Firm partnerships.

Domestic-partner benefits are slowly changing the way businesses--and the country--view gay families

When Eileen Donaghy learned in 1998 that her employer, Shell Oil Company, had extended insurance benefits to the domestic partners of its gay and straight employees, she was thrilled. She thought the company was finally treating her partner, Mary Stuart, a New Orleans high school teacher, on an equal basis with the partners of heterosexual employees.

But Donaghy didn't realize that the implementation of the benefits would require a long education process. "I was talking to people in the insurance company who didn't understand how the benefits worked," she says. "We would be in a doctor's office, and a nurse would holler, `What is she to you?' They were just clueless. It was all very awkward and difficult at first. We had no idea how complicated taking advantage of the benefits would be."

While the nation is focused on the high-stakes marriage debate in Vermont and other states, businesses, ranging in size from mom-and-pop operations to behemoths such as Shell and IBM, have sparked a quiet revolution in the nation's recognition of gay and lesbian families. According to the Washington, D.C.--based gay lobbying group Human Rights Campaign, which tracks corporate policies, 3,400 employers offer the benefits today. As recently as 1996, fewer than 500 offered them.

The 3,400 figure includes private companies as well as city and state governments, nonprofit organizations, and educational institutions. Cities such as Philadelphia and Santa Barbara, Calif., offer domestic-partner benefits to their workers, as do the states of Oregon and California and some 100 colleges and universities.

"It's just exploding," says Kim Mills, HRC's director of education. "So many companies are signing on that it's hard to keep track of them all. We are even starting to see nontraditional industries like oil and banking falling like dominoes. Everyone likes to be second, and now there are enough companies on board that everyone can be second."

The cultural and political ramifications of this quiet revolution are enormous. Every time a company offers the benefits, it changes the climate of the workplace for gay and lesbian employees. And every time employees sign up for the benefits, it has a ripple effect on the community around them.

"In the end it was a really good experience because I feel we were able to educate so many people about same-sex relationships being just like everyone else's," says Donaghy, who joined Shell as an engineer in 1996. "Everyone is much more professional about it now. I think what we are doing today will make it that much easier for gay couples in the future."

However, not everyone is thrilled with the concept of domestic partnership. Some activists say that it provides a facile way out of the marriage debate by offering gays and lesbians separate but equal benefits.

"Domestic-partner benefits and legislation can also be seen as an attempt to forestall the legalization of same-sex marriage," says Judith Stacey, professor of sociology and gender studies at the University of Southern California and the author of In the Name of the Family: Rethinking Family Values in the Postmodern Age. "In a way it's an easy way of releasing the pressure valve for full same-sex equality when it comes to family life. We are seeing that in the Vermont legislature, in Hawaii, and elsewhere. It's much easier, much more comfortable for society to grant an approximation of marriage but not marriage itself. Whether DP benefits lead to marriage itself or stops there is a difficult question."

The increase in the number of companies offering the benefits is driven primarily by the strong U.S. economy. Not only are corporations less fearful of the modest costs associated with same-sex domestic-partner benefits (usually about 1% of the overall cost of the benefits package), they also see them as one way of recruiting some of the best employees in a highly competitive job market.

"It's a lot less expensive than increasing salaries," says Lee Badgett, assistant professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. "These days many nongay employees are asking about how gay people are treated, how single people are treated. They don't want to work in a stressful environment."

But in many cases there is a less altruistic motive behind the corporate largesse: San Francisco's equal-partners ordinance, for example. Passed by the board of supervisors in 1996 and implemented in 1997, the law requires that firms conducting more than $5,000 worth of business with the city per year offer the same benefits to all employees, regardless of sexual orientation. Since at least 1,400 new companies contract with the city every year, the potential for expansion coverage under the ordinance's legal mandate is vast. (The ordinance is under review by the ninth circuit U.S. court of appeals.)

As a result of the increasingly favorable workplace environment, gay men and lesbians are putting down roots in particular companies and climbing the corporate ladder quicker than ever. That development in turn contributes to corporate appreciation of the gay market. "Because gay people are finally sitting in boardrooms, corporate executives are seeing how their insights can contribute to the bottom line as more than just good employees," says Mills. "That's one reason we have begun to see so many advertising campaigns directed at gay people."

The spread of domestic-partner benefits has political implications as well. Indeed, it may be laying the groundwork for same-sex marriage. "DP benefits are a way for the country to realize that the sky will not fall if gay couples are treated equally," says Badgett. "It shows there will not be a lot of fraud, that these are real, sustaining partnerships. It shows that it will not lead to the kind of social disruptions the right wing is always predicting."

Paradoxically, however, the adoption of the benefits may be intensifying opposition to same-sex marriage. "The thinking on the right wing seems to go, If we can't stop the corporations, we have to draw the line at marriage," says Badgett. "With opponents so focused on stopping marriage, it may take even longer than expected to open it to same-sex couples as well."

Indeed, when it comes to corporate employment policies, there is little recourse for gay rights foes. With the exception of the Southern Baptist Convention's boycott of the Disney Corporation, motivated in part by the company's gay-inclusive policy, religious conservatives have been unable to mount much more than symbolic opposition. "I'd bet on Disney over the Southern Baptists any day," says Stacey. "What we are seeing is the irreversibility of family diversity in America. In the future there will not be one `normal' family pattern that's statistically dominant. It's becoming less and less possible for people to imagine an automatic set of relationships or stages that everyone will pass through. The nation is finally catching up to the reality."

Instead, antigay activists have focused on battling local governments, where gay rights strongholds have created political demand for the policies. The Alliance Defense Fund, a Scottsdale, Ariz., organization founded by a group of religious conservative leaders--including James Dobson, Donald Wildman, and D. James Kennedy--has financed several lawsuits challenging the ordinances. Jordan Lorence, a Washington, D.C., attorney who filed several of the suits, told the Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Sun-Sentinel that the measures are contrary to "millennia of consensus from every major culture in the world."

But even that tactic is likely to find limited success. Municipalities appear to be adopting San Francisco-style equal-benefits laws at a faster rate than opponents can challenge government domestic-partner benefits. Los Angeles implemented one in January; Seattle's became law late last year and applies to any contract with the city awarded on or after September 30 of this year.

The trend is likely to continue spreading. Cynthia Goldstein, contract compliance officer for the San Francisco law, says that representatives from several additional cities have inquired about setting up their own version of the ordinance. "We threw down the gauntlet," she says, "and to our surprise, other cities are following our lead. It's an idea whose time has come."

Find more on domestic-partner benefits and links to related Internet sites at www.advocate.com