Ours is an unusual friendship. One of us is a gay man who has written a book in favor of gay marriage. The other is a straight man who has written a book opposing gay marriage.

One of us argues that the advent of gay marriage could help to strengthen marriage as a social institution. The other warns that accepting gay marriage is likely to weaken the institution for everyone. Not much to agree about.

But here’s an interesting thing: Both of us are married, and both of us live or work in political jurisdictions -- New York state and Washington, D.C. -- that define marriage as the union of two persons. So we recently asked ourselves a question: What does it mean for us to disagree about gay marriage, now that gay marriage is the law where we make our homes and pursue our livelihoods?

For David, the opponent of gay marriage, what seems most important as the shouting stops is conciliation. His side must confront and reject anti-gay bigotry. Is opposition to gay marriage by itself proof of bigotry? No. But is far too much of the opposition largely fueled by prejudice? Yes. Looking to the future, is it important for all of us to understand and affirm the equal dignity of homosexual people and of homosexual love? Yes.

For Jonathan, the proponent of gay marriage, what seems most important as the shouting stops is getting marriage right, for all people. Winning the legal right is important for same- sex couples, but it’s hardly the end. Over the long run, will same-sex marriage shore up marriage’s privileged social status, or diminish it? Gay Americans and their communities all have an interest in establishing that their right to marry can support and perhaps even strengthen American commitment to the institution that is now open to them.

Supporting the Gift

What has always mattered most, to David, regarding marriage law is what he calls the gift: the possibility that a child will be raised in love by both biological parents -- the two people, the man and the woman, whose sexual union brought the child into the world. In states where gay marriage is the law, can he continue to advocate and work for that gift? Might Jonathan support him? The answer to both questions is yes.

Labels: adoption, culture, David Blankenhorn, domestic partnership, donor conception, gay marriage, homosexuality, Jonathan Rauch, Marriage, religious liberty, single parenting, unmarried parents

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...While many in our community have worked hard to secure the right of same-sex couples to marry, others of us have been working equally hard to develop alternatives to marriage. For us, domestic partnerships and civil unions aren’t a consolation prize made available to lesbian and gay couples because we are barred from legally marrying. Rather, they have offered us an opportunity to order our lives in ways that have given us greater freedom than can be found in the one-size-fits-all rules of marriage.

It’s not that we’re antimarriage; rather, we think marriage ought to be one choice in a menu of options by which relationships can be recognized and gain security. Like New York City’s mayor, Michael R. Bloomberg, who has been in a relationship for over 10 years without marrying, one can be an ardent supporter of marriage rights for same-sex couples while also recognizing that serious, committed relationships can be formed outside of marriage.

Here’s why I’m worried: Winning the right to marry is one thing; being forced to marry is quite another. How’s that? If the rollout of marriage equality in other states, like Massachusetts, is any guide, lesbian and gay people who have obtained health and other benefits for their domestic partners will be required by both public and private employers to marry their partners in order to keep those rights. In other words, “winning” the right to marry may mean “losing” the rights we have now as domestic partners, as we’ll be folded into the all-or-nothing world of marriage.

Of course, this means we’ll be treated just as straight people are now. But this moment provides an opportunity to reconsider whether we ought to force people to marry — whether they be gay or straight — to have their committed relationships recognized and valued.

Labels: beyond marriage, cohabitation, committed relationships, domestic partnership, gay marriage, Marriage

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...The legislation explicitly encompasses registered domestic partners in all the provisions that are applicable to spouses. Washington bans marriage by same-sex couples but has a comprehensive domestic partnership status. Of equal importance, critical provisions on assisted reproduction and parentage through holding a child out as one's own do not depend on the parents being married or registered as domestic partners. The bill explicitly states that "a child born to parents who are not married to each other or in a domestic partnership with each other has the same rights under the law as a child born to parents who are married to each other or who are in a domestic partnership with each other."

In situations of donor insemination, the statute replaces the previous provision that applied only to husbands and wives with a gender-neutral, marital-status neutral provision that “a person who provides gametes for, or consents in a signed record to assisted reproduction with another person, with the intent to be the parent of the child born, is the parent of the resulting child.” Consent must be in writing but failure to put the consent in writing does not preclude a finding of parentage “if the persons resided together in the same household with the child and openly held out the child as their own.” The statute also provides that the semen donor “is not a parent unless otherwise agreed in a signed record by the donor and the person or persons intending to be parents…” All of these provisions closely track the legislation enacted in the District of Columbia two years ago.

