Marriage is good and protected in Michigan

The truth that "protecting marriage" apparently requires gay people to lose their employer-provided health care benefits was proven true in Michigan today as a court ruled that Michigan's anti-gay marriage amendment (adopted in 2004) doesn't allow cities or state universities to grant health care benefits to the partners of their gay employees.

This is similar, but not quite the same issue as the situation here in Lawrence; in Michigan the issue is employment benefits; in Lawrence the proposed ordinance is a symbolic public registry, but if, say, the University of Kansas were to grant benefits, then a situation such as they have in Michigan would be set up here.

Either way, this proves that in expanding these various amendments to do more then merely ban gay marriage, the right wing supporters of these measures are intending to do exactly what actually happened in Michigan - take away people's health care and go way beyond "protecting marriage" to actively try to harm gay people living in their state.

Hopefully, city and university administrators can re-rig their health care plans to perhaps cover "any designated adult" or something like that, rather then specifying a "spouse" or "domestic partner" -- that would insure that people don't lose their health care coverage.

Or maybe a new amendment can be drafted that would strip health insurance from bigots. One can dream, I suppose.

Labels: gay rights, politics

posted by Mike at 3:17 PM