Re: closet conlanging

   Date:         Wed, 23 Dec 1998 22:12:56 -0500
   From: "Daniel J. O'Neil" <oneild@...>

   Even in Denmark, where you say, Lars, that DPs have the same legal
   consequences of marriage except for the right to adopt children--
   well that's a pretty big exception. It's hard for me not to feel
   that DPs are in some ways a means of throwing a sop to gays and
   lesbians while denying us full equality. I think, for instance, of
   Hawaii, where the state legislature in the past year created a
   domestic partnership law (with limited legal benefits) in order to
   derail the movement for extending marriage to gay and lesbian
   couples.

There are a couple of points to clarify here. The Danish thing is not
called a domestic partnership, just a registered partnership. You
don't have to live together to be married or enter partnership (but
the equivalents of IRS and INS assume you're up to no good if you
don't).

If Danish lawmakers had in fact wanted to extend marriage to same-sex
couples, the restriction on adoption would just have been put into
another law. Unmarried couples are so common in Denmark that many
Danish laws give them equal status with married couples. Mixed-sex
couples do have more legal rights than same-sex ones, especially
regarding children, but most of these do not depend on marriage, and
so they do not (formally) constitute a difference between marriage and
registered partnership.

A recent series of adjustments to various laws had as one explicit
goal to prevent a same-sex couple from getting joint custody of a
child. The reason given is that "a child needs both a mother and a
father". It's differential treatment, yes, but at least it was openly
discussed and voted on in Parliament. These laws give specific rights
to mixed-sex couples who are married or live in a more-or-less
marriage-like relationship: They get joint custody of common children,
they can adopt as a couple, and they are allowed to receive artificial
insemination. (The important part in practice is the prohibition of
insemination for lesbian couples (and single women) --- the donor
countries for adoption insist on married mixed-sex couples anyway).

The only thing that is now different between marriage and RP is the
right of one partner to `co-adopt' a stepchild, because that results
in joint custody of the child. (If a biological parent who has sole
custody of a child dies, different rules apply. People who had an
exceptionally close relationship to the parent(!), e.g., partner or
widow/er, are possible adoptive parents, but so are the family and the
other biological parent, regardless of closeness. A judge will have to
decide, based on the best interest of the child).

Some parties in Parliament are actively trying to change these rules,
and the insemination part was challenged in the International Court of
Human Rights, so I hope these restrictions are not permanent.

Lars Mathiesen (U of Copenhagen CS Dep) <thorinn@...> (Humour NOT marked)