Feds expand partner benefits for employees

Under presidential order, the executive branch of the U.S. government is expanding its benefits package for employees with same-sex partners to include benefits already offered opposite-sex married couples.

President Barack Obama announced the added partnership benefits in early June, kicking off LGBT Pride Month with a memorandum requiring executive agencies to act quickly to extend to the same-sex domestic partners of federal employees family assistance services, hardship transfers and relocation expenses.

“Fair access to relocation, support, family and medical leave protections, child care services, retiree pension annuities and the range of other benefits offered … to federal employees will make an immense practical difference to the many thousands of LGBT workers who serve the American public,” said Jennifer Pizer, marriage project director for Lambda Legal, a national LGBT rights group.

The president’s memorandum also requires that agencies offering new benefits to employees with opposite-sex spouses make those benefits available to employees with same-sex domestic partners “to the extent permitted by law.” The law referenced in the document is the U.S. Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as the union of a man and a woman and limits how the federal government treats same-sex couples. Obama has repeatedly called for the repeal of DOMA, signed into law by Bill Clinton in 1996, when it seemed Hawaii might legalize marriage for same-sex couples.

Obama, in a statement in early June, said, “My Administration continues to be prevented by existing federal law from providing same-sex domestic partners with the full range of benefits enjoyed by heterosexual married couples.”

The president urged the House and Senate to pass the Domestic Partnership Benefits and Obligations Act, sponsored in the Senate by Joe Lieberman and Susan Collins and in the House by Tammy Baldwin.

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Man facing hate charge

New York City police have arrested a man on a hate crime charge in connection to an anti-gay incident.

Authorities said a 43-year-old Brooklyn man approached two 22-year-old men June 5 and began making comments about one of the men’s clothing.

As the men continued on their way, police said the older man pulled out a knife and made anti-gay remarks while menacing them.

Seton considers gay course

Officials considering whether a Catholic university in New Jersey should offer a course on gay marriage have not yet announced a final decision.

Seton Hall University’s Mission and Identity Committee met behind closed doors on the South Orange campus June 3.

A university spokesman said the committee discussed the course but did not make a final recommendation.

Earlier, Newark Archbishop John Myers, who is a member of the school’s board, issued a statement saying, “the course is not in sync with Catholic teaching.”

DADT opponents ready to combat filibuster

Activists seeking the repeal of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy are lobbying U.S. senators to shore up a filibuster-proof majority of 60 votes.

“The repeal language in the defense authorization bill is at risk of being filibustered, stripped out or weakened by our opponents when the full Senate votes,” said Aubrey Sarvis, executive director of Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, a D.C.-based organization established to fight the ban and protect LGBT servicemembers. “Sen. John McCain has threatened to filibuster the entire defense budget to stop repeal.”

The vote to repeal DADT, the 17-year-old policy banning openly gay and lesbian servicemembers in the Armed Forces, will come when the full Senate takes up the National Defense Authorization Act, a big-money appropriations bill.

McCain, running for re-election in Arizona, has threatened a filibuster, arguing that lawmakers should not vote to repeal the policy before the Pentagon has completed a study of the issue.

“I want the people to know that we needed a complete study as to the effect on the impact of our battle effectiveness and morale before we repealed it,” McCain told News/Talk 92.3 KTAR in Arizona last week. “They’re ramming it through.”

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