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| From the issue dated September 28, 2007 |
Gay Professors Face Less Discrimination, but Many Still Fight for Benefits
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Gay and lesbian faculty members may no longer be desperate to hide their true identities in academe, but many are desperately seeking health insurance for their partners.
With anti-gay discrimination fading, obtaining health and other benefits for partners is still a major concern for many gay and lesbian academics. A growing number of colleges and universities have been adding such benefits since they were first introduced in the early 1990s. No full tally exists, but a survey this year by the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources found that 40 percent of 544 institutions responding — or 217 — extended health insurance to same-sex domestic partners. The Human Rights Campaign, which describes itself as the country's largest advocacy group for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people, has identified a larger number: 304 institutions, up from 178 five years ago.
The stronger the institution, the more likely it is to provide benefits for same-sex partners. Sixty percent of the 125 universities that received the highest ranking in U.S. News & World Report's annual survey provide same-sex-partner benefits, according to the campaign. And more than 80 percent of the magazine's top-50 institutions do. These colleges are motivated by more than a sense of justice: Increasingly, same-sex-partner benefits are seen as an essential part of recruiting and retaining top faculty members.
That point was driven home at the University of Wisconsin last December, when Robert W. Carpick, a leading researcher in nanotechnology (the building of extremely small, atom-scale structures), left for the University of Pennsylvania. The lack of domestic-partner benefits at Wisconsin was "a driving reason to look elsewhere," he says. Penn offered him a job; the fact that it offered such benefits clinched the deal, says Mr. Carpick, who married his partner of 10 years in Canada in 2003.
"It's very difficult putting your heart into working at an institution when you're not being treated the same as colleagues down the hall," he says.
Legislation to provide same-sex-partner benefits, backed by Gov. Jim Doyle of Wisconsin, a Democrat, is now being considered by a divided state legislature. University officials say the cost of the benefits would probably be less than the $3.5-million in research grants that Mr. Carpick brought to Wisconsin during the six years he was there. Losing the researcher shows that any cost saving "doesn't seem like a very good bargain," says Patrick V. Farrell, Wisconsin's provost.
In a few states where colleges have introduced such benefits, the moves have met legal challenges.
Kentucky is a case in point. In April the University of Kentucky's board of trustees approved the extension of health insurance to employees' same-sex domestic partners. The decision was part of efforts to improve faculty quality as Kentucky carries out a state-mandated mission to become a top-20 public research institution by 2020. "We very much look at this as a competitive issue," says Jay D. Blanton, a university spokesman.
However, in June the state's attorney general released an opinion that the plan, and a similar one begun several months earlier at another public institution, the University of Louisville, violated an amendment to the state's constitution adopted by voters in 2004. The amendment defines marriage as between one man and one woman, and adds that "a legal status identical or substantially similar" shall not be recognized.
Both institutions have been scrambling to bring their plans into compliance, and the attorney general has indicated that he supports their efforts. The University of Kentucky announced that it had changed its plan, dropping requirements that an employee demonstrate strong marriagelike ties to his or her partner. Instead, benefits would now be available to any "sponsored dependent" living with the employee for at least 12 months.
At the end of a re-enrollment period, only 61 staff members, out of a total of more than 12,000, had signed up. "We think this will have a negligible impact" on the cost of health coverage, says Mr. Blanton.
A similar pattern is unfolding in Michigan. Voters there also approved a marriage amendment in 2004. That state's attorney general then declared that same-sex-partner benefits for public employees were illegal. After a lower court ruled against the attorney general, an appeals court reversed that decision. Now the state's supreme court has agreed to hear the case.
In the meantime, the state's two largest public institutions, the University of Michigan and Michigan State University, both announced modifications in their well-established same-sex-partner benefits, similar to the changes made in Kentucky, in hopes of complying with state law.
