Florida Agenda

SARASOTA – Sarasota City Commissioners unanimously approved a domestic partner registry that gives same-sex couples the same rights to shared health care coverage, choices about education for their children, and other decisions.

Beginning December 4, both gay and straight couples can file under the guidelines. Sarasota joins other Florida cities including Gulfport, Tampa, and St. Petersburg in establish a domestic partner registry.

The registry guarantees specific rights, including Health Care Facility Visitation and Health Care Decisions, Funeral/burial Decisions, and Pre-need guardian designation, among other things spelled out by the ordinance. Under the measure, “two persons are considered to be domestic partners if: They consider themselves to be members of each other’s immediate family. They agree to be jointly responsible for each other’s welfare. Neither of them is married under the laws of the State of Florida, is a member of another domestic partnership, or civil union with anyone other than the co-applicant. They are not blood related in a way that would prevent them from being married to each other under Florida state law.

Each is at least 18 years of age and competent to contract.”

LJUBLJANA, SLOVENIA – Voters rejected a measure last week that would have allowed gay couples in Slovenia to adopt children under certain conditions.

The legislation, which was drafted by the former Yugoslavian state’s previous liberal government, would have permitted same-sex couples to adopt biological children born to one of the partners, but would have forbidden adoption of a third party’s biological children.

In the usually tolerant country, approximately 55 percent of voters in the national referendum rejected the measure.

A coalition of religious and conservative Catholic, Muslim, and Serbian Orthodox communities drafted a petition in advance of the referendum, in which they stated, “Marriage and family are of utmost importance for the development of the human person and society.

For this reason, we all have an obligation to protect the values of marriage and of family as a community of a husband and a wife, and children.”

By RORY BARBAROSSA

NEW YORK, NY – The growing support for LGBT rights among American corporate leaders is turning into tangible results for the nation’s LGBT workers, with a growing number of blue chips and other companies offering non-fiduciary benefits and other forms of compensation to their LGBT workforces, and their partners: married, domestic, or what have you.

For example, Ernst & Young, one of the nation’s largest accounting firms, is one of about three-dozen companies that now compensate their LGBT employees because of a provision in the tax code that requires them to pay income taxes on their partners’ health benefits—an amount that straight married couples are not required to pay. Approximately three-dozen companies now offer the so-called “gross-up benefit,” which, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) reports, is close to three times as many that offered the benefit just twelve months ago.

HRC reports that other companies that began offering the benefit as of Jan. 1 include American Express, Bank of America, Microsoft, and Yahoo. Both HRC and legal experts say that the tax requirement is a federal issue, and therefore trumps even laws in states that recognize gay marriage. “Four letters,” says Chris J. Mancini, a Broward County attorney who has represented many LGBT clients on domestic partnership issues. “D-OM- A.” Mancini, a former federal prosecutor, notes that the federal Defense of Marriage Act does not recognize same-sex couples as being married, even in the eight states that have legalized marriage equality.

“Under DOMA and its federal spousal definitions, a man on his wife’s health plan doesn’t pay federal taxes on his share of benefits, but a man on his husband’s plan does,” Mancini explains.

“Big Five” accounting firm Ernst & Young has offered benefits to same-sex domestic partners since 2002. The matter of the tax inequity came up during a town hall meeting held in November by the company’s diversity department. According to HRC estimates, the gross-up benefit provides an extra $1,200 on average to an employee’s family. Competitors KPMG and Pricewaterhouse Coopers have likewise added the gross-up benefit gay employees and their partners.

Bank of America offered domestic partner health benefits beginning in 1998: the company added the tax benefit this year for both domestic partners of employees and eligible children.

RORY BARBAROSSA

Four Hawaii same-sex couples entered into civil unions early on New Year’s Day as a new statewide law took effect. The couples–Monica Montgomery and Donna Gedge,  Saralyn Batt and Isajah Morales, Gary Bradley and Paul Perry, and Bonnie Limatoc-DePonte and Lydia Pontin–became the first to legally wed as Hawaii began to legally recognize same-sex civil unions.

The law allows both same-sex and opposite-sex couples to join in civil unions. These unions possess the same rights and responsibilities that come with traditional marriages. With Hawaii and Delaware marching down the aisle to recognition on Jan. 1, there are now five states that recognize same-sex civil unions. Six states and the District of Columbia give outright same-sex marriage licenses: Connecticut, Iowa, Vermont, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, and Washington, D.C.

California does not recognize new same-sex marriages. In May 2008, the state’s Supreme Court ruled that gay couples have the right to marry in California. Later that year, opponents of same-sex marriage secured passage of Proposition 8, a state constitutional amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman.  A federal judge ruled in 2010 that Proposition 8 violated the U.S. Constitution. Enforcement of that ruling was stayed pending appeal.

