Same-sex benefits debate
Posted on April 1, 2007
Filed Under Alaska | Leave a Comment
Jackie Buckley, a 10-year employee of the Anchorage School District, can finally tap into a benefit most of her colleagues have long taken for granted: health coverage for her partner of 23 years.
Buckley and Dawn Ridge, who have two teenagers at home and four grown kids, see themselves as a regular Alaska family. They deal with dishes and laundry, household bills and homework. They own vehicles together, take care of each other in hard times. Maybe they are tougher than some. For spring break, they hunkered down in a bare-bones public-use cabin up north near the Chena River.
To same-sex couples and those who support them, getting health benefits is a matter of equal pay for equal work. Ridge, who works from home, is a diabetic with $200-a-month medication bills, so the health coverage, acquired in January as a result of a court decision, is sorely needed.
Tuesday’s statewide advisory vote on whether to ban health benefits for same-sex partners pits families like Buckley’s against religious conservatives who frame the issue as being all about marriage. She sees the effort as cruel.
“It says we are not as good as somebody else,” says Buckley, 49, who has coached youth sports, volunteered for her church and been active in PTA. In her School District job, she coordinates services for families.
The state vote coincides with a municipal election in Anchorage. But in most of Alaska, voters are being asked to show up at the polls just to vote on this one question. Turnout is expected to be low.
The ballot measure doesn’t say a word about marriage, but anti-gay groups and fundamentalist pastors insist that protecting marriage is what the vote is all about.
They argue that the state Supreme Court overstepped when it ruled in 2005 that same-sex partners with the same “truly close relationship” as married couples are entitled to the same state benefits, especially since state law makes it impossible for such couples to qualify by marrying.
About 30 pastors of Anchorage churches, big and small, came forward in mid-March to say limiting benefits “isn’t about hatred and bigotry and discrimination. It’s about protecting marriage,” said event organizer Jim Minnery, chairman of Alaska Family Action, the political arm of the Alaska Family Council.
Such groups argue that gay couples really want affirmation that their relationship is akin to marriage. Couples say that’s not so. Some say they’d be fine with an oft-mentioned idea of benefits for relationships like unmarried heterosexual couples, two adult sisters sharing a home — or gay couples.
In 1998, 68 percent of Alaska voters approved a constitutional amendment that defined marriage as a union between one man and one woman. That banned gay marriage here. The next year, a group of same-sex couples and the American Civil Liberties Union sued for benefits, arguing the state and the city of Anchorage illegally discriminated against gay and lesbian employees.
“There is no indication here that denying benefits to public employees with same-sex domestic partners has any bearing on who marries,” the Supreme Court said.
It took until January for the state and city to comply with the ruling. Couples must attest to being in a committed relationship and to financial interdependence such as co-owning property. Few people have signed up as a result of the ruling, officials say. Read more….
Source: Anchorage Daily News
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