Democratic Governor Jack Markell signing Delaware's civil unions bill
Yesterday morning there were 43 states that did not have a legal classification for same-sex relationships -- marriage, civil unions, domestic partnerships, etc. By yesterday afternoon, that number dropped to 42 when Delaware's Democratic Governor Jack Markell signed into law the country's latest civil union legislation.
The signing ceremony wasn't a stoic pen-and-pad affair, it was a full-blown party with 600 people in attendance at arguably the state's premier concert venue. Governor Markell is up for re-election next year which might make some politicians cagey about being associated with The Gay. But last night the governor made it clear he wants to be the guy, the guy famous for signing the civil unions bill:
We’re here to recognize so much of what is so incredibly right about our state... This is about a new energy and a new excitement. It’s about a moment in our history – and make no mistake, because tonight is history – that came about because people came together, because it became clear that Delaware’s LGBT community is in fact part of every Delaware community... Because of years of making the case that justice needed to be heard, that families needed to be honored, that there are lives – there are actual lives - at stake…
Because of those years of working to make clear that this is about equal rights, not special rights, that this is about fairness and families, that this move to make justice more real honors the founding ideas of our state and of our country – freedom, equality, opportunity…
It’s become clear that in Delaware – justice and equality move one way – and that is forward.
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Good for DE!
Meh. Get back to us when we can actually have equality with actual marriage rights.
Agreed. It feels a bit unseemly for the governor to hyper-extend his arm and his rhetoric to pat himself on the back in celebration of what is essentially codifying "separate but equal."
I have no doubt whatsoever that Gov. Markell would very gladly support and sign a full marriage equality bill. But his support is meaningless if it can't get past the house and senate. As bitter as I am to not have full marriage equality, the fault does NOT lie with the governor who has been an avid supporter of full LGBT rights long before he was governor, and long before we had ANY rights in this state.
Leslie, I don't think that we really disagree that much. I know that the governor would sign a full marriage bill if it were to pass. My point is that, in addition to self-congratulation for making progress, he would have done really well to acknowledge that this was a partial step. That "separate but equal" is better than what existed prior to it, but is not the end of the line (minimally courageous truth) as much as it is a legally indefensible half-step towards equality (full-on, courageous, dangerous truth.)
Would someone explain what legal rights are afforded to legally marrieds versus civil unions? As far as I know with a civil union you have the same legal rights so essentially you are fighting over the word marriage. A marriage is when you stand before God, your friends and family and make a committment to each other whether legal or not. Who cares what anybody else thinks?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_union#United_States
http://www.ehow.com/facts_5681525_marriage-vs_-civil-unions-rights.html
http://lesbianlife.about.com/od/wedding/f/MarriageBenefit.htm
http://www.gao.gov/archive/1997/og97016.pdf
Companies may also deny rights to civil union couples that they cannot deny to married couples; they may also make a legal distinction between civil unions and marriages w/in company policy as a format to discriminate. Used to work for a major insurance company out of Chicago, IL that has this as part of it's current employment policy. The federal and state government is afforded this same legal discrimination and currently exercises it as well- although the federal gov't has taken some steps to correct said discrimination.
Also "God" doesn't necessarily have anything to do w/ marriage. unless you are presuming to make the argument that Buddhists and Hindu's and other such religions should not be able to issue marriage licenses.
You are also assuming that going forward laws won't be made to discriminate against homosexuals once the civil unions for gays, marriages for straights legality is established (although that's a wee bit of a slippery slope argument so I won't push it too much.
Additionally if a marriage does just have to do w/ you standing up in front of God, your community, and your family/friends, then why not just legalize marriage across the board? That makes it sound like the argument against marriage equality is that those in the opposition want to enforce their religious beliefs on people whom they don't know.
Until the bill actually goes into effect on 1/1/12, because my Spouse and I were married in California before Prop H8te, Delaware law says that we are criminals and that we could be fined or even jailed for the crime of having gotten married in another state and then moving back to DE to live as a married couple.
