Pedestrian

I know a domestic partnership is not a marriage. I have one of each. I’m in a legal domestic partnership which has been superseded by my legal marriage in California.  Unless, of course, I leave my home state and travel somewhere where my marriage is not recognized but maybe my domestic partnership is.  At the very least, the legal definition of my relationship with our child is still mommy, all over the world, and it’s our child (as well as the mortgage on our house) that legally tie us together regardless of laws.

In Feb 2004, my wife and I were married at San Francisco City Hall.

San Francisco City Hall, Feb 14 2004

When the California Supreme Court invalidated our marriage in August 2004, we became domestically partnered within days to protect our rights when our daughter was born (my wife was pregnant and our daughter was born in late August, shortly after our marriage was invalidated). We don’t have any photos of our domestic partnership form signing.

Then we were married on Kitsilano Beach in Vancouver, BC in March 2007.

Kitsilano Beach, March 31 2007

We were married in San Francisco in Golden Gate Park in October 2008 and in May 2009 the California Supreme Court decided that our marriage was still legal.

San Francisco, October 5 2008

The campaigns to reject referendum 71 in Washington State have brought out arguments to reject referendum 71 because it’s “everything but marriage.”  That’s a big fat lie.  Domestic partnership is nothing like marriage.

Ask Flickr: domestic partnership has 700ish search results and marriage has 700,000ish search results

According to Wikipedia, one is very legalese and the other is very touchy feely, guess which one?

A domestic partnership is a legal or personal relationship between two individuals who live together and share a common domestic life but are neither joined by marriage nor a civil union.

Marriage is a social union or legal contract between individuals that creates kinship. It is an institution in which interpersonal relationships, usually intimate and sexual, are acknowledged by a variety of ways, depending on the culture or demographic.

They’re both a legal state, but marriage is usually associated with romance – look at the words in the Wikipedia definition: kinship, interpersonal, intimate, sexual, acknowledged – and domestic partnership has a negative definition: “share … but are neither joined …”

From the records of our family and our relationship, it’s clear that a marriage means photos and flowers and fancy clothes and people showing up and a party and lots of documentation and gifts and records and cards and photo albums.  A domestic partnership is a legal document kept in a safe with copies kept with us when we travel (in case someone questions our legal relationship in a time when we need to be recognized as something other than “friends”).

We don’t have any photos from the day we were domestically partnered at the California Secretary of State’s office.  We didn’t throw a party and we didn’t send out announcements or receive gifts or dress up or buy flowers — and we didn’t invite anyone and nobody showed up to toast us.  There was a bike messenger in front of us in line and my wife was 9 months pregnant and a woman was reluctant to let her use a bathroom.

The “deny domestic partnership” crowd is afraid of their children learning about gay people in school, but their children are already learning about gay people in school. Children with gay and lesbian parents are sitting next to their children in school.  They claim that domestic partnership is “everything but marriage.” It’s not.

Domestic partnership rights protect families and children. The Prop 8 groups in California even conceded (and argued in court) that it was okay with them to give domestic partnership rights to gay and lesbian couples, just not marriage (though we are still married and our marriage seems to be doing no harm to any children or schools in California).

Without domestic partnership rights, gay and lesbian couples can jump through legal hoops to take care of each other — and pay legal bills that seem like a gay tax.

Approve Referendum 71 in Washington and retain dignity and responsibility and rights for people who already do more than most couples to secure their legal ties to each other and protect their relationship.