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Archive Version of
Partners Task Force for Gay and Lesbian Couples Online from 1995-2022 Demian and Steve Bryant originally founded Partners as a monthly newsletter in 1986. By late 1990 it was reformatted into a bi-monthly magazine. Print publication was halted by 1995 when Demian published Partners as a Web site, which greatly expanded readership. In 1988, the Partners National Survey of Lesbian & Gay Couples report was published; the first major U.S. survey on same-sex couples in a decade. In 1996, Demian produced The Right to Marry, a video documentary based on the dire need for equality that was made clear by the data from the survey mentioned above. The video featured interviews with Rev. Mel White, Evan Wolfson, Phyllis Burke, Richard Mohr, Kevin Cathcart, Faygele benMiriam, Benjamin Cable-McCarthy, Susan Reardon, Frances Fuchs, Tina Podlodowski, and Chelle Mileur. Demian has been the sole operator during the last two decades of Partners. Demian stopped work on Partners Task Force in order to realize his other time-consuming projects, which include publishing the book “Operating Manual for Same-Sex Couples: Navigating the rules, rites & rights” - which is now available on Amazon. The book is based on the Partners Survey mentioned above, his interviews of scores of couples, and 36 years of writing hundreds of articles about same-sex couples. It’s also been informed by his personal experience in a 20-year, same-sex relationship. Demian’s other project is to publish his “Photo Stories by Demian” books based on his more than six decades as a photographer and writer. |
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“Pacte Civil de Solidarité” (PACS), or “Civil Solidarity Pacts,” were instituted in France on November 9, 1999. While not the same as legal marriage, these PACS do provide far more than just symbolic significance. PACS offer some of the tax, welfare, and inheritance rights that married couples enjoy. Registered couples are able to share such things as joint auto insurance, extend their social-security coverage to each other, file joint tax returns, and leave each other property in their wills on favorable tax terms. There are some striking differences between registered couples and legal marriage. PACS registered couples:
Because most mayors in France have wanted nothing to do with same-sex marriage, the ceremony has been relegated to the back rooms of court buildings, unlike marriages that take place at City Hall. Air France announced that it will offer lower spousal rates to employees and clients who are registered same-sex couples. Other French airlines and the national railroad already offered job benefits to same-sex domestic partners before PACS were instituted. Numbers Signed Up Nearly 14,000 couples registered during the first four months that the PACS have been offered. 46,000 couples registered between November 1999 and October 2000. Because of privacy protections, it is unknown what percent are same-sex couples. Officials estimate that, during the first year, 50-70 percent were same-sex couples. The lobby group PACS Collective estimated that 75 percent of the Paris registrations were same-sex couples, with only 40 percent from Paris suburbs. Of the opposite-sex couples, it is thought that many of them are deeply cynical about traditional marriage, and some use the registration as a trial marriage. During 2002, 25,000 couples signed a PACS contract. In the first half of 2003, 15,000 couples signed up. As of December 2004, more than 130,000 PACS contracts have been signed nationwide; 60 percent by opposite-sex couples.
The official French government’s Web information on PACS:
This domestic partnership status does not work as a model for America, because implementing an equivalent legal status to marriage requires duplicating 150-to-350 laws in each state, and more than 1,138 laws on the federal level. [See U.S. Federal Laws for the Legally Married.] The whole idea is completely impractical. Further, domestic partnerships are usually not recognized outside of the issuing state. Because of the lack of portability, they create a patchwork legal status as a couple moves or vacations.
While such contracts are an attempt to create equal treatment, they only reinforce a separate and totally unequal status, one we consider to be a manifestation of apartheid. [See Marrying Apartheid: The Failure of Domestic Partnership Status] For a vast survey, please see our:
Legal Marriage Report: Global Status of Legal Marriage Return to: Domestic Partnership Benefits
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