The county that surrounds Florida’s Capital City voted unanimously to move forward with a domestic partner registry March 12.
The measure, proposed by Commissioner Mary Ann Lindley, will extend benefits, similar to those that married couples get, to those who are registered with the domestic partnership registry, gay or straight.
“The county council finds that there are many individuals who establish and maintain a significant personal and economic relationship with another individual,” the ordinance reads. “Individual forming such domestic partnership often live in a committed domestic relationship. Domestic partners are often denied certain benefits and rights because there is no established system for such relationships to be registered or recognized.”
The handful of rights extended to those participating would include hospital and jail visitation and access to each other’s children in the public school system.
What it does not do, however, is define a relationship as a marriage or bestow the some 1,400 rights granted to heterosexual, married couples in Florida.
Leon County’s ordinance is modeled after those that have passed in Volusia, Orange, and Pinellas Counties and in the cities of Gainesville, Sarasota, Orlando, Tampa and St. Petersburg.
Several members of Equality Florida attended the vote, which was held around 6:30 p.m. March 12.
The county that surrounds Florida’s Capital City voted unanimously to move forward with a domestic partner registry March 12.
The measure, proposed by Commissioner Mary Ann Lindley, will extend benefits, similar to those that married couples get, to those who are registered with the domestic partnership registry, gay or straight.
Several members of Equality Florida attended the vote, which was held around 6:30 p.m. March 12.
