Although same-sex couples will parity gain in financial areas including taxation, they will not have access to adoption and insemination services, and will not be allowed a ceremony at registry offices. There are a total of 37 differences between the Unions and the the rights and obligations of legally married couples. The compromise bill creates an apartheid status for same-sex couples.

Included in the Civil Union Registration

• Access to a pension if one partner dies
• Alimony
• Social Security claims
• Inheritance

The Civil Union bill passed 110-64 in parliament.

The new Civil Union status was a result of two decades of lobbying by Homosexual Initiative Vienna, Austria’s oldest gay men and lesbian group.

The right-wing Freedom Party rejected the legislation for going too far, and the Greens said it didn’t go far enough. While Austria is considered one of the more conservative countries in the European Union, a 2006 European Union poll — surveying up to 30,000 people — showed Austrian support for same sex-marriage at 49 percent, which was higher than the EU average of 41 percent.

Austria had provided rights for de facto same-sex unions since 2003, following the decision of the European Court of Human Rights in Karner v. Austria. This status, called “unregistered cohabitation,” gave cohabiting same-sex couples the same rights as unmarried cohabiting opposite-sex partners.

Not a Model for Family Recognition in U.S.

This domestic partnership status does not work as a model for America, because implementing an equivalent legal status to marriage requires duplicating 150-to-350 laws in each state, and more than 1,138 laws on the federal level. [See U.S. Federal Laws for the Legally Married.] The whole idea is completely impractical.

Further, domestic partnerships are usually not recognized outside of the issuing state. Because of the lack of portability, they create a patchwork legal status as a couple moves or vacations.

While such contracts are an attempt to create equal treatment, they only reinforce a separate and totally unequal status, one we consider to be a manifestation of apartheid. [See Marrying Apartheid: The Failure of Domestic Partnership Status]