Delaware took its first legislative step to give gay couples the same legal opportunities as married couples by introducing a civil union bill in the state Senate.
Sen. David P. Sokola (D-Newark North) and Rep. Melanie George (D-Bear) filed Senate Bill 30 on Tuesday afternoon. The bill would grant gay couples the same medical and parenting rights as heterosexual couples.
Sokola said 27 Democrat and Republican delegates have signed the bill as co-sponsors, according to Delaware Online .
More than half the businesses in the Fortune 500 already grant benefits to gay couples. Sokola said Delaware is “playing catch-up.”
Lisa Goodman, President of Delaware Equality, helped draft the bill and will work for its passage. “We want to protect and provide for those we love,” she said in Delaware Online . “We believe that the law should protect us and our relationships.”
Delaware Equality says that through the legislation “civil unions would be parallel, but not equal, to marriage,” meaning out-of-state civil unions and same-sex marriages would be recognized in Delaware, but only as civil unions.
The organization was also responsible for a poll in early March that found 62 percent of voters favor allowing same-sex couples to form civil unions.
In related news, Colorado’s state Senate approved civil union legislation during its second reading today with a 55 percent vote, according to the Huffington Post. The Civil Unions Act would make civil unions eligible for public assistance benefits, give rights to visit one another in a correctional facility, and permit property inheritance, among other rights, but does not establish gay marriage rights in Colorado.
The bill will move onto the Republican-controlled House after one more vote in the Senate.
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