..." as married spouses. [1]
Enacted in 1999, the domestic partnership registry was the first of its kind in the United States created by a legislature without court intervention. Initially, domestic partnerships enjoyed very few privilegesprincipally just hospital-visitation rights. The legislature has since expanded the scope of California domestic partnerships to afford many of the rights and responsibilities common to marriage. As such, it is now difficult to distinguish California domestic partnerships from civil unions offered in a handful of other states.
Although the program enjoys broad support in California,[2] it has been the source of some controversy. Groups opposed to the recognition of same-sex families have challenged the expansion of domestic partnerships in court. Conversely, advocates of same-sex marriage contend that anything less than full marriage rights extended to same-sex partners is analogous to the "separate but equal" racial laws of the Jim Crow era.
Then in 2000 prop 22 was initiated as a California statute and in 2007 prop 8 was initiated as a constitutional amendment to reinforce that statute in "defense of marriage". In 2008 the California supreme court stepped in and deemed the prop 22 statute unconstitutional, but in 2009 the California ballot initiative process continued anyway and prop 8 passed, thus creating an amendment to the state constitution defining marriage as between "one man, one woman" which had been established by the prop 22 statute. Now the state supreme court will review the constitutionality once again.
Make no mistake, the "defenders of marriage" are the ones who are going out of their way to make laws in California. The religious zealots felt so threatened by the domestic partnership registry that they went out of their way to enact legislation to discriminate against same sex couples. It is a serious and potentially dangerous legal precedent to amend the constitution by ballot initiative and they are using emotion to slip such religious discrimination right past you.
Again respectfully...prop 8 has nothing to do with domestic partnership or civil unions or anything else except marriage. Fourteen word that define marriage as the union of one man and one woman...nothing more.
Edit - The point of my previous post was that domestic partnerships as well as civil unions are still available to homosexual couples.
Last edited: