And Now, Gay Family Rights?

Homosexuals are winning health and other spousal benefits

No state in the union officially recognizes gay marriages. But homosexuals continue to push hard for the same legal rights that society accords married couples. "The old Donna Reed vision of the family is no longer what most Americans experience," says Harry Britt, the only avowedly gay member of the board of supervisors of San Francisco, a city where single adults outnumber the married, and homosexuals make up 15% to 20% of the population. In response to those demographic facts of life, Britt last week persuaded his fellow supervisors to pass a startling measure that would allow the city's employees to sign up their lovers for spouselike health benefits. The ordinance is the first of its kind in the country.

The measure applies to unmarried heterosexual couples as well as homosexual partners over 18, but there is little question that the idea was gay-inspired. To qualify for the benefits, couples unrelated by blood or marriage pay a $23 filing fee, then swear that they "share the common necessaries of life." If the relationship breaks up, a person must inform the city and wait six months before claiming a new partner. Mayor Dianne Feinstein has not yet signed the legislation, but since it passed by an 8-to-3 vote, her veto would probably be overriden.

The new rules require the city to treat all qualifying live-in partners as if they were spouses. For instance, they will have the same visitation rights at local jails and hospitals, and city workers would get a day off to attend a mate's funeral. But what backers were most eager to win was low-cost ($50 a month) health benefits, which city employees will pay for at the same rate as they do for a husband or wife.

The autonomous Health Service System Board, which must also okay the idea, opposes it. One of its worries is that applicants could lie about their status. "How are we going to check on that?" asks Board President Walter Johnson. Another, he says, is the uncertain cost. "We do not know where we're going, who we're talking about, how many people we're talking about." Supporters counter that the new single beneficiaries will be younger (thus healthier), yet not likely to make childbirth claims. And with even a majority of nongay San Franciscans supporting the idea, political pressures may force the board to go along.

Gays have recorded a few other victories that give them rights mimicking those of the nuclear family. In New York City, employees of Rupert Murdoch's leftish weekly Village Voice will soon be able to get health benefits for gay (and straight) lovers, with the company paying the cost. Last summer a New York appeals court ruled that a gay man could adopt his lover in a case where the partners involved were fighting an apartment lease that prohibited occupancy by nonfamily members. Noting that homosexual relations in private are no longer against the law in New York, the court upheld the right to adopt, reasoning that "the best description of a family is a continuing relationship of love and care," which can describe a gay relationship as well as a conventional one. Back in San Francisco, the city's retirement board last month voted to award $5,500 in survivor's death benefits to Scott Smith, former lover of Supervisor Harvey Milk, who was shot four years ago by a disgruntled onetime colleague. The settlement of Smith's claim was not a legal precedent but, says Smith, "it sets a moral precedent."

So it does, which is just what troubled the San Francisco Examiner, among others. In an editorial last month about the expansion of gay rights, the Examiner observed: "The notion that an unmarried relationship is the equivalent of marriage is an attack upon social norms, the destruction of which concerns a great many people in the nation and, we assume, in San Francisco." U.S. law, from its beginnings, has favored the traditional family for its critical role in the nurture of future generations. Even those who oppose discrimination against homosexuals may question the wisdom of giving gay families the same support.

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