The New York Daily News reports that on June 3rd, New York City, after 17 years of registering domestic partners, will open its doors to marriage-like ceremonies, akin to the services offered to straight couples.

The city began registering domestic partners, most of whom are not gay, at the city clerk’s offices in 1993. Up until now, the nearly 50,000 domestic partners who signed up received nothing more than a piece of paper.

Registering as a same-sex domestic partner is not the same as gay marriage – which the state Senate nixed last year – but it does convey some legal benefits, especially if one partner is a city employee.

…

With last year’s rejection of a gay marriage law by the state Senate, a domestic partnership ceremony “is a good gesture,” agreed Councilman James Van Bramer (D-Queens). “Not everyone is going to want a ceremony, but if they do they should be able to have it,” Van Bramer said.

The idea of providing a ceremony was suggested by a group of Fordham Law School students who spent time last year working with the City Council’s legal division.

Unlike married spouses, domestic partners don’t usually receive inheritances. They also don’t have marital-type confidentiality privileges.

At least now, they can have a party.

David Weigel, a journalist who covers and blogs about conservatives and libertarian politics for the Washington Post, got into some controversy when tweeting about ‘bigots’ who fight against same-sex marriage. While he did retract from his endorsement of the term, he reiterated his opposition to laws which discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation:

I’m a bystander in the same-sex marriage debate — I haven’t given to any cause on either side. But in 2006 I did vote against a Virginia same-sex marriage amendment, which passed. I didn’t, and don’t, think social issues should be subjected to votes like that. I don’t support much direct democracy in general — this is a republic, and we shouldn’t throw these kinds of decisions to the electorate at large.But why was I willing to be so disrespectful to one group of activists? Unlike with most activists, I don’t really see the direct impact on their lives, or on the lives of the people who agree with them, of the cause they oppose. Antitax protesters are threatened by higher taxes. Anti-health-care-bill protesters fear their coverage will get worse. Anti-meat-eating protesters believe animals are being murdered and the environment is being made worse.

Even the birther movement has always made a kind of sense — oust Obama from office, and you get a chance to reverse what damage you think he’s done to your country.

But who’s threatened by legal same-sex marriage? Whose life is made worse? If there was science suggesting that children raised by same-sex parents are worse off than children raised by traditional families, that would be one thing, but I haven’t seen it. We’ve watched legal same-sex marriage in several European countries and several states, and it hasn’t ushered in some decline in the quality of life, or marriage, for those who don’t participate in it.

That’s what I don’t understand. That’s my bias, for now. I’ll happily entertain arguments for the contrary.

Hawaii’s state legislature passed legislation legislation affording same-sex couples many of the same rights enjoyed by heterosexual couples. The state House of Representatives passed the bill by a 31-20 vote late Thursday, but Republican Governor Linda Lingle has until early July to sign or veto the groundbreaking new law.

Marriage equality in the ‘Aloha State’ has a long history, as it was in 1991, in a decision by the State Supreme Court that invalidated laws that prohibited same sex couples from wedding. However as a reaction to this action, voters passed a constitutional amendment empowering the legislation to define marriage as a heterosexual insitution. That referenda did not close the door on civil unions though.

If approved, Hawaii will become one of six states including California, Nevada, New Jersey, Oregon and Washington granting civil union status to same sex couples. Full civil marriage are legal in Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont and Washington, DC. Marriages performed in other states are recognized in Maryland, New York and Rhode Island.

The legislation has sparked an intense lobbying effort by the Catholic Archdiocese and many religious groups seeking a veto from Governor Lingle.

Reade more about Hawai’i’s new civil union law and the efforts surrounding the legislation in the Honolu Advertiser.

Former First Lady Laura Bush, in her soon-to-be-release memoir Spoken From The Heart has gone on the record to outline her counsel to her husband about the use of same-sex marriage as an election strategy in the 2004 elections:

“In 2004 the social question that animated the campaign was gay marriage. Before the election season had unfolded, I had talked to George about not making gay marriage a significant issue. We have, I reminded him, a number of close friends who are gay or whose children are gay. But at that moment I could never have imagined what path this issue would take and where it would lead.”

Read more excerpts from Spoken From The Heart at the Daily Beast.

Same-sex marriage may not yet be legal at the federal level or in every state, but the U.S. Census Bureau is seeking to count same-sex married couples in the 2010 Census, and is reaching out to gay and lesbian communities across America to solicit their help in capturing an accurate picture of their relationships.  Che Ruddell-Tabisola, the national LGBT partnership leader for the Census Bureau, commented on the Bureau’s efforts to capture same-sex couples in its count:

“Our job is to get an accurate count. … One of the most important things is for same-sex couples to know that it is 100 percent safe to participate in the census.”

Safe for two reasons:

First, individuals’ census data are confidential. Second, nowhere on the 2010 census form does the government actually ask for anyone to identify his or her sexual orientation. Boxes exist for “male,” “female” and for spousal relationship. The existence of a same-same marriage or partnership is surmised from the data.

The 2010 Census form does not actually have a category for same-sex couples or gays and lesbians to self-identify. Rather, the Bureau is asking same-sex couples to mark the appropriate gender box and select “married” on the Census form, regardless of whether same-sex marriage is legal in their respective state or not.  In previous years the Census Bureau has assumed it was a mistake when a Census form included two individuals of the same sex and the “married” box was checked, and the Bureau graciously corrected the gender on those forms to reflect a heterosexual couple.  In 2010, the Bureau is assuming that where a form indicates two individuals of the same gender and “married”, that in fact it is a married couple and will count it as such.  The Bureau will extrapolate data based on marital status and gender to determine how many same-sex couples there are in the United States for the first time since the government began collecting this information.