NZ: Right to civil union paramount, despite slow uptake

Link: Massey University

Excerpt:

Same-sex couples may not be flocking to tie the civil union knot just yet. But that is no reflection of how highly they value the right to do so if they choose, says a Massey researcher and author of a new paper on civil unions.

Dr Mark Henrickson, a senior lecturer in social work at the Auckland campus, says the recently-publicised slow uptake among both heterosexual and same-sex couples formalising their relationship since civil unions became legal three years ago is irrelevant.

“It is the right to legal recognition of same-sex relationships, rather than recognition of relationships per se, that forms the foundation of lesbian, bisexual and gay support for government recognition of same-sex relationship,” he says in a new paper titled Civilised Unions, Civilised Rights: Same-Sex Relationships in Aotearoa New Zealand. The paper is the latest to be published from a major on-going survey into the lives of lesbians, gays and bisexual people, titled Lavender Islands: Portrait of the Whole Family, launched in March 2004.

His survey, conducted during the period of robust public debate on civil unions prior to the Civil Union Act being passed in 2005, found that the majority of the 2,269 respondents strongly supported civil union legislation. An overwhelming 95 percent of those in relationships and 93 percent of singles supported government recognition of same-sex couples.

But despite 66 per cent of partnered respondents and 63 per cent of single respondents saying they would undertake legal recognition of a relationship at some point in the future, “the actual uptake of civil unions has been somewhat less than survey data would suggest,” says Dr Henrickson.

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While more same-sex couples may get hitched via civil union in the future, Dr Henrickson says one implication of his study is that public officials reduced the demand for same-sex marriage simply by legalising it.

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[jw]