My apologies for starting yet another thread on the topic, but I think there’s an interesting question here that could use in-depth, educated discussion.
Briefly, Hamish and I have been going back and forth on the topic of whether civil unions or same-sex marriages would fare better in the international arena. That is, assuming the US adopted one or the other, which would be likelier to be held valid in other countries, and what barriers would occur in adopting comity agreements with other countries?
Hamish suggests (correct me if I’m wrong, please) that same-sex marriages and same-sex civil unions are equally likely to be rejected by countries without SSM allowances in their own society, but that SSM are likelier than SSCU to be accepted in societies that allow for SSM.
I, on the other hand, think that SSCU are MORE likely to be accepted in countries with no provisions for SSM: whereas other countries might have moral or religious objections to allowing SSM, they might not have as strong objections to SSCU. I acknowledge that civil unions are probably not currently covered by comity agreements, but am not convinced that changing this would be a major hurdle.
So my questions are these:
- Could civil unions be enacted in a way that they’d be covered by existing comity agreements – for example, if comity agreements cover existing contracts, could CUs be enacted as a specialized form of contract, guaranteeing their recognition under comity agreements?
- How difficult is it to change comity agreements? How often do countries object to proposed changes? How often are they changed?
- Given that some countries (hi, Scandinavia!) have recently enacted civil union legislation, are there existing comity agreements out there that we can look at as models? What about comity agreements for SSM?
- Who’s right – Hamish, or me?
I’d appreciate limiting this thread to discussions of the international implications of SSMs and civil unions; there are five bajillion threads on the other aspects of the debate.
Daniel