No Ring, No Benefits

Here's an interesting story out of Boston, the capital city of the only state in the union with legalized gay marriage. The Boston Globe newspaper has told its gay employees that if they wish to continue getting health benefits for their "domestic partners" after January 1, they better get "married" (as gleefully reported by their archrival, The Boston Herald):

Memo to Boston Globe gay and lesbian Guild employees: Get married or lose your domestic partner benefits.

Globe staffers have been told that health and dental benefits for gay employees’ domestic partners are being discontinued. Gay couples who want to keep their benefits must marry by Jan. 1.

A memo sent to the Globe’s Boston Newspaper Guild members, and obtained by the Herald, states that Massachusetts gay Guild employees can extend their benefits to their partners only if they marry.

“An employee who currently covers a same-sex domestic partner as a dependent will have to marry his or her partner by Jan. 1 for the employee benefits coverage to continue at the employee rates,” the memo states.

The policy change at the Globe, which devotes extensive coverage to gay issues, opens a new can of worms in the Bay State as employers rethink their domestic partner benefits in the wake of the legalization of gay marriage in 2004.

Benefits for domestic partners were originally offered to gay employees because they couldn’t legally marry, said Ilene Robinson Sunshine, a lawyer at Sullivan & Worcester.

Now that gay marriage is legal in Massachusetts companies that offer benefits to gay employees’ partners risk hearing cries of discrimination from unmarried straight couples.

Such concerns played a role in the policy change at the Globe, said Steve Behenna, the newspaper’s compensation and benefits director.

Since the implementation of gay marriage in Massachusetts, gays have been having it both ways (no pun intended). The could remain "domestic partners" and draw health benefits, or they could get "married" and have benefits. This was clearly unfair to unmarried heterosexual (or what we call normal) couples who couldn't claim the same benefits that "domestic partners" could.

What are the gay activists to do now? I wonder how long until some "couple" sues the paper claiming that they are being forced to marry due to their economic circumstances? How many of those "domestic partners" are dealing with expensive health issues and are receiving the benefits, but don't really want to get married?

This should be interesting.