Word: gays
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...large problem facing the domestic-partnership movement is a practical one: major U.S. insurance companies have thus far refused to offer group plans that include coverage for unmarried partners, partly because of the unspoken fear that the pool would include a higher proportion of gay males at risk for AIDS. In West Hollywood when the city decided to provide health coverage to its employees' domestic partners, no insurance company would underwrite the business. The city had to resort to self-insurance. So far that has resulted in a drop in costs, but it has not yet encouraged leading insurance companies...
Thomas Stoddard of Lambda counters that "history by itself cannot justify % an unduly limited definition of family, particularly when people suffer as a result." Yet even within the gay-rights movement, there is some disagreement about the goal. Paula Ettelbrick, the legal director of Lambda, argues that the campaign for domestic partnership or gay marriage is misdirected because it tries to adopt traditional heterosexual institutions for gays rather than encouraging tolerance for divergent life-styles. "Marriage, as it exists today, is antithetical to my liberation as a lesbian and as a woman, because it mainstreams my life and voice...
...public seems to be tolerant of the notion that gay couples should be allowed more of the rights now accorded to married couples. In a TIME/CNN poll conducted by the firm of Yankelovich Clancy Shulman, 54% agreed that "homosexual couples should be permitted to receive medical and life- insurance benefits from their partner's insurance policies." Yet there is little support for gay marriages: 69% said such arrangements should not be made legal, and 75% felt that gay couples should not be allowed to adopt children...
Despite this public resistance, legalizing some form of marriage for gay couples is probably the logical outcome of the drive for domestic-partnership rights. "Given the fact that we already allow legal gay relationships," writes Andrew Sullivan in the New Republic, "what possible social goal is advanced by framing the law to encourage those relationships to be unfaithful, undeveloped and insecure?" Marriage involves the obligation to support each other both in sickness and in health and to share financial benefits and burdens. It implies, at least in theory, a commitment to a long-term and monogamous relationship. The advent...
Domestic-partnership rights and legal gay marriages, therefore, can be justified to the extent that the couples involved profess a willingness to accept the mutual financial obligations, community-property rights and shared commitments to care for each other that are the basis of family life. With this broader goal in mind, it makes sense for society to allow -- indeed to encourage -- domestic partners both gay and straight to take on all the rights as well as the responsibilities of marriage...