MARK WAITE / PVT Kathleen Bienenstein, at left, and Bonnie Swadling, proudly show off their domestic partners certificate at their Pahrump home. Advertisement

When the Nevada domestic partners bill became law Oct. 1, Bonnie Swadling and Kathleen Bienenstein of Pahrump quickly got their paperwork in.

They proudly displayed their certificate, No. 70.

By Oct. 26, the Nevada Secretary of State reported over 1,000 couples statewide -- both heterosexual and same-sex couples -- had registered as domestic partners, but only 10 couples were from Nye County, all from Pahrump.

Bienenstein said they knew bill co-author, State Sen. David Parks, D-Las Vegas, through a gay group in Las Vegas called the Stonewall Democrats. Parks is the only openly gay member of the Nevada Legislature. He e-mailed the application to Bienenstein and Swadling.

"We did ours beforehand. They were accepting the applications before the first. They couldn't issue the certificate until the first. That's why we didn't have to go to the office. We did it by mail beforehand. We had the application notarized at the town hall," Swadling said.

Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons vetoed Senate Bill 283, but his veto was overridden by a 14-7 vote of the Senate May 30 and a 28-14 vote of the Assembly -- just barely the two-thirds majority required.

Bienenstein said she wasn't surprised the bill was introduced because she knows Parks. But she was surprised it made it through both houses of the Legislature.

Swadling said, "The governor tried, but he's with the party of no anyway."

"What I was surprised and pleased about, it passed by one vote and Assemblyman Goedhart was the vote. That surprised me and I was pleased," Bienenstein said. "They needed his vote to override."

Nevada District 36 Assemblyman Ed Goedhart, R-Amargosa Valley, was the only Republican to vote to override the governor on this bill.

When asked to explain his vote after the session ended last June, Goedhart said, "If I'm espousing limited government and freedom, then why am I going to go ahead and try to impose my moral values on somebody else?"

A domestic partnership is a new type of civil contract allowing partners to have the same rights as other civil contracts, but language in the bill clarifies it is not a marriage. Nevada voters passed a constitutional amendment defining marriage as between a man and woman by a margin of 73.6 percent to 23.9 percent in 2000, then passed it again in 2002 by a margin of 77.8 percent to 22.2 percent.

"Now we don't have the concern, if one of us were to become ill, of being prevented from visiting each other in the hospital. We don't have a concern if one of us passes away, that we won't have an issue to deal with, nobody can make the arrangements. Those were legitimate concerns before," Swadling said.

Bienenstein said they already put the deed of their home, their car title and their bank account in both of their names. Each has a living will, and they gave each other power of attorney. "Any time that we ever traveled, we always carried all our paperwork with us just in case there was an accident," Swadling said.

The domestic partners bill means both women, who work for the state, will be able to receive a pension for the other one, which is a state benefit.

"If the federal government were to recognize it, then of course you'd have joint income tax, you'd have your Social Security benefits, survivor benefits. But that's all federal," Bienenstein said. "In the end, those benefits would be lost."

Bienenstein and Swadling are originally from Michigan. They moved to Las Vegas in January 2005 and moved again to Pahrump in December 2006. Swadling is the new chairman of the Nye County Democratic Party, Bienenstein ran for the Area 2 seat on the Nye County School Board in 2008 but lost in the general election by 142 votes.

"We've been together 21 years. We went to Vermont in 2000 when Vermont was the first state to recognize civil unions," Swadling said. She recalled the ceremony on a beautiful fall day in October, with the leaves at their peak color.

Bienenstein added, "We went to Canada in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, in March 2004 and were married there. We had a legal marriage, because they passed a law that permitted that. So we went there."

After that, Swadling joked, "So we're just hoping one of them takes."

Though only 10 out of the 1,000 couples who signed up for the domestic partners bill thus far are from Nye County, Bienenstein said she thinks more gay couples chose not to register over a concern the registry is public record.

"We don't go out of our way to hide anything, and we've been accepted wherever we seem to show up and whatever we seem to do. I haven't had any problems," Bienenstein said. "I think basically older couples have a little bit of hesitation because of the history of what happens to gay people as a rule, or what used to happen."

"I never thought this would happen in my lifetime. But here we are, three legal unions later," Swadling said as they both laughed.

"I've never had anything negative said to me or done to me. It's a different time and this is Pahrump. In Pahrump, we're kind of different anyway," Swadling said, again to some laughs.

"There's kind of an undertow of not having tolerance here for some things. But I think there's a lot of tolerance here for different lifestyles, diversity." Bienenstein said.

Pahrump doesn't have a gay bar or a gay rights group. There was a transvestite who ran for the Pahrump Town Board in 2000, Denise "Liberty Belle" Holmes, who advanced past the primary but lost in the general election.

"The more comfortable you are with yourself, and the more you interact with people, the more they accept you, and if it's something they can't accept, they just stay away from you," Swadling said.

The couple paid extra to have a color certificate. Normally the standard black and white certificate costs $50. Couples registering as domestic partners have to provide proof they share a common residence; neither is already married or part of another domestic partnership; is at least 18 years old and competent to consent to the partnership.

Swadling said she isn't afraid of the religious right faction within the Republican Party, which is opposed to gay rights.

"That's just a get-out-the-vote issue. I mean, that's to get the base going, and that to me is such a shame they would have to use dirty tricks like that to get people out," she said.

Bienenstein said she had been accused of having a "special agenda."

"I don't have a special agenda and I don't want special rights. I want the same rights everyone else has, and I do not have them."