The Daily Background

Separate and unequal: legally married “unionized” gay couples in New Jersey are discovering that civil unions laws can be overridden by federal statutes that allow their employers to discriminate against them:

Smaller companies that buy private health insurance plans for their employees are compelled to offer them to same-sex couples under the state’s civil union laws. But most legal experts agree that federal regulations give companies with self-funded insurance plans — a group covering 55 percent of the country 105 million working-age employees — the power to ignore state laws regarding corporate benefits.

And when companies choose to follow federal laws, they often cite the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as a union between a man and woman as a reason to deny coverage to same-sex couples. New Jersey officials estimate that almost 90 percent of the reports of noncompliance to date have been linked to companies covered by these federal laws.

However, many cite California as a state which passed further regulations to close the loopholes and protect the half-equality that civil unions granted gay and lesbian couples. But some companies are fighting it every step of the way, so that rights allowed to gay couples in one state, aren’t also offered to couples in another state, even though they both recognize civil unions. This is pretty backwards:

California, for instance, passed a domestic partnership law in 1999. But after running into some resistance from corporations claiming to be protected by federal law, California passed follow-up legislation mandating that any company doing business with the state also guarantee domestic partnership coverage to same-sex couples.

That law compelled many large corporations such as Federal Express, which is not offering benefits to couples joined in civil unions in New Jersey, to do so in California, according to a company spokeswoman. In New Jersey, however, many couples have not been as lucky.

As we’re now learning, the current civil unions and domestic partnerships were a good first step, but they should not by any means be a last step. It really doesn’t matter whether you call it marriage or not (except to conservatives), but there needs to be a standardized set of equal rights guaranteed to all Americans. Whether that comes in the form of much more robust civil unions that guarantee 100% equal rights to all Americans, or by merely extending marriage rights to everyone isn’t important. And really, what’s the difference at that point anyways?

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