The institutions in both states anxiously hope they have weathered the challenges, but in neither state is the issue resolved. "A lot of schools are watching Michigan and Kentucky closely," says Lori Messinger, an associate professor of social work at the University of Kansas, who is conducting a comparative study of campus policies toward gay faculty members for the American Association of University Professors.
There are other challenges: Gov. Ernie Fletcher of Kentucky, a Republican, is pushing for legislation banning benefits to same-sex partners of employees of state universities. This spring Alaskan voters approved a nonbinding resolution to ban same-sex-partner benefits for public employees, but the state legislature failed to adopt a bill to that effect. And in Ohio, a state legislator is suing Miami University, arguing that Ohio's 2004 marriage amendment bars the university from providing benefits to employees' same-sex partners.
Many supporters of such benefits accuse some promoters of marriage amendments of having misrepresented their true intentions. "There's been a policy of bait and switch," says James P. Madigan, a lawyer representing Miami faculty members whose same-sex partners receive benefits. "The referenda are sold as being about nothing but marriage," but as soon as they are passed, supporters use them to try to take away other rights, he says.
Meanwhile, the number of institutions providing such partner benefits continues to grow. Even in states whose legislation doesn't give public institutions a clear mandate to do so, some state institutions are finding ways to provide health insurance. The University of Florida, for example, is paying for the benefits with money not appropriated by the state: grants, earnings from research contracts, donations, etc.
Yet the majority of the country's colleges appear not to offer such partner benefits. "It matters who your president or chancellor is," says Kansas' Ms. Messinger. "If this is something they're not interested in, or not willing to spend political capital on, it's just not going to happen."
Besides offering health insurance for same-sex partners, advocates say, there are other steps colleges can take to make gay faculty members feel safe and welcome. President John T. Casteen III of the University of Virginia said this year that the institution was being put "increasingly to some disadvantage" by the lack of a state policy in favor of domestic-partner benefits. In June, however, the university took a small step on its own and announced that the same-sex partners of students and employees could use campus gymnasiums, a privilege already accorded to spouses.
A growing number of institutions are amending their antidiscrimination policies. "Most states don't have laws against discrimination based on sexual orientation," says Ms. Messinger, so adding such policies is a meaningful step.
Ninety percent of U.S. News's top-125 colleges have done that, according to the Human Rights Campaign. Such moves, which typically cost a college next to nothing, "are a signal to faculty that they can be open, they can introduce their partners; they will not be discriminated against," says Gilbert Herdt, chair of the department of human-sexuality studies at San Francisco State University.
But universities can't affect how their gay and lesbian faculty members are treated off campus. If your same-sex partner is gravely ill, says David L.R. Houston, a Ph.D. student in cultural anthropology at McGill University, when it comes to hospital-visitation rights, even the best campus policy won't make any difference.
Ralph J. Hexter, president of Hampshire College, and one of only 11 openly gay college heads in the country, recently wed Manfred Kollmeier, his partner of 27 years. Yet "if I predecease my partner, he will have no right to my Social Security," he says, because it is a federal program, and federal law does not recognize same-sex spouses.
Similarly, even when faculty members' same-sex partners are covered by a campus health-insurance plan, the privilege is costly. Federal tax regulations treat the value of the insurance for same-sex partners (but not for heterosexual spouses) as taxable income.
Problems remain in academe as well. Advocates say that sexual orientation now is often not an issue in hiring, especially at large institutions. But some say research into gay issues can be problematic. Ellen Lewin, a professor of women's studies and anthropology at the University of Iowa, says that when young gay anthropologists seek employment, "if they are good scholars, they're getting jobs."
But, she adds, very often, "People who study gay topics are not" finding employment. She sees a similar pattern in the granting of research funds. In 2002, Ms. Lewin applied to the National Endowment for the Humanities for a one-year, $50,000 grant to support a study under the title "Family Values: Gay Fathers in an American Community." It was turned down. Two years later, she reapplied with the exact same research proposal, changing only the title: She dropped the word "gay."
That time the project was approved.
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Section: Diversity in Academe
Volume 54, Issue 5, Page B10