Legalization of gay marriage and civil unions in states

Legalization of Gay Marriage and Civil Unions in States

The status of gay marriages has been a serious subject of debate for several years now. While people may have, at least partially, accepted the fact that a human being is entitled to have an individual choice regarding its personal relations, many are still reticent to legally regulate this status.

In the United States, many of the member states have been making significant progress in legalizing gay marriages. We will examine below the status of gay marriage in several significant states.

Our examination of the legal status of gay marriages in the U.S., we need to refer to Defense of Marriage acts, passed along in different states of the Union. According to the Defense of Marriage Act, which became law in September 1996, marriage is clearly defined as "a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife." Only 11 states have not adopted such acts and it seems only obvious that these have made the greatest progress on the way of legalizing gay marriages. These states are Connecticut, Maryland, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.

Because of the many examples in the sense of supporting legal gay marriages in different states across the U.S., we may assert that this movement has gained a certain momentum in the last couple of years. One of the best examples in this sense was given in February 2004, in San Francisco, when 2,300 gay couples married at the city hall, with the permission of Mayor Gavin Newsom.

According to state laws, same-sex marriages are banned in California, in conformity with Proposition 22, that states "only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California," but the mayor chose to overrule these regulations and to proceed to legalizing a large number of gay marriages. He declared that he was not "interested as a mayor in moving forward with a separate but unequal process for people to engage in marriages."

Despite the success of such an action, we need to be cautious when we examine, from a legal point-of-view, the implications of such an act. Undoubtedly, the mayor proceeded only because such an action could be carried on quickly in the city, without giving time to legal factors to intervene. As previously shown, California is regulated by a code of law, where Proposition 22 clearly stipulates and prohibits same-sex marriage. The mayor's act was nevertheless a victory for partisans of legalization, especially given the fact that California is on the list of states that have passed Defense of Marriage Acts.

On the other hand, California made some progress on legalizing gay marriages by passing the Domestic Partners Rights and Responsibilities Act, an act that permitted domestic partners most of the rights and responsibilities that civil law permits to the members of a marriage. Further more, in March 2005, Judge Kramer decided that a ban on same-sex marriage violates "basic human right to marry a person of one's choice." A final decision is to be taken by the California Supreme Court in 2006.

Vermont seems to be, in many ways, the most advanced state in the proceedings towards recognizing gay marriage. In 1999, the Vermont Supreme Court passed a decision in the case of Baker vs. Vermont that stated that gay couples had the same state constitutional rights as straight ones. The actual civil union law went into effect on July 1, 2000 and the first three months marked an affluence of gay couples from other states getting married in Vermont.

In Vermont, currently, gay marriage has actually been assimilated to a partnership, so as to be "easier for the state to digest," as Republican Tom Little, an active advocate, pointed out. As marriage is still defined as the union between man and woman, the homosexual union in Vermont allows the partners in the gay couple to benefit from ALL rights and obligations that members of a heterosexual union have as well, including inheriting the partner's goods upon his passing away.

The case of Vermont, where civil union between gay couples was assimilated, through accepting that the gay couple should have the rights and obligations that heterosexual couples have, but is not exactly the same thing as a heterosexual marriage and is perceived as a civil union, is also the case for several other states, most notably Connecticut, close to passing a similar bill.

In April 2005, State House lawmakers approves a "same-sex civil-union bill," but with the amendment according to which marriage was still defined as "a union between one man and one woman," in direct concordance with the Defense of Marriage Acts.

The Bill itself was voted by the House with 85 to 63 votes, but the amendment was also passed with 80 to 67. There are voices who are concerned that such an amendment may endanger the final success of the bill, but Sen. Andrew J. McDonald, co-chairman of the legislature's Judiciary Committee, declared that, despite the amendment, there are "588 rights and privileges that are still going to be conferred on same-sex couples that didn't exist prior to this legislation."

The virtual success of such a bill would be tremendous for supporters of gay marriages. As I have previously mentioned, the issue is not necessarily for gay civil unions to be called marriages. It is a much deeper issue, an issue where the homosexual civil union should be assimilated in all rights and obligations to the heterosexual marriage. In this sense, Connecticut seems to be on the same path as Vermont in recognizing the rights of gay couples.

Progress was also made in New York towards achieving the legalization of gay marriages. Judge Doris Ling-Cohan ruled, at the beginning of 2005, in favour of gay couples being allowed to marry. According to the decision, there is no point in guaranteeing basic freedoms to lesbian and gay people if one is not interested in conferring one of the most essential rights of all, the right to marry whomever one may desire. The New York Court of Appeals will now follow in case the Judge's sentence is contested.