Panel pushes domestic partner benefits for federal employees

While some progress has been made, the federal government continues to lag behind the private sector in workplace gay and lesbian rights, members of a panel on federal domestic partner benefits said Friday. Panel members convened at the Labor Department Friday to discuss domestic partner benefits, which would give federal employees' domestic partners of the same or opposite sex access to health and life insurance and retirement benefits. Spouses of federal employees are already eligible for these and other benefits. According to the Human Rights Campaign Foundation, more than 3,500 companies, colleges, universities and state and local government agencies, along with 102 Fortune 500 companies, currently offer domestic partner health benefits to their employees. Federal employees do not have those benefits. Robert Sadler, co-chair of the Labor Department's Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Employees Association (GLOBE), said the federal budget process is the biggest hurdle for in gaining domestic partner benefits. "When comparing the private sector with the public sector [the difference is] you're dealing with appropriated funds, so we have to wait for an act of Congress," said Sadler. Sadler was joined on the panel by Daryl Herrschaft of the Human Rights Campaign Foundation, T Santora of the AFL-CIO's Pride at Work organization, Larry Drake, executive vice president of the American Federation of Government Employees chapter at the Labor Department, and Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass. Drake said a very important step forward in the fight for gay and lesbian rights in the federal government happened at his agency in 1994, when the Labor Department added language banning discrimination based on sexual orientation to the equal employment opportunity section of the agency's labor contract. But the fight for domestic partner benefits is a broader struggle, he said. "It's frustrating because we can't negotiate with the Department of Labor over our pay and similarly we can't negotiate over domestic partner benefits. It has to be a law passed by Congress and signed by the President." Frank vowed to continue working for such benefits.

"No fight for civil rights of any group has ever been done in one step," said Frank, who introduced "The Domestic Partnership Benefits and Obligations Act" (H.R. 638) in February. The legislation gives domestic partners of federal employees access to benefits, including health and life insurance, retirement benefits and compensation for work injuries. "If the position is we won't accept less than the full loaf, we'll never get there," said Frank, who is openly gay.