Well, I Was PLANNING On Liveblogging the Domestic Partnership Benefits and Obligations Hearing, But...

It hasn't started yet, because the House Oversight and Government Reform Federal Workforce Subcommittee members and half of the first panel are voting off voting on legislation. So I'll give you a summary of the important bits in the three panels-worth of testimony that have been submitted:

-The Office of Personnel Management is supporting the bill: This is no surprise, but it is a reversal from the previous administration, when the deputy OPM director said that concerns about fraud and constitutional issues meant that the administration couldn't possibly support the legislation. Current OPM Director John Berry suggests in his written testimony that the bill be amended to find a way for agency-level HR offices to handle benefits elections and verification of employees' relationships, rather than have OPM act as a central clearinghouse; that provisions be made for annuitants with same-sex partners to include them as beneficiaries, etc.; and to find a way to recognize former domestic partners as beneficiaries.

-The definition of "domestic partner" is still facing some technical issues: The International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers wants the bill clarified so that gay and lesbian federal employees who are married in states where such marriages are legal, but where domestic partnerships do not exist, are covered. Testimony from the California Public Employees Retirement System suggests it might be viable to cover domestic partners who are heterosexual if they're over a certain age but don't want to marry for tax reasons. The Southern Baptists are calling the exclusion of heterosexual couples discriminatory. Those latter two objections seem unlikely to go anywhere, but they raise the problems of definitions.

-Dr. Frank Page, the President of the Southern Baptist Convention 2006, is the only witness in opposition to the bill: Page's objections center on religious-conservative lines about the sanctity of the family, but he says aloud the sentiment that I think motivates most opposition to this bill on social grounds: that it makes the Defense of Marriage Amendment look hypocritical and untenable, and if passed, could be a step towards the repeal of that legislation.