The statute also creates two important presumptions. (The provisions above on assisted reproduction do not create a presumption of parentage; they create parentage.) Persons in a domestic partnership are both presumed the parents of a child born to one of them. And "a person is presumed to be the parent of a child if, for the first two years of the child's life, the person resided in the same household with the child and openly held out the child as his or her own."

Labels: beyond marriage, children, de facto parenting, domestic partnership, donor conception, parenting, unmarried parents, Washington (state)

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Hungarian lawmakers approved a socially and fiscally conservative new constitution Monday that was blasted by rights groups and the political opposition for measures including a ban on gay marriage and protection of the life of a fetus from conception. ...

Same-sex couples may legally register their partnerships but marriage is restricted to heterosexual relationships.

Labels: abortion, domestic partnership, Europe, gay marriage, Hungary, Marriage

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U.S. tax and property laws are so complex that unintended consequences are common. Here is one: Thanks to a 1996 federal law aimed at preserving traditional marriage, thousands of same-sex couples in California, Nevada, and Washington state could get big tax bonuses on their federal returns starting this year.

The bonuses are off-limits to heterosexual married couples—a sharp reminder of the "marriage penalty" that often dings two-earner couples.

What's going on? The affected same-sex couples are benefiting from unusual interactions between state and federal laws.

All three states recognize domestic partnerships and also have what is known as community-property law. Community property refers to a system of ownership in nine states that usually attributes income and property acquired during marriage equally to both partners, regardless of who earned it. (The nine states are Arizona, California, Idaho, Louisiana, New Mexico, Nevada, Texas, Washington and Wisconsin.)

The three states also now apply community-property laws to registered domestic partners. So the Internal Revenue Service—which must follow state property laws—has ruled that these couples should figure their total community income and split it down the middle, starting in 2010.

That is where the benefit comes in. Although domestic partners must divide their income equally, the federal Defense of Marriage Act prevents the IRS from treating these couples as married joint filers. So for 2010 and after, each partner will claim half the community income but still file as single or head of household.

The result, in many cases, is a federal tax savings because a couple will avoid the marriage penalty that often raises taxes for two-earner heterosexual married couples. ...

The law has changed many times since, and the current system contains both marriage penalties and bonuses. The bonuses often favor married couples with disparate earnings, because their combined income benefits from lower brackets.

Labels: domestic partnership, gay couples, Marriage, marriage penalty, tax policy

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Almost three years ago, the Michigan Supreme Court ruled that granting health benefits to same-sex domestic partners of government employees was a violation of the state's "defense of marriage" constitutional amendment approved by the voters in 2004.

Well the Michigan Civil Service Commission voted last week for a "work around" that will actually expand eligibility for benefits. What's unconstitutional is recognition of unmarried couples, so the benefits can now go to anyone who has lived with the state employee for at least a year and that person's children. The person is called an "other eligible adult." About half the state workforce will be covered by the new policy, which goes into effect October 1. Coverage was negotiated with two unions, UAW and SEIU, and benefits were extended to some nonunion employees as well. Other unions are likely to negotiate for the benefits when their contracts expire later in the year. ...

I am frankly surprised by the simplicity of these eligibility requirements. Most of the employee benefit policies I know of that are not strictly "couple" based (and many that are, like that at my own university!) require some sort of evidence of economic interdependence. There's a logic to such a requirement; it allows an employee to protect the well-being of someone with whom the employee has established a level of connection that warrants economic and emotional peace of mind. I see a true "plus one" policy as representing something different. It essentially values the work of each employee equally by giving each employee the opportunity to enroll one other adult for benefits. The Michigan plan is not a pure "plus one" policy because the employee must live with the other adult, but with no other requirement it allows coverage for a friend that would be unavailable under most other plans.

Labels: beyond marriage, domestic partnership, economics, Michigan, Nancy Polikoff, reciprocal beneficiaries

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New Hampshire performed its first gay marriages this past week. New Jersey lawmakers vote on gay marriage today. Even so, advocates are shifting strategy to focus on having same-sex relationships legally recognized in other forms.

The reason: Despite those victories for gay rights, the end of 2009 saw momentum on the marriage issue stall.

Two states rejected same-sex marriage, reflecting the fact that most Americans do not support it, says John Green, a political science professor at the University of Akron. No other state is actively considering legislation.

As a result, Green says, advocates will push for states to grant civil unions or domestic partnerships, which allow similar rights to those of married couples. Americans are more likely to support those relationships, he says.