The passage of the laws in both Hawaii and Delaware were not without debate and compromise. Lawmakers in both states made it plain that “it is not the legislature’s intent to revise the definition or eligibility requirements of marriage.”

Calling it “a prime example of exercising civic courage,” Hawaii Gov. Neil Abercrombie, a Democrat, signed the state’s civil unions bill into law last February. “It is about doing what is right, no matter how difficult, no matter how much opposition,” Abercrombie added.

Gov. Jack Markell, a Democrat, signed the Delaware law in May saying boldly, “Th is bill

is about a new energy and excitement. It’s about a moment in our history that came about because people came together to work for it, because it became clear that Delaware’s LGBT community is in fact part of every Delaware community. The greater good is served when we speak out and fight hard when we see that bias, prejudice or even outdated laws attempt to lessen any one of us.”

On December 18, the Sun-Sentinel reported that despite Florida’s laws banning same-sex marriage, many gay Florida couples are opting to get married in states that recognize their unions.

According to the report, the U.S Census Bureau estimates that out of a total 65,601 same-sex couples in Florida who cohabitate, 32% are self-identified as being married.

Same-sex couples in Florida continue to face numerous restrictions not experienced by heterosexual married partners. As the Sun-Sentinel notes, in the absence of legal standing and without specific written instructions to the contrary, it remains at the discretion of hospitals to decide if same-sex married partners can make decisions in life-and-death situations.

A number of municipalities, including Broward and Palm Beach counties, offer more benefits to same-sex couples who register as domestic partners. And state Sen. Eleanor Sobel, D-Hollywood, and Rep. Mark Pafford, D-West Palm Beach, have introduced domestic partnership legislation which would permit gay couples to enjoy some of the same benefits as straight married couples.

The Sun-Sentinel also reported on a recent Gallup poll which shows that 53% of Americans think same-sex marriage should be legal. That number represents a drastic shift in opinion from 1996, when two-thirds of Americans opposed legalizing same-sex marriages.

CHICAGO, IL – The State of Illinois will allow gay and lesbian couples in civil unions to be able to file their state taxes jointly just as married heterosexual couples are currently allowed.

Bernard Cherkasov of Equality Illinois states that the victory is not about financial gains for same-sex civil unions but about making sure that same-sex couples receive the same benefits, protections, rights and responsibilities that married couples get.

Residents of Illinois pay a flat 5% tax regardless of marital status, so gay and lesbian couples won’ t save money.

LOS ANGELES, CA – The Williams Institute on Sexual Orientation Law, based at the University of California, Los Angeles, states that Palm Springs has

the highest concentration of same-sex couples living together in California according to the 2010 census.

According to the census, Palm Springs has about 115 same-sex couples per 1,000 households and ranks ahead of other notably gay cities such as San Francisco and West Hollywood.

Statewide, the data shows there are 125,516 same-sex couples living together in California, roughly 10 gay or lesbian couples for every 1,000 households. Of those couples, 53 percent are women and 47 percent are men.

NEW JERSEY – Seven gay and lesbian New Jersey couples, along with many of their children, are going to court to try to force the state to recognize gay marriage.

The families say in their legal complaint that the state’s civil union law designed to give gay couples the same legal protections as married couples has not fulfilled that promise.

One man says he was denied being able to make urgent medical decisions for his partner. Another saw his partner and children’s health insurance canceled by a skeptical auditor. One woman had to jump through legal hoops to adopt the baby of her civil union.

Along with the gay advocacy groups Garden State Equality and Lambda Legal, the couples planned to announce details of the lawsuit on Wednesday. The advocacy groups provided a copy to The Associated Press on the condition that no details be published before Wednesday morning.

The lawsuit, to be filed in state court, comes less than a week after New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed a law allowing gay marriage in that neighboring state. But it’s the latest step in a nine-year legal battle in New Jersey.

States afford gay couples a hodgepodge of rights. New Jersey is one of seven states that offer the same legal protections of marriage, but call it either civil unions or domestic partnerships.

New Jersey’s civil union law is cast as the villain in the suit.

“The separate and inherently unequal statutory scheme singles out lesbians and gay men for inferior treatment on the basis of their sexual orientation and sex and also has a profoundly stigmatizing effect on them, their children and other lesbian and gay New Jerseyans,” the claim says.

The legal filing tells the stories of seven couples — two of whom previously sued for the right to marry — and the problems they say they’ve faced since the state began offering civil unions in 2007.

Their lawyer, Lambda Legal’s Hayley Gorenberg, said most people in places like medical offices don’t want to discriminate against them, but don’t understand the rights conferred through civil unions.

“People are not badly inclined toward them,” she said in an interview Tuesday. “They are just flummoxed” by the civil union requirements.