Guess What's Next 

The Journal has an article this morning about opposition to a change in state law regarding benefits to "domestic partners":

In a lawsuit filed in April in Dane County Circuit Court, the state employees asked the court to overturn a Court of Appeals decision from the 1990s that found state government did not have to provide benefits to same-sex couples. The workers said the "equal protection clause" of the state Constitution is violated when employment benefits are denied to partners of gay and lesbian employees. If the suit is successful, the state would be required to provide employment benefits, such as health insurance, to same-sex partners of state workers.

The article is actually about whether the state should be accepting pro-bono legal help from an outside organization to fight the suit. But I really don't want to talk about that part. I want to talk about the lawsuit as a whole. Unfortunately details are not easily found about the policies, and I haven't bothered to research them. I can only go off of what I know from several years of getting health insurance through my employers.

Here is the issue as I see it... and if someone has information to the contrary, I'd love to hear about it, so please leave a comment. Everyone seems to be equating "domestic partners" with homosexual couples only. If you've ever gotten insurance through your employer, you know that they will only provide insurance to a spouse or dependent. What people are doing here however is equating a "domestic partnership" as a "homosexual marriage", and saying that it is then equivalent to a "heterosexual marriage", and so the same rules should apply for insurance. But is it? Because homosexual couples cannot get married in the state of Wisconsin, they're really just cohabitating... and that is different. Would some of them marry if given the option? Sure, I bet some would, but some would not. Just like thousands of heterosexual couples, they'd just shack up together and not get married.

So if we start giving benefits to homosexual couples... that means that the next thing that will happen is that cohabitating heterosexual couples will sue saying they're domestic partners as well. I think they'll have pretty firm legal ground to sue too. Just wait and see. And since my tax dollars are being used to support all this... I can't say as I'm thrilled over the whole matter either. I say let them get married and then treat them like any other married couple... but don't give away benefits to just any old couple shacking up, gay or straight.