Indiana Equality has a new blog contributor!

Introducing Indiana Equality's newest blog contributor:

Zak Szymanski is a reporter and editor whose career has been based in minority and GLBT journalism. Recently transplanted to Bloomington, Indiana from San Francisco, CA, where he was Assistant Editor of the Bay Area Reporter for 7 years. He now freelances locally and nationally and teaches journalism at IU.

The following is a contribution from Zak. Welcome Zak!

Midwest “partner” policies can do better

On a certain level, Michigan gay rights advocates had no choice but to ask state courts to affirm same-sex partner benefits in the wake of the state’s same-sex marriage ban. They were reacting, in part, to the outright lies told by marriage ban proponents, who promised voters that passage of Proposal 2 would not jeopardize health insurance. They also wanted to stem the tide of possible fallout from Proposal 2: a broad reading of the amendment to jeopardize health insurance, according to ACLU attorney Jay Kaplan, could mean that “any time a public entity is recognizing a same-sex relationship they are violating the amendment,” and thus other issues such as child custody could be affected.

But make no mistake: if last week’s Michigan Supreme Court ruling means the state’s universities and public entities will adopt broader definitions of domestic partners for the purposes of health insurance eligibility, then the GLBT community has scored a victory in this case.

It’s a victory that would have been achievable without litigation, and it’s one that benefits more GLBT people than before. And as Indiana’s institutions ponder domestic partner insurance, Hoosiers should insist that these policies are not limited to same-sex couples.

“Gay rights groups, labor groups, and everyone concerned with protecting diverse families now need to advocate employee benefit schemes that allow employees to name any one person with whom they live in a economically interdependent relationship…” family law expert Nancy Polikoff blogged in response to the Michigan ruling.

The Washington, DC-based attorney’s new book, Beyond (Straight and Gay) Marriage, has been praised for making legally sound arguments for family recognition not modeled after marriage. “That approach is actually better from a family policy perspective! It means that two people who are not romantic partners but decide to raise their children together, or two friends who pool their resources, can also qualify...as can unmarried straight and gay partners.”

As a GLBT journalist, I am often at the receiving end of sound bites from same-sex couples who claim that they do not have the rights and benefits that “every other family” in America has.  It is also frequently emphasized that marriage inequality would be solved by extending the institution to gay and lesbian couples.

Neither assertion is true.  From gay male/lesbian “co-parenting” arrangements to heterosexual grandparents raising their grandchildren, the majority of American households are unmarried and do not benefit from the roughly 1,400 rights awarded through marriage. Or as queer scholar Lisa Duggan once bluntly surmised: “slipping a few homos into the hierarchy” does not actually remedy marriage inequality. If the GLBT community is to build a movement that is truly based on equality, we need to get over ourselves.

One of the community’s complaints against broader-based domestic partnership policies—where many combinations of cohabitation are eligible for recognition--is that they do not specifically identify same-sex couples as on par with opposite-sex marriage. [Indeed, this is why conservatives and liberals agree that broader policies are better able to withstand legal challenges in areas with gay marriage bans].

But so what? Where insurance coverage is the goal, not distinguishing my relationship from a variety of unmarried relationships is just fine with me. In fact, far from “settling” for less, it sets the bar higher, challenging our institutions to accept the parameters of family that we define for ourselves. I shouldn’t have to be romantically involved with someone in order to have health insurance for my family.

Oh, I know. We are supposed to be mouthpieces against the “slippery slope,” lest we are accused of wanting to marry monkeys and give benefits to dogs. But let’s be real: broader partner policies have tests of joint financial responsibility and cohabitation that have already withstood legal challenges in some of the nation’s most conservative areas, and they have insured more families without being huge financial burdens on employers.

Polikoff has long advocated what Michigan gay supporters are now realizing: in order for domestic partnership policies to survive—and to benefit more GLBT people—the policies must cover more than just same-sex couples. Other queer activists believe that same-sex-only benefits actually encourage bans against same-sex partner recognition.

ACLU’s Kaplan does not necessarily disagree. But pursuing litigation for same-sex couples’ insurance, he said, was in part to make sure that previously covered partners did not lose their healthcare. Many Michigan institutions leaned toward dropping their domestic partner policies altogether rather than broadening them, he said, and advocates would have had to persuade them [as they must do now, anyway] that broadening domestic partner policies would not break the bank.

But that’s work we have to do anytime we ask for domestic partnership policies from employers. And it’s work we should be doing from the very beginning, instead of selling short all the other families – straight as well as GLBT – who cannot get married for a variety of reasons.

Michigan’s recent ruling is an opportunity for our community to get back to building coalitions that domestic partnership evolved from in the first place.  The more families helped by domestic partnership policies, the less of a chance we have at losing them.