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Chapter One. Building a context for legal recognition for same-sex couples the UK,
Canada and California.
Introduction
This chapter considers the legal and policy background to legal recognition for samesex
couples in the UK, Canada and California. These three locations offer interesting
points of similarity and difference. Canada, the UK and the US are all Western
democratic countries and, notwithstanding the francophone tradition in Quebec,
draw upon an Anglo-Saxon cultural heritage. The political systems in the US and
Canada have both evolved from British colonial rule, with Canada emulating the
British parliamentary system, while the US system of Madisonian checks and
balances on power is more fragmented (Radin and Boase, 2000, p. 66). To varying
degrees, there are active lesbian and gay social movements in all three countries and
each share similar recent histories in terms of the decriminalisation of homosexual
acts, greater social tolerance of lesbian and gay people and, in the context of the
HIV-AIDS crisis, greater awareness of the historical lack of legal protection and social
recognition available to same-sex couples.
Civil partnerships became available in the UK in 2005, the same year that marriage
became available to same-sex couples across Canada. California briefly legalised
same-sex marriage in June 2008 before this was overturned by referendum the
following November. However, the marriages of same-sex couples who married
between June and November 2008 remain legally valid, and an alternative form of
legal recognition remains available to lesbian and gay couples in California in the
form of domestic partnerships. In terms of the advent of legal recognition, the
courts have played a significant role in both Canada and California, whereas civil
partnership in the UK was an exclusively parliamentary initiative. Canada legislated
for same-sex marriage at the national level, following the intervention of provincial
and national Supreme Courts. Conversely, competence over marriage and legal
recognition of same-sex couples in the US lies with individual states rather than at
the federal level, which accounts for the asymmetrical design of the study to focus
on two countries and one sub-national state. California’s size and status as the most
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