Erie Times News: Benefits Open to Same-sex Partners

There are still several steps this contract has to go through before being finalized . . . more later.

 

 

The benefits send the wrong message, both morally and financially, to students and taxpayers, said Diane Gramley, president of the American Family Association of Pennsylvania.

"We're just appalled that the State System of Higher Education thinks this is a good idea," she said. "When you have individuals engaged in high-risk activity, they're more prone to sexually transmitted disease, more prone to HIV/AIDS, and you're going to be expending more money for those individuals."

 

Article published Jul 11, 2007

Benefits open to same-sex partners
State universities to offer professors, partners health care

By EMILY BABAY
emily.babay@timesnews.com

Gay and lesbian professors at Pennsylvania's 14 state-owned universities, including Edinboro University of Pennsylvania, will soon have health-care benefits that also cover their same-sex partners.

In a tentative contract struck last week, the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education pledged to offer health benefits to same-sex partners of faculty members for couples who have proof of "financial interdependency," such as jointly owned property, said Pat Heilman, the faculty union's president.

The benefits, Heilman said, would help the state system in recruitment and retentionof both gay faculty and straight professors who support gay rights.
The contract between the state system and the coaches' union also includes health benefits for same-sex partners.

The Human Rights Campaign lists about 300 colleges nationwide that offer domestic-partner health benefits. There are about 4,200 higher-education institutions in the United States, according to 2005 data from the National Center for Education Statistics.

For some at Edinboro, the contract provides long-awaited benefits.

"This is something that's overdue," said Dan Burdick, a music professor who is gay and chairman of the President's Commission on the Status of Gay Men, Lesbians, Bisexuals, Transgender People and Allies at the university. "I'm very happy that we're going to have that."

Burdick said he is single now, but it's a "great feeling" to know that a partner would be able to receive health benefits.
"That's a feeling my colleagues have had since the day they were hired," he said.

But gay rights have been one front in the culture wars that have polarized U.S. politics, and some have spoken out against the state system's proposed health benefits.

The benefits send the wrong message, both morally and financially, to students and taxpayers, said Diane Gramley, president of the American Family Association of Pennsylvania.

"We're just appalled that the State System of Higher Education thinks this is a good idea," she said. "When you have individuals engaged in high-risk activity, they're more prone to sexually transmitted disease, more prone to HIV/AIDS, and you're going to be expending more money for those individuals."

But PASSHE spokesman Kenn Marshall estimated that only 1 percent to 2 percent of the faculty union would take advantage of the domestic-partner benefits, and said the benefits would cost the system only about $350,000 a year out of a yearly budget of more than $1 billion.
"We didn't see that it was going to be a significant cost," he said.

Similar health-care benefits have been struck down elsewhere, but Heilman and Marshall said they didn't expect the state system's benefits to face legal challenges.

The Michigan Court of Appeals ruled in February that state universities there couldn't offer health-care benefits to same-sex partners of employees.

Pennsylvania law and legal precedent make it unlikely that a Pennsylvania court will make a similar ruling, said Stacey Sobel, executive director of Equality Advocates Pennsylvania, a Philadelphia-based legal organization that concentrates on gay-rights issues.

The city of Philadelphia offers its employees health benefits similar to those proposed by PASSHE -- and when the benefits were taken to court, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled in December 2004 that the city could continue to provide them, Sobel said.
Michigan's state constitution has an amendment that bans same-sex marriage, while a Pennsylvania statute simply defines marriage as between a man and a woman.

"It's a very different legal climate in Pennsylvania," Sobel said.

Three state-related schools -- the Pennsylvania State University system, Temple University and the University of Pittsburgh -- have been offering domestic-partnership health benefits for several years.

Annemarie Mountz, a Penn State spokeswoman, said she was "not aware" that the benefits had ever been challenged on legal grounds.

Edinboro spokesman Brian Pitzer said it is too early to say how the health benefits will influence faculty retention and recruitment.
"We won't know what the impact will be until we see how many responses we receive," he said.

Gannon University and Mercyhurst College do not offer domestic-partner health ben-efits -- and have not had indications of faculty interest -- spokespeople from both universities said.

Penn State Behrend and Allegheny College offer health benefits for same-sex partners of faculty members.

EMILY BABAY can be reached at 870-1686 or by e-mail.