Facebook allows you to describe your relationship status from several options (why they don’t just let you freelance it like your status, I don’t know). These options include: “Single,” “In a relationship,” “Engaged,” “Married,” “It’s complicated,” “In an open relationship,” “Widowed,” “Separated,” “Divorced,” and now also “In a civil union” and “In a domestic partnership.” I’m sure some people are really bothered by this as yet another step of validating homosexuality and maybe even start calling for some sort of boycott against facebook. Here’s the problem with that. Aside from being just dumb, it misses the whole point of facebook in the first place. The idea of personal or micro-blogging is to reveal, express, and disclose yourself in the way you would with others ordinarily but through the enhanced access medium of the Internet. So in casual conversation if you would say you are widowed or in a civil union, they’re now allowing you to say that on your facebook page. I have a lesbian friend whose status says she’s married, although I actually have no idea whether this is a legally recognized marriage or just what she says to people. The point is that there is a vast difference between governments recognizing and/or rewarding a relationship and individuals being permitted to use free speech technology like social networking to accurately self-disclose.
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