Facebook Recognizes Civil Unions and Domestic Partnerships

Facebook has now added “in a civil union” and “in a domestic partnership” to its options for relationship status. There is a great post over at the tech web site ZDNet on this change. The post, which is part tongue-in-cheek and part serious, is titled “The country of Facebook recognizes civil unions.” They note that, with 600,000,000 users, Facebook ranks in size just behind China and India in population, so it is as if another country is being added to the list of those that recognize same-sex unions. But, they also correctly point out that not all of these users are being given this relationship status option. Only users in a small list of countries will be afforded this option and, puzzlingly, the list does not correspond to those that have civil unions or domestic partnerships. For example, Canada is on the list, but it has same-sex marriage, not civil unions or domestic partnerships.

-Tony Infanti