Gay Couples File Suit After Michigan Denies Benefits
By RICK LYMAN,
NYTimes on the web, April 4, 2005
DETROIT, April 2 - Kathleen Moltz, a pediatric endocrinologist at Children's Hospital of Michigan, said she and her partner, Dahlia Schwartz, talked it over for quite some time before deciding to sue the governor.
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Fabrizio Costantini for The
NY Times
Dr. Kathleen Moltz, playing with her son Itamar, and Dahlia Schwartz say benefits are not "a small issue."
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Fabrizio Costantini for The
NY Times
Tom Patrick is raising 3-year-old Raul and four other children with his partner of seven years, Dennis Patrick. |
"We're not conflict seekers," Ms. Schwartz said.
"We just want to live our lives quietly."
But at stake, they said, are the health benefits that Ms. Schwartz, as Dr. Moltz's domestic partner, receives from Wayne State University, which operates the hospital.
"It is not a small issue to us," said Ms. Schwartz. "I have a thyroid condition.
And a main reason we moved to Michigan was so I would be able to stay at home with the children."
In November, Michigan voters, along with those in 12 other states, approved legislation to define marriage as an institution between a man and a woman.
On March 16, Michigan's attorney general, Mike Cox, took that one step further, ruling that passage of the constitutional amendment meant that gay and lesbian state workers should be ineligible for health benefits for their partners in future contracts.
Michigan is not the only state in which a battle over the rights of same-sex partners is under way.
But it has become the focus of attention with the filing of a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union in which 21 same-sex couples are asking the state courts to clarify whether the amendment's passage means the loss of their benefits.
"A lot hinges on what happens in the case in Michigan," said Jeremy Bishop, program director for National Pride at Work, the A.F.L.-C.I.O.'s constituency group for gay workers.
"If the courts rule unfavorably for us, then I can well imagine the right wing taking the same argument to all 13 states that passed these amendments last year."
The argument over the definition of marriage, specifically whether it should apply to same-sex couples, has been simmering for years but heated up last year following the granting of gay marriages in Massachusetts, San Francisco and elsewhere.
Proponents of the amendments contend that they are simply trying to make clear and cement into state constitutions that a majority of Americans are opposed to defining a gay relationship as a marriage.
"Our belief is that it's only appropriate that marriage between one man and one woman be given special recognition, special incentives and special protection under the law," said Gary Glenn, president of the American Family Association of Michigan, a spearhead of the amendment's passage.
The first legal challenge to the amendments began in Michigan solely by chance, Mr. Glenn said, because a Kalamazoo city commissioner asked for an opinion from the attorney general about that city's workers.
"I do not believe that the voters of Michigan would have passed this amendment if they knew that it would mean taking away health benefits from same-sex partners," said Kari Moss, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan, which has filed suit against the governor in an effort to overturn the attorney general's interpretation.
Advocates for gay rights have argued since the amendment's passage in Michigan that proponents operated a kind of bait-and-switch on voters, pretending that they wanted only to strengthen the traditional concept of marriage when they were actually intending to roll back the rights that gay Americans have won over the decades.
"Personally, I think the conservative right wing has overstated their mandate, just like they did in the Terri Schiavo right-to-die case," said Dennis Patrick, a communications professor at Eastern Michigan University.
He and his partner of seven years, Tom Patrick, are raising three adopted sons and two foster children.
"Once people hear that benefits are being taken away, they don't like it. They say, hey, wait a second, that's not right."
Mr. Glenn disputes the contention that any bait-and-switch was involved. The key issue, before and after the election, was defining marriage, he said.
As for benefits, his group believes that it is acceptable for benefits to continue to gay households, if structured in a way that does not define the relationship as a marriage.
"The point is recognition of what constitutes marriage," Mr. Glenn said, "not who gets benefits."
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