Genealogy Software That Records Same-Sex Marriages?

Here's a dilemma that anyone doing professional genealogy can appreciate; also some of you who have some non-traditional family members, can appreciate this.

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A newsletter reader sent a message this week asking a question that I could not answer. I thought I would pass this on to other readers in hopes that we can find an answer. Here is the original question:

Since we now have two states that permit same-sex couples to marry, and seven other states plus the District of Columbia with "domestic partnership" or "civil union" laws, and several foreign countries with similar laws, I've been looking for genealogical software that permits the entry of such relationships. The Master Genealogist claims to be a "Complete Faimly History" program, but does not seem to allow the entry of same-sex marriages. It does allow one to create a tag, such as partner, for such situations, but it does not export anything about that tag to a GEDCOM file. The situation becomes more challenging when there are adopted children in a same-sex relationship - again, the software doesn't seem to "recognize" these non-traditional families.

Do you know if any of the commercially available genealogy programs provide appropriate fields to permit entry of genealogical data for same-sex couples that WILL export to a GEDCOM file?

Posted by Dick Eastman - EOGN, 25 Nov 2008

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Well, I'm happy to say that FTM does this quite nicely! The program is affordable, and does allow the same sex marriage to come through on the Gedcom. It even allows for parenting of natural, adopted and step-children.

While it will designate one person the "Husband" and one person the "Wife", it will allow for both parties to be of the same sex, although it will question if this is what you really want to do.


On the comment section of his blog, Dick had several answers, including Reunion 9; Legacy Family Tree 7; TMG; Family Tree Maker; Genbox; GeditCom; Most of the French Genealogy Programs; and one sour apple who stated the original question was an oxymoron.

CBH