Date: Mon, 04 Apr 94 10:13:50 EDT From: Sarah Richardson Subject: Notes from Williamsburg conference W&M Employee Benefits Conference About thirty faculty and staff members from colleges and universities around Virginia attended the "Employee Benefits for Gays and Lesbians in Higher Education in Virginia" conference last Thursday, March 24 at the new University Center at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg. What follows is a transcription of the notes Rick Fleming (UVa) took at the conference. First to speak was Prof. George Greenia of W&M, who hosted the conference. He related that W&M was Virginia's first campus to have sexual orientation added to its non-discrimination policy. This was done by their president during the summer of 1990, after about three years of prodding by Greenia and others. It was supported by the W&M GALA (one of the country's three largest G+L alumni/ae associations, btw, along with Penn's [the largest] and Yale's), as well as by the W&M Faculty Assembly. There have been no problems of any sort resulting from this policy. In January 1993, Greenia petitioned W&M for health benefits for his "spouse" -- the administration deferred to the office of then-Attorney General Mary Sue Terry, whose office called the proposal "interesting" but wanted a decision from the president whether he wanted to enact such a policy before commiting resources to study it for him. In October of 1993 and agian in January of 1994 the W&M Faculty Senate approved the petition "almost unanimously," leading to considerable press coverage and the now-notorious posturing in the House of Delegates by Del. S. Vance Wilkins (R-Amherst Co. -- minority leader) and others; but the plan was finally rejected by the W&M administration. Greenia and others at W&M are now proposing the creation of a private endowment fund to help defray health insurance costs (which Greenia estimates at perhaps $30,000 a year for the 5 or 6 couples who are now seeking coverage): money provided through a private endowment could be used at the discretion of the college without direct General Assembly or SCHEV intervention. It should be noted that the Wilkins budget amendment, which would have prohibited "extension of health insurance medical/hospitalization benefits or ancillary benefits either directly or indirectly, other than to an employee, retired employee, his or her legally recognized spouse, child or minor dependant," was "stripped from the Virginia state budget in Conference Committee before the budget was forwarded to Governor Allen," according to an excellent legal overview paper provided to the conference by W&M law student Doug Steinberg. Still, this amendment was passed 57-38 by the House of Delegates, with every single Republican voting for it. Marj Plumb, health policy coordinator for the NGLTF, told us that a Time/CNN poll in 1989 showed that a significant majority of Americans supposrt DP health benefits and oppose employment discrimination against GLB people. She went on to present some rather sobering statistics as to how many LGB people are without insurance. A study found that 36% of lesbians in California have no health insurance; another showed that 30% of HIV-positive people in DC are uninsured. It is estimated that there are 8-10 million children living in 2-3 million gay or lesbian homes in the US. Many of these families lack insurance. All these facts mean that gays and lesbians, like other under-insured segments of the population, tend to have bad health-care outcomes due, e.g., to postponing treatment until illnesses reach the emergency stage. Unfortunately, even the current move toward health-care reform seems to hold out little hope for a quick improvement in this area. The Clinton plan defers to the states in its definition of family, and only one of the alternative plans is any better. Marj handed out an Action Alert flyer which requests calls to members of Congress supporting either the Clinton plan (HR 3600/S. 1757) or the Wellstone/McDermott/Conyers bill (S. 49/HR 1200) and opposing the various alternative plans: Cooper/Breaux, Chafee/Thomas, Lott.Nichel, Nickles/Stearns, and Gramm/Armey. Of these alternatives, only the Chafee bill requires coverage for all individuals: it has "an individual mandate (kind of like car insurance) but no employee mandate." Only the Wellstone, et al. plan currently does not discriminate against GLBO families; if you support the Clinton Plan, you should ask that sexual orientation be added to its non-discrimination language and that its definition of 'familiy' be expanded to include domestic partners. Law Prof. John Levy of W&M then introduced himself and stated that the legal situation is very grim for GLB health or other employee family benefits in Virginia. He said he had little to add to the legal overview paper provided by Doug Steinberg. (A copy of the paper can be obtained by writing Prof. Greenia at the Dept. of Modern Languages at W&M, Williamsburg, 23187.) We then heard from Pat Heck, chair of Virginians for Justice. He reported that this year's General Assembly session was overtly, sometimes stridently homophobic. In the past, G/L issues have generally been quietly, politely, but firmly swept under the table -- typically by being referred into, but never back out of, a "subcommittee of a subcommittee" -- but this year, several GLB-related issues [healthcare benefits, hate crimes, mandatory HIV testing for certain people exposed to the blood or body fluids of others, etc.] actually came up for votes. Needless to say, just about every one of those votes went against