Same-sex couples still unequal (UMass Daily Collegian column)

Some background info: Currently, same-sex domestic partners of UMass employees are covered under the employee health plan. The UMass administration, under orders from the governor, is threatening to remove same-sex partners from the health plan unless they produce a marriage certificate. In a sense, this is progress toward marriage equality, since now same-sex domestic partners will be denied healthcare just like opposite-sex unmarried partners. But this column sheds light on some of the more troubling aspects of this decision....


Same-sex couples still unequal

Vanessa Adel

March 21, 2005

I am writing to express my concern about the imminent policy change regarding domestic partners and family health plans at the University of Massachusetts. As I was completing my family health insurance forms for the upcoming semester, I was told that the University will soon be instituting a policy whereby same-sex couples will need to show a certificate of marriage as a prerequisite for obtaining spousal or family health insurance. This new requirement would incur more discrimination for same sex couples despite the apparent legal gains made by the new marriage laws in Massachusetts.

My partner and I have been in a loving relationship for 13 years. We have a three-year-old daughter and are also currently working with a private adoption agency who has advised us not to get married in order to increase our chances of securing a match and going through with an out-of-state adoption.

In adoption processes, same-sex couples often circumvent anti-gay state policies in international and domestic adoption by presenting a single-parent home-study. All interested parties such as birth parents and social workers know that a child is being placed in a same-sex home, but on paper, the home study is written as a single parent plan that becomes a two-parent adoption upon legalization within the home state. However, if we got married in Massachusetts, we would have to declare our legal relationship to anti-gay states, thereby severely limiting our options for adoption since only six states will officially recognize gay couples as worthy of adopting children.

The key issue is that the federal Defense of Marriage Act does not recognize the legality of gay marriage in Massachusetts. Neither do most of the states.

continued here: http://www.dailycollegian.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2005/03/21/423e2ab1e252f

and those mixed marriages between Catholics and Protestants. Like it or not, it's going to take a lot of them some time to get used to gay marriages, and some of them will only get used to it when the courts lean on them and start costing them money to cling to their prejudices.

It's been that way for every other group. It'll be that way for gays.