History
Beginning in 2002, Rhode Island allowed for unregistered domestic partnerships that provided a small number of legal benefits to same-sex couples. For example, the surviving spouse of such a partnership, if a police officer, fire fighter, or correctional officer, could receive a death benefit. Domestic partners could adjust their state taxes to reflect the costs of health insurance premiums. Domestic partners could control the funeral arrangements of a deceased partner. This status became inactive with the state's adoption of civil unions.
In February 2007, Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch issued an opinion advising that same-sex marriages performed in Massachusetts be recognized in Rhode Island. He said that "his interpretation permitted recognition of the marriages, although he acknowledged that it was just an opinion and did not have the force of law." The Human Rights Campaign noted that "This is not a binding opinion and the attorney general noted that this question will most likely be answered by the courts."
Read more about this topic: Recognition Of Same-sex Unions In Rhode Island
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Literary works cannot be taken over like factories, or literary forms of expression like industrial methods. Realist writing, of which history offers many widely varying examples, is likewise conditioned by the question of how, when and for what class it is made use of.”
—Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956)
“We don’t know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don’t understand our name at all, we don’t know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)
“The awareness that health is dependent upon habits that we control makes us the first generation in history that to a large extent determines its own destiny.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)