Having a legally recognized relationship will help, especially since we are raising our granddaughters and my current status as a legal stranger to them puts them at risk if something were to ever happen to my Spouse. But we're holding off on the big party until we have full state and federal recognition as a married couple.
I just don't get the stupidity in the gay community. "Marriage" is a religious affair. The state can only license the union. Who gives a f**K if ts called marriage. If I get hitched to my partner and my state licenses that then I'm married just as much as anyone - with all the rights etc. The word marriage means nothing legally if marriage and union have the same legal considerations. And just because you can legally be "married" doesn't mean diddly to any given church - they still won't marry you so then where are you; in a civil ceremony thats where. Truthfully the only people who stand to gain anything from the word marriage being inserted into the language are the layers who can then divorce us every 3 months. It was this asinine fight that brought us George Bush. So shut the f**k up and enjoy your new rights. Personally I like being separate but equal. I don't want my union degraded by equating it with some backwards christian system.
That's assuming that none of the gays that want to be married are religious, which is definitely not the case... It should bother everyone more that the government is so intertwined with religious institutions despite the separation of church and state.
How is separate but equal REALLY equal? It doesn't matter that religious institutions use the word marriage. If the law recognizes one union as a "civil union" and one as a "marriage" and both are given the same rights, then a prejudicial factor clearly still exists. Clearly legislators have no problem dolling out union rights in order to gain our vote as long as they can still find another term to separate our relationships from straight ones. I understand that in terms of rights the two are no different in this state. However, if this was really about EQUALITY, it would be called MARRIAGE. I'm sorry if you don't understand that the gay community just wants to stop being separated from everyone else.
@ G Riley, boy your so called Christian ways are hypocritical, does your religion say "Love one another? or are there some twisted words in there that make it OK with your JUDGEMENTS! You must be a conservative Republican that thinks you are right to discriminate and tell people how to live! WE ARE ALL ONE in the eyes of GOD, my God is...loving and has compassion, non-judgement, we are ALL gods children, not just a select few! Sorry the bible is not all true & accurate, it has been REVISED many times to suite the needs of the power hungry, big egos wayyyy back in time! The greater truth of the bible will come! Live in the moment, not the past~ Humanity is not yet wise, we are just discovering all the lies that the government & churches have been shoving down our throat for a very long time!!! I will continue to keep my eyes & heart open to all POSITIVE aspects for humanity....Unity~ Love for one another~ Compassion~ Equality~ and LETTING GO of All Negativity that this world has been spewing, because it surely has NOT done us justice! WAKE UP AMERICA and FEEL the TRUTH Within YOU!~~~=))
The problem as it stands now is that marriages and civil unions aren't treated equally. To be truthful marriages should not have any legal rights assigned to them whatsoever, but they do. Civil unions should be what the law follows, but this isn't how it works. Civil unions are institutionally treated as secondary to marriages. The law could change that, but at the moment it has not. Legalizing same sex unions in Delaware doesn't magically mean that the citizens of Delaware will have equal rights as a married couple would. For instance a private company can say that it will allow the partners of a married couple to partake in things like a pension or insurance plan w/ the company, but then decide that they won't also extend that right to a civil union. In which case any straight and GLBTQ couple in a civil union will not be given that benefit, but every married couple will. This is just but one example of the disparity between the two. I don't think many gays expect for those who're religious are hung up on whether or not gays can get "married." What gays are hung up on is the idea of equal treatment. Civil unions are handed out not as a state recognized legal format in which you get benefits for being together, but instead as a copout secondary answer to what the state really wants you to have which is a marriage license. The whole melding of partnerships and religion has to do w/ social control and expanded state/religious power- it always has been ever since marriage was created wayyy back when.
Personally this is why I think marriage shouldn't even exist to begin w/.
Amanda, Could it be that "legislators have no problem dolling out union rights" because they want you to have at least the "rights" that are afforded by doing so, knowing full well that the religious nuts would never allow the "Marriage" thing to pass? So, Gay people are given all of the rights of "other" people until the "Marriage" name/issue can be worked out. I don't see a problem other than the religious part. I can remember when Gay people were not able to have any rights, can't you?