An August survey by the Pew Research Center found that 53% of Americans oppose allowing gay men and lesbians to marry legally, but 57% favor allowing them to enter into civil unions, arrangements that give them many of the same rights.

"By picking away a little bit by little bit, advocates hope to create a trend and shift public opinion, as people see it's not as pernicious as they may have thought," Green says. "The ultimate goal is same-sex marriage."

Labels: civil unions, culture, domestic partnership, gay marriage

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Regardless of their politics, Americans owe Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins gratitude for this: that their 23-year relationship unraveled, and ended, far from the public eye.

The couple separated over the summer, and apparently no fire hydrants were harmed in the process, no emergency medical technicians were summoned. It was late December before word of the break-up trickled out to the tabloids, and two weeks later the actors are still not talking, except to confirm through a publicist that they split. ...

Capisce, we do. Ms. Sarandon, whose seemingly golden "domestic partnership" with Mr. Robbins was the stuff of Hollywood legend, is desirous of preserving marriages on screen, but not so much in real life. She famously declined to wed Mr. Robbins, the father of her two sons, because she worried such a stuffy and archaic ritual might harm their relationship.

"I won't marry because I am too afraid of taking him for granted, or him taking me for granted," she once said. "Maybe it will be a good excuse for a party when I am 80."

Of course, many married people have a good excuse for a party when they're about 80--they're called golden anniversaries, and they're great. A pinnacle of married life, the 50th-anniversary party is a joyous celebration of love, perseverance and forbearance, virtues no less noble because they are lightly enforced by the state. The marriage certificate, surrendered at a divorce hearing, does not guarantee a happy union, but neither does the absence of one, as Ms. Sarandon learned.

Labels: culture, divorce, domestic partnership, Marriage

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Leland Traiman, who runs a sperm bank in California, worries about his lesbian clients in more conservative parts of the country when he hears fellow gay rights activists talk about winning the right to wed.

With 34 states lacking any legal recognition of same-sex relationships, Traiman wonders if all the emphasis on matrimony is misplaced.

"When I speak to women from Florida or Wisconsin or Minnesota, they are like, 'I don't care what it's called, I just want to be able to visit my wife in the hospital and cover my children with my health insurance,'" said Traiman, who helped pass the nation's first domestic partnership law a quarter-century ago in Berkeley. ...

Activists like Traiman point to the success of efforts to extend spousal rights and other civil rights protections to same-sex couples, even as the passage of gay marriage bans grab headlines.

On the same day that Maine rejected a gay marriage law approved by its Legislature, for example, voters in Washington state approved a law giving same-sex couples or straight older couples who register as domestic partners all the state rights and responsibilities of marriage. Washington's so-called "everything but marriage" law passed by the same margin as Maine's gay marriage rebuff, 53 percent to 48 percent. ...

This month, more than 150 Christian conservative leaders published a 4,700-word declaration, pledging to fight any legislative efforts to equate same-sex unions with traditional marriages. In theory, though, the Manhattan Declaration would not oppose extending legal protections to two people in a nonsexual relationship, such as two sisters or even a same-sex couple that abstained from sex, said Robert George, a Princeton law professor who serves as board chairman of the National Organization for Marriage.

"What you couldn't have is ... an explicit reference to partners in intimate relationships because 'intimate' is an euphemism for 'sexual,'" George said. "In that case, all a civil union scheme is a semantic substitute for marriage, or same-sex marriage by another name."

Labels: civil unions, culture, domestic partnership, gay marriage

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Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert slammed lampooned same sex marriage opponents in his "The Word" segment Monday night, turning the arguments against "outing" on its head by farcically arguing that the signers of an anti-gay marriage petition should be allowed to stay in the closet.

Opponents of gay marriage in Washington state are trying to keep the signers of an anti-gay marriage petition private. Protect Marriage Washington got enough signatories to mount a referendum against a provision allowing gay couples to enjoy the same benefits as straight couples, but refuses to disclose the names of the signers.

"God knows what would happen to our names if they end up in China," Colbert remarked. "If those names are released, we would all then know the signers. By which i mean their orientation about other people's sexual orientation. and that's a very personal thing.

"Some say 'too bad, they chose to sign this petition,'" Colbert continued. "But, folks, I don't believe it's a choice. I believe you're born thinking gays don't have the right to get married. Or even be joined in union."

Labels: culture, domestic partnership, Washington (state)

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