Toward perfect unions: California's new domestic-partnership law is second only to Vermont's.

The passage of a sweeping domestic-partnership bill in California has activists across the country hailing its potential to build on the momentum started three years ago in Vermont. "When California adopts something it has massive implications for the entire country," said William Lippert, a Vermont Democrat who was Instrumental in writing his state's groundbreaking civil unions law.

Indeed, the California domestic-partnership bill, which recall-challenged governor Gray Davis was promising to sign at press time, follows the example of its eastern counterpart by providing gay and lesbian couples with most of the state-level rights and protections of marriage. It also mandates recognition of similar laws in other states, such as Vermont. "I think it's of tremendous significance for our national gay and lesbian community that we have two jurisdictions offering mutual recognition in law," Lippert said.

But in many ways the two states' approaches are very different, as are the rights they afford to couples. In Vermont, civil unions are recognized only after an official ceremony. In California, though, same-sex couples merely have to register with the secretary of state. That distinction was not by chance, according to openly lesbian California assemblywoman Jackie Goldberg. She and four other openly gay state legislators who helped craft the bill wanted to distinguish it from traditional marriage as much as possible in order to gain support.

"Why, just for the sake of having a ceremony, should we try to break new ground when people in California already support us having domestic partherships?" Goldberg asked. "Nothing in the bill prohibits anyone from having a ceremony; it's just not required in order to enter into a domestic partnership."

The California law provides rights and responsibilities in areas as varied as child custody, legal claims, housing protections, bereavement leave, and state government benefits. Unlike those in Vermont, however, California's gay couples cannot file joint tax returns. Eric Bauman, an openly gay adviser to Davis, said the joint-tax provision was stripped from the bill to protect domestic partners from federal scrutiny. "The advice we received was that this created a tremendous risk of getting people audited," he said.

Vermont's civil unions law also differs in that it was mandated by a state supreme court decision. The California law was a purely legislative action.

The domestic-partnership law will not take effect until January 2005 to give current registered partners time to consider the importance of so many new rights mid responsibilities, Goldberg said. "We wanted to make sure that everybody had a chance to remove their name [from the registry] if they wanted to," she said.