I do remember when Gay people were not able to have any rights, and I do appreciate when strides are made in a positive direction. However, I believe that once a minority group accepts "separate but equal" treatment, it becomes harder to attain full equal treatment in the long run. WI Thomas once said, "When men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences". When we accept the definition of marriage as between heterosexuals, and civil union as between homosexuals, we are accepting the consequences that typically come along with separate but equal institutions. It's not that I don't appreciate the progress that this legislation brings to Delaware, I just think that by calling it a civil union instead of a marriage even though it ensures the same rights, is accepting that civil unions are in some way inferior and undeserving of the proper classification by law.
I feel that if we take the slow but measurable progress and it is slowly accepted, we can then move to the next step. We are coming out of the dark ages. In my state a guy campaigned that he WOULD pass Gay "Marriage" and now say's he can't get it passed so he is passing "Civil Unions". I think he gave it his all but it was not enough.
Feh! Thanks for the long semantic observation. It contributed space and verbiage.
G Riley:Why do you equate backward with Christian and isnt that a form of bigotry?I agreed with just about everything you said until you decided to ridicule my faith and my God.This Gay marriage issue is really about economics all the way around and the Lawyers will have a field day with an expanded client base.
[New user here, this is a reply to the above post by G Riley]
There's a lot of legal stuff that kicks in for marriages that doesn't kick in for "civil unions." And state law can't change that, because a lot of it is administered under the laws of others states or federal law.
If straight couples suddenly have state-granted "civil unions" and not state-granted "unions," that would be fine, I agree with you. But it's not, and pretending they're the same when they're not is disingenuous.
Good grief. An honest and genuine politician. The Apocalypse is nigh.
Nice work, Delaware!!
How incredibly refreshing. I wish more politicians would "come out of the social conservative closet" and admit that they have liberal beliefs.
@GRiley:
1) … common, legal, and historical usage of the word "marriage" is a bit at tilt with windmills when compared to your personal, idiolectical definition. Sorry, but you'll have to have an argument with the OED over that particular issue.
2) #Holding … and the quote cited from the Supreme Court here is what sets judicial precedent for the commonly held belief that legally sanctioned segregation is INHERENTLY discriminatory if for no other reason than that it creates two or more distinctive classes of citizens within a society. People like to create social hierarchies. When you allow them to arbitrarily do so, it tends to encourage the creation of an oppressed underclass. Our legal system recognizes this and actively attempts to curb such behavior. Whether or not it's government's place to do such things is neither here nor there; real people are being marginalized and suffering as a result right now. No moral person would stand by and shrug at such a thing, so I will assume that you're not immoral but more likely ignorant.
Please take a high school history course. It would benefit you.
I think Civil Unions for ALL would be a fine idea. And then let marriage be a personal, cultural designation, a religious one if that is appropriate for the couple.
But as long as Marriage is an option offered by the government to opposite-sex couples and denied same sex couples, then it is not true equality.
ding ding ding
I'm unsure if the poster was intending to count all of those states where same-sex couples can register in some fashion v. just those states where the status conveys all rights of marriage (however it's named), but either way the gap is a ways better than the 43/42 numbers mentioned in the first paragraph.
http://www.thetaskforce.org/downloads/reports/issue_maps/rel_recog_4_11_color.pdf
I grew up in Delaware so for me this is surprisingly pleasant news. I agree with those who say until there is full recognition by both federal and stage governments of gay marriage, it'll never be equal. Still, this is a huge leap forward from the Delaware in which I grew up.
Patrick, I agree, we are moving forward even if it is slowly.
It would be best then if government got out of the business of marriages or more importantly regulating and defining the institution.The federal government has no enumerated power over the instituion of marriage so all powers not vested in the federal government goes in theory to state government where the issue should be adjudicated.I would love as i said to get the government out of regulating and recognizing marriages leaving this to the houses of worship,but since this is not going to happen lets maintain the standard of federalism and state soverignty.