"Domestic Partnerships" Legal in Washington State

[OttoDaFe]

Well, not yet — the law takes effect in July — but they’re coming.

The law creates a domestic partnership registry and provides enhanced rights for same-sex couples, including hospital visitation rights, the ability to authorize autopsies and organ donations and inheritance rights when there is no will.

(And I imagine that Tim Eyman’s word processor is already working overtime on an initiative to overturn it.)

While this does not affect me directly, it is scarcely mundane and pointless to a considerable number of people (some of whom I know). It ain’t fair, but it’s a step in the right direction.

[racer72]

This is the one time I will support Eyeman. My only beef if you are going to make civil unions legal, make them all legal regardless of sex. My brother and his SO have lived as a couple for 14 years and neither get the same rights as a gay couple. Unless of course, they wait till they are 62. If they can’t make the law fair for all the citizens of the state of Washington, it should not be a law.

[susan]

I hope Oregon will be joining Washington soon.

[alphaboi867]

@racer72

This is the one time I will support Eyeman. My only beef if you are going to make civil unions legal, make them all legal regardless of sex. My brother and his SO have lived as a couple for 14 years and neither get the same rights as a gay couple. Unless of course, they wait till they are 62. If they can’t make the law fair for all the citizens of the state of Washington, it should not be a law.

I agree, opposite-sex couples should be free to enter into civil unions/domestic partnetships on the exact same basis as same-sex couples, but only if same-sex couples are free to enter into marriages on the exact same basis as opposite-sex couples.

[SmartAleq]

@alphaboi867

I agree, opposite-sex couples should be free to enter into civil unions/domestic partnetships on the exact same basis as same-sex couples, but only if same-sex couples are free to enter into marriages on the exact same basis as opposite-sex couples.

So this is when all the smart people of every gender who are bent on matrimony deliberately request a license for a civil union in preference to a standard marriage license, thereby increasing the demographic AND the voting/lobbying power of the civil union group. Make those with civil unions the default and leave “marriage” to the religious. Then, since there are no “time honored, god sanctioned traditions” in the terms of civil unions, they will become exactly what the people of the state in question want them to be, with the rights and privileges the sovereign people wish to vote themselves in subsequent initiative ballots. Let the marriage people end up as King Shit of Turd Hill, presiding over their own worthless territory as the rest of us go forward with the secularization of cohabitation. Shoot, after a while we’ll be able to draft competent legislation spelling out how multiple partner CUs will be handled with regards to raising the children and property division. Who says a civil union has to be ONLY one person and one other person? Don’t you oppress me, mate!