Hawaii Gov. Neil Abercrombie signed the civil-union bill into law Feb. 23, though it won't come into effect for 10 more months.
The law grants same-sex couples all the state-level rights and obligations that married people have.
"This signing today of this measure says to all the world that ... everyone is a brother or a sister here in paradise," Abercrombie said. "Civil unions respect our diversity, protect people's privacy, and reinforce our core values of equality and aloha. ... If there is anything that the word aloha means, it's that our diversity defines us rather than divides us."
Video of the signing can be viewed at tinyurl.com/hi-sign.
Six other states have laws like Hawaii's: California, Illinois, Nevada, New Jersey, Oregon and Washington. Five statesConnecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermontand Washington, D.C., let gay couples marry. Five states have gay union laws that extend some but not all rights of marriage: Colorado, Hawaii (an older law), Maine, Maryland and Wisconsin. Four states do not let gay couples marry but recognize them as married if they get married somewhere else: Maryland, New Mexico, New York and Rhode Island.
In California, same-sex marriage was legal from June to November 2008, when voters amended the state constitution via Proposition 8 to put a stop to it. The couples who married then are still legally married, as are other same-sex couples who live in California and got married anywhere in the world before Prop 8 passed. Gay couples who married somewhere else after Prop 8 passed, or who marry elsewhere in the future, receive every state-level right and obligation of marriage in California except for the legal right to call their marriage a "marriage" when they are in California. They are not recognized under the state's domestic partnership law, but rather are married couples who are denied use of the word "marriage."
Eleven other nations allow same-sex couples to marryArgentina, Belgium, Canada, Iceland, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, South Africa, Spain, Sweden and Mexico (where same-sex marriages are allowed only in the capital city but are recognized nationwide). Numerous other nations have same-sex civil-union laws that extend some or all marriage rights and obligations.
Assistance: Bill Kelley