Other Legally Recognized Same-sex Unions
Civil union, civil partnership, domestic partnership, registered partnership, unregistered partnership, and unregistered cohabitation statuses offer varying legal benefits of marriage and are available to same-sex couples in: Andorra, Australia, Brazil, Colombia, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, New Zealand, Slovenia, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and Uruguay.
They are also available in parts of Mexico (Coahuila and Mexico City) and the United States (California, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, New Jersey, Nevada, Oregon, Rhode Island and Wisconsin. In some countries with these legal recognitions, the actual benefits are minimal. Many people consider civil unions, even those that grant equal rights, inadequate because they create a separate status, and believe they should be replaced by gender-neutral marriage.
Read more about this topic: Same-sex Marriage
Famous quotes containing the words legally, recognized and/or unions:
“Rape is a culturally fostered means of suppressing women. Legally we say we deplore it, but mythically we romanticize and perpetuate it, and privately we excuse and overlook it.”
—Victoria Billings (b. 1945)
“I find very reasonable the Celtic belief that the souls of our dearly departed are trapped in some inferior being, in an animal, a plant, an inanimate object, indeed lost to us until the day, which for some never arrives, when we find that we pass near the tree, or come to possess the object which is their prison. Then they quiver, call us, and as soon as we have recognized them, the spell is broken. Freed by us, they have vanquished death and return to live with us.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“The newly-formed clothing unions are ready to welcome her; but woman shrinks back from organization, Heaven knows why! It is perhaps because in organization one find the truest freedom, and woman has been a slave too long to know what freedom means.”
—Katharine Pearson Woods (1853–1923)