Date: Mon, 04 Apr 94 10:13:50 EDT
From: Sarah Richardson <SRICH@VTVM1.CC.VT.EDU>
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.
