Domestic partner registry spurs no stampede By KEITH EDDINGS (Original publication: July 3, 2005) It took two years, three public hearings and several emotional debates — in which both sides invoked God, family and the Constitution — before Westchester County legislators voted to create a domestic partner registry that would allow unmarried couples to seek some of the benefits of marriage. Advocates called the 12-5 vote to create the registry a significant step for human rights in Westchester. But in the 31 months since it opened, the registry has been largely ignored by the community for which the battle to create it was waged. Only 146 of the 239 couples that have signed the registry since it opened on Nov. 27, 2002, can be identified as gay, based on first names. They represent 7 percent of the 2,112 same-sex couples in Westchester who acknowledged their relationships in the last federal census. Female couples outnumber male couples by 2 to 1. Seventy-three heterosexual couples — exactly a third of the couples whose sex could be identified — also signed up, while the sexes of 20 couples could not be determined because one or both partners signed with a first initial or a name common to both sexes, like Lee or Pat. Although County Clerk Leonard Spano warned that he would need more money and staff to handle what he predicted would be "a substantial upsurge in the number of people that we currently serve," an average of fewer than two couples a week have trickled through his door to declare their partnerships over the last three years. By comparison, 27,017 couples have signed New York City's partner registry — about 30 percent of them heterosexual — since it was created in 1993, according to the city clerk. The city has about eight times Westchester's population. Putnam County does not have a domestic partner registry. Even Westchester legislators who fought for the county's registry appear to have forgotten about it. The law they passed creating the registry established a five-member board to oversee it, but no appointments have been made. "I'm trying to remember the reason for putting (the advisory board) in the legislation to begin with," said Legislator George Oros, R-Cortlandt, a Republican who voted against the registry and, as the legislature's minority leader, was to have made one of the appointments. "At the time, we were concerned about the clerk getting inundated. Obviously, none of that has happened." That there has been no stampede to the registry may be due to the fact that legislators gave the partnerships little legal weight when they voted to sanction them. In New York City, domestic partners are handed a host of next-of-kin rights, including the right to take over a lease in a rent-regulated building when a partner dies. In Westchester, partners are given only visitation rights in jails and prisons, and at health care facilities such as hospitals and nursing homes. County Executive Andrew Spano has questioned whether even those limited rights are enforceable anywhere but at the county correction complex. Instead, the principal power of Westchester's registry is to provide unmarried couples with a certificate allowing them to claim domestic partner benefits with companies that offer them. Employers are not required to recognize the partnerships or to offer the benefits, but several do, including IBM, The Journal News, the town of Greenburgh and county government. Some employers, like IBM, don't ask to see the certificates to authorize the benefits. Some, like The Journal News, do. "We (expect) that they can provide it, but we don't ask to see it," said Jim Sinocchi, a spokesman for IBM in Armonk, which provides health benefits to the partners of 600 gay employees among a U.S. work force of about 140,000. "It's sort of like we don't ask people to bring in their marriage licenses to get regular benefits." Couples say there is another, less tangible value to registering: the simple affirmation of their relationship. "It's another way of publicly declaring your love and relationship," said Michael Sabatino of Yonkers, who signed the registry with his partner, Robert Voorheis, the day it opened. "It's a public way of saying you're a committed couple and that this is actually going to be recorded in the public record." Opponents of the registry say it undermines traditional marriage by providing heterosexual couples with an option to marriage that would be easier to enter and dissolve. But for some couples, gay and straight, the registry has been a springboard to marriage. A random check of registered couples found four who have done so, including Sabatino and Voorheis, who wed in a Canadian province where gay marriage is legal on Oct. 4, 2003, 10 months after joining the Westchester registry. (On Tuesday, the Canadian House of Commons voted to legalize gay marriage in all 13 provinces and territories. The Spanish parliament legalized gay marriage in that country two days later.) Richard Marasse and Kathleen Bowen of South Salem also married after concluding that their domestic partnership was a second-class recognition of their 13-year relationship. "I realized it would provide an even more secure ability for us to have more benefits and it reflected no change at all in our feelings for each other," said Marasse, 57, a lawyer. "It was an improvement in the material sense. No. 1, it allowed her to take my Social Security in the event I died, which she would not have been able to do even though we were domestic partners." Five of the 239 couples registered in Westchester have dissolved their relationships, according to the county clerk.
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