By RORY BARBAROSSA

The Orlando Sentinel reported last week that LGBT rights activists are anticipating a rush of same-sex couples at Orlando City Hall when the Central Florida city’s new domestic-partnership registry launches in January. Officials say that not all of those couples will be from Orlando, nor will all of them be gay.
City officials have already begun to accept appointments for couples to register once the service commences on January 12.

“I think there’s going to be incredible interest. We’re going to see a big surge in the beginning,” Equality Florida field director Joe Saunders told the newspaper.

Although the Sentinel story noted that the registry doesn’t carry the legal privileges of marriage or civil unions, it does bestow certain rights: couples who register their relationships are entered in a government database which bestows visitation privileges in hospitals and city jails. They are also empowered to make health-care decisions for an incapacitated partner, and to plan a partner’s funeral.

The article reported that Orlando City Commissioner Patty Sheehan pushed for the registry, noting that same-sex couples are often barred from seeing their partners during medical emergencies since state-law doesn’t recognize them as family members in such cases. Sheehan and her partner, Jocelynn White, are scheduled to be the first couple to sign the city’s registry. “It’s not as many rights as marriage, but it helps,” Sheehan told the Orlando Sentinel.

Because unmarried heterosexual couples often encounter the same hurdles, the registry is also open to them, and straight couples are among those who have scheduled appointments to register.

And those who reside outside Orlando are also invited to register. Part of the rationale behind this allowance is the large number of tourists who visit Central Florida.

Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer told the Sentinel that he anticipates nonresidents registering because anyone in Central Florida might need treatment at the region’s hospitals. Signing up for the registry means these facilities would be required to treat registered partners as family members. The registry may also prompt visitors from other states to sign up while on vacation in Orlando.

As the Orlando Sentinel reported, those states that have legalized same-sex marriage, such as New York and Vermont, have seen an influx of out-of-state LGBT visitors who come specifically to be married there. These include former Broward County Mayor Ken Keechl, who married his longtime domestic partner, Fort Lauderdale realtor Ted Adcock, in New York City on December 23.