Those on Facebook now have two new relationship status options in their profiles. As of Thursday, Feb. 17, the social networking site added "Civil Union" and "Domestic Partnership" to the choices available to end users.
The new options are already being rolled out in the U.S. and several other countries, including Canada, France, the U.K., and Australia. The change was reportedly made in consultation with the Facebook's Network of Support group. Facebook created the support group last year in the wake of a number of cyberbullying-caused suicides among the LGBT community.
Andrew Noyes, manager of Facebook's public policy communications said,
"This has been a highly requested feature from users. We want to provide options for people to genuinely and authentically reflect their relationships on Facebook."Michael Cole-Schwartz, spokesperson for the Human Rights Campaign praised Facebook, saying
"As LGBT people face a patchwork of relationship recognition laws, this gives people more tools to adequately describe their relationship. Facebook has been a company that has tried to be inclusive of the LGBT community and this just one sign of it."Facebook is always rolling out new features, and while this feature doesn't enhance the site's usability, it does something that many would say is more important. It acknowledges the partnerships that exist between LGBT couples as being valid. After all, what is social networking without relationships?
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