us, but at least we now have the voting records to tell us who our friends are. The quiet removal of the Wilkins amendment from the budget in conference shows that we do still have some friends in the House of Delegates at least. Steve Pershing, Legal Director of the ACLU of VA in Richmond then told us that these are interesting times -- as in the old Chinese curse, "May you live in interesting times." Steve spoke in an inspirational vein about the rightness of our cause and our assurance of eventual victory -- "but it will take a long time." He went on to describe some of the interesting legal tacks being pursued by the ACLU. They are considering, for example, a suit to overturn Virginia's archaic "cohabitation" and "fornication" statutes which would use Internal Revenue Code provisions to provide a claim of legal standing for the plaintiffs. (The IRC, by the way, does NOT restrict the definition of household members to those related by blood or marriage.) Pershing is representing Sharon Bottoms and April Wade in court, and believes that the appeals court which will be next to hear the Bottoms case is sympathetic, based on questions the judges posed during the hearings. Two representatives of William and Mary's Dept. of Personnel and Training, Gretna Smith and Rita Metcalfe, then informed us that DPT has been holding forums at venues around the state during March to get employees' input on a possible "cafeteria-style" health benefits package and various other possible changes to the state insurance program. A telephone poll is being conducted on this through April 17 -- state employees may participate by calling 1-800-445-0773 from a touch-tone phone (you will be asked to enter your social security number). Or you can write to: Health Benefits Procurement Project Department of Personnel & Training 101 North 14th Street Richmond, VA 23219 The DPT reps handed out a "Spotlight on Benefits" newsletter which gave a good deal of detail on the poll and Q&A about the determination of the details of the state plan(s). Additional hearings may be scheduled if state employees request them. We then went around the room and representatives from a number of campuses around the state described their situations. To summarize: most colleges and universities in the state have separately achieved the inclusion of sexual orientation in some or all non-discrimination policies. Exceptions are VCU and some of the community colleges. Thomas Nelson Comm. Coll. (Hampton) does have a non-discrimination policy, as do Mary Wash., ODU, Radford, and UVA, which were all represented. The Radford rep mentioned that VPI also has a non-discrim. policy and active student and faculty/staff organizations. None of the institutions represented (other than W&M) has made or presently expects to make any substantial progress toward DP health benefits. It is the opinion of the UVA LGB Faculty & Staff Association, for example, that the most practical thing for us to do now is to work for the abolition of the "Crimes Against Nature" law, since all the other legalized discrimination we face is based on our being "felons" under that statute. But W&M probably has an unique opportunity, given the very positive attitude of its faculty and alumni/ae, to pursue DP health benefits via the private-endowment route, and other schools may sooner or later follow W&M's lead. As for the Symposium on "Defining Family" which was held that night, well! Imagine a colloquium among the following: Steve Pershing, ACLU of Virginia Legal Director Beatrice Dohrn, LLDEF Legal Director David Flaks, PhD., Director of Employee Assistance Program, St. Francis Medical Center, Trenton, NJ Joseph Broadus, [arch-conservative] Law Professor at George Mason U. Herbert Titus, Editor of _The_Forecast_, a law & public policy journal, and founding Dean of the Regent University law school (a rabid but very slick ultra-RRR Pat Robertson sidekick) -- and you have a pretty good idea of what happened. Dr. Flaks cited all the psychological studies which have shown that gays and lesbians are as good or better at parenting than heterosexual men and women, and that children raised in G/L homes are, if anything, a little better-adjusted than those from "normal" households. The others regaled us with the sort of rhetoric we've come to expect. Ms Dohrn did a competent job as keynote speaker, filling in at the last minute for Barney Frank, who had to cancel his appearance due to scheduled floor votes in the House. Mr. Titus informed us that the country is really governed not so much by the Constitution as by the Declaration of Independence, which says that we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights, but these do _not_ include the right to do what _he_ knows our Creator just would not consider natural or morally correct. He garnered much applause for his remarks, but only from Regent students who had been bussed in for the event. Prof. Broadus blamed all the social ills of the last 30 or 40 years (evidently as far back as history extends in his view) to the erosion of Traditional Family Values, and trotted out all the tired old "Where do we draw the line" arguments to assail the notion that anyone other than legally-married straight Moms & Pops could possibly be allowed to call themselves a family or be entrusted with the rearing of their own sons and daughters. Pardon me, but it was not an evening I particularly care to dwell upon. To close on a positive note, there were numerous gay and lesbian students there, many quite obviously in couples :-), and they hardly let the RRR'ers forget it for a second.