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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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Legal Marriage Primer Read This If You Don’t Read Another Thing About Legal Marriage by Demian © May 21 2009, Demian The word “marriage” has two major meanings. One is a civil, legal status — the other is a religious or social status. It is critical to understand that the struggle for equal treatment is in the civil sphere, not with any church or religious philosophy.
Legal marriage triggers, at least, 150-to-350 laws in every U.S. state. Connecticut has 588 laws that are triggered by legal marriage. And on the Federal level, there are more than 1,138 such laws. These civil laws, in order to be just and fair, should apply to all citizens equally. The civil right of legal marriage is not just a mere matter of semantics, culture, or social grace. It is the right to be considered a full adult, and be treated the same as any other U.S. citizen.
In America, there is no state church, and no religious body has the right to dictate state policy. Civil marriage laws have been the sole domain of individual states until the Federal “DoMA” law in 1996. State marriage licenses are not religious in any way. They are legal contracts made between the couple and the state, not with any religious body. Clergy are not required for a license to be completed. The couple does not need to be a member of any church or temple. The marriage license does not require, as some churches do, that the couple be together “till death do you part.”
Marriages, as we know them today, do not look the same as they did several hundred years ago. State involvement in marriages is historically a new phenomenon. Many cultures around the world had marriage rites for same-sex couples, long before organized religions took up marriage ceremonies. In fact, in the very early days of the Catholic and Orthodox Church, male-male marriages were the first to get official church blessing; opposite-sex marriages came later. Not only are there no religious requirements to get a marriage licenses, you can get one even if you have committed anti-religious crimes, such as being a convicted rapist or murderer. In most states, you only need to be an adult, and part of an opposite-sex couple.
While religions have wildly differing views toward sexual orientation, many religions offer ceremonial blessings to same-sex couples. They do so because they recognize that all couples need social and spiritual support to be productive and survive in a healthy way. And these churches consider all congregants to be members-in-good-standing, regardless of sexual orientation.
Most contemporary biologists think that orientation is genetically predetermined, with a possible environmental component. Even if orientation were a choice, it should be constitutionally protected in the same way other choices are protected, such as religion and political affiliation.
To date, full and equal legal marriage for same-sex couples is only available in the countries and U.S. states listed at the end of this article: No other legal procedure allows same-sex couples the same range of protections, responsibilities, and benefits that come with civil marriage.
A few of the rights triggered by legal marriage which are difficult or impossible to duplicate by other legal documents:
The entire struggle for workplace partner benefits derives from the fact that we are not treated the same as other families in the first place. Were there legal marriage for same-sex couples, we would automatically be eligible for benefits. Domestic partner benefits have come about because the marketplace recognizes the need to support all its workers in a fair manner. These benefits attract and keep better employees. They do not bring social acceptance or recognition for anything further than insurance, or time off to care for an ill partner or a partner’s children. Domestic partnership (rather than marriage) benefits are a form of apartheid because of the way these benefit plans are administered. In order to qualify, many plans require the employee to sign an affidavit stating that the relationship has existed for a year, that the couple lives together, and that the couple is mutually responsible for each other’s economic welfare. None of these are required of legally married employees. In fact, legally married couples are not required to live together — or even like each other — and can sign nuptial agreements which keep their finances separated. Domestic partner benefits can be great value in the short run, and demonstrate the dire need same-sex couples have to protect their families. However, after more than 23 years of tracking the social status of same-sex couples, Partners Task Force has concluded that the effort to enact domestic partnership law is not in the best long-term interests of couples. Domestic partnership status is a far cry from equality.
There is no evidence that the movement toward legal marriage would be aided by advocating anything other than full legal marriage. This is true in the same way that there was no good reason to demand separate water fountains as an incremental path toward full integration. Separate social structures for different classes of people are never equal. As a community, there is little to gain by fighting for a second-class status like domestic partnership laws. It is not a stepping-stone to legal marriage because the two are legally and socially totally different entities. Fighting for the second class status of a domestic partnership takes the same amount of time and energy as fighting for legal marriage, and it encounters nearly the same level of resistance. The attempts to enact a few meager worker’s benefits in various municipalities has resulted in annulments by state officials (Hawaii), and has been struck down by courts (Austin, Tex., Chapel Hill, N.C., Minneapolis, Minn., Pima County, Ariz., and the State of Minnesota).
Further, the radical right extremists do not really care whether it is marriage law or domestic partner status, only that it be denied to same-sex couples. They have said so since the first domestic partnership benefit was created in Berkeley in 1984. They publicly announced that they planned to stop the 1998 Hawaii governor’s domestic partnership bill, which followed winning the court case for legal marriage. (The Hawaii legislature destroyed that ruling by changing their state constitution specifically to deny equal coverage of same-sex couples.)
Some have suggested that making some kind of a parallel structure to marriage — and calling it anything but marriage — would satisfy the need for legal protection of same-sex couples, as well as mollify the radical religious right wing. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t do either. No parallel structure to marriage law could possibly duplicate the more than 1,138 Federal laws and each state’s 150-250 laws which apply to anyone with a marriage license. To try to do so would be a legal, financial and logistical nightmare. Further, when there is a change in a marriage law, the “parallel marriage” law would likewise need to be changed as well.
Because most states do not recognize domestic partner registrations or Civil Unions, it is likely that the same would happen to any parallel marriage-like structure. And it would not be recognized by the U.S. Federal system because of the “DoMA” law which denies recognition of same-sex couples. It certainly would not be recognized by other countries, just as the “Registered Partnerships” of Northern Europe are not recognized anywhere else.
Every culture has defined marriage differently. Every age has changed the way people are related by law and custom. Marriage in the West used to mean that the husband completely owned the wife and the children. Now, a wife is no longer property and may bring charges against a husband for unwanted abuse. Another tradition, denial of license to an interracial marriage, was enforced by prison terms in America by 13 states until the U.S. Supreme Court ruling of 1969.
It is now time for the marriage laws to be updated and conform to the real needs of same-sex couples. Many churches have done this already in the spiritual and social arena. It is now time for our states to do the same in the legal sphere.
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