In Austria and France, some gay couples are trying to get the right to full marriage—while some heterosexuals are trying to get the right to “half marriage”:
As the number of straight French couples opting for Pacs [domestic partnership agreements] has grown, the number of marriages has shrunk, to the point that there are now two couples entering into a Pacs for every three getting married.
[ . . . ]
Supporters cite a number of reasons why registered partnerships are better than marriages. Dissolving a marriage can take up to six years, while for registered partnerships it takes three at most. The law also puts more emphasis on openness and honesty than on strict sexual fidelity.
“Should we want to get divorced it would be easier, which is good, because marriage is heavily criticised for being too strict,” says Joerg Eipper Kaiser, a 34-year-old museum worker in Austria’s second city of Graz.
(Via: Family Scholars Blog)
May 18th, 2010 | 11:29 am
The Pacs were brought in to forestall gay marriage, and so that they not create a separate, discriminatory category of strictly gay folk, were opened up to heterosexuals as well. One feature of the Pacs is that they specifically do not give the partners the right to have children, particularly via adoption. It would be interesting to see how many heteros entering into these arrangements actually procreate. France particularly wanted to protect patrimony by keeping marriage away from gays, because so many French enterprises are family-based. There was a strong economic interest in finding this alternative solution. It will be interesting to see if the impact reflects the intention behind the creation of the Pacs.