Nearly 300 companies and business groups across the country, including many prominent Massachusetts firms, are asking the US Supreme Court to strike down the Defense of Marriage Act, saying it forces them to discriminate against married gay employees.
A who’s who of corporate America signed on to a friend-of-the-court brief filed Wednesday. The group of 278 businesses includes the Bay State’s EMC Corp., State Street Corp., Akamai Technologies Inc., and a number of law firms and health insurers.
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My wife and I divorced 30 years ago but later I asked her to move back in since she had no good way to earn a good living. While she was living at my house, my company expanded health insurance benefits to include gay couples, even if they were not married. However, they would not allow my former wife to be added to my insurance policy. In this time, she got an infection on a Sunday when the local healthstop was closed, so we had to go to the imergency room of the local hospital. They prescribed a $10 antibiotic and charged her over $500 for the visit, even though she earned only about $8,000/year. Also during this period, gay activists got the local Catholic adoption agency in Massachusetts closed down because they would not service gay couples. The gays already had a way to adopt and they gained nothing in the process but they did make it more difficult for heterosexual couples to adopt. My wife and I eventually remarried after over 20 years being divorced and are happier than ever now. Hiowever it irks me how 3.5% of the population can destroy benefits for others and be almost cannonized by the Boston Globe and the rest of thr liberal media!
Sorry for the troubles, but you and your wife had a choice. She might have qualified for MassHealth or other subsidized care while single and low income, or you could have remarried earlier to give her the benefits from your employer. Many employers started offfering these benefits to same-sex couples who could not legally marry. Some organizations offer benefits to all domestic partners -- married or not, same-sex or different-sex. It depends upon the organization and, in the case of insurance, their agreement with their group insurer. No one was trying to take anything away from you.
However, it would be more fair if all individuals could have protections, especially in health care. That is, it should make no difference in coverage whether someone is in a relationship (legal or not) or single. This would have been better for your wife when you were divorced. And, up to 40% of employee compensation is in the form of benefits, beyond salary; obviously married people get more benefits. Why should they get more than single people, and why should employers have to pay more for them? For example, a system like Medicare-for-all would resolve this. Get employers and private insurers out of making coverage and health decisions and raising the costs for all of us. Of course, there are other benefits, state and federal, that marriage confers which is a whole other topic.
A correction on adoption: it was NOT "gay activists [who] got" Catholic Charities to close their adoption service. It was Catholic Charities' decision. All state contractors had to comply with the Commonwealth's non-discrimination standards. Catholic Charities did not want to comply. It could have complied and continued, or it could have given up the state contract and stayed open. They chose to close.
No one is trying to destroy benefits for you or others. (And, no one knows the real percentage of gay and lesbian people in the population, but many more people (gay/lesbian and "straight") support extending civil rights and benefits to the gay and lesbian population.
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My wife did not have any choice (& not a Mass. resident) and asking a religeous group to conform to requirements that contradict their beliefs is to ask them to not exist or to get out of the charitable service that they provide. But nobody asks a kosher delicatessan to serve products that are against their beliefs so nobody shopuld be saying "do as we say or else!" to the Catholic Church, especially since everyone becomes a looser - unless they are just bullies!
So you were wrong on all counts.