Partners of Gays to Receive City Medical Benefits

LAGUNA BEACH — Laguna Beach on Tuesday became the first city in Orange County and one of only a handful in the nation to grant medical benefits to unmarried partners of city employees, including gays and lesbians.

Under the new policy, approved unanimously by the City Council, unmarried couples will be eligible for medical and dental coverage already extended to spouses of city employees.

“We know today in Southern California and the nation that the American family is changing and the city of Laguna Beach is responding to that change,” said Councilman Robert F. Gentry, who proposed the policy.

Gentry, who is gay, said the new policy attempts to treat all city employees more fairly: “I’m a city employee and I know that I’m treated differently than other employees,” he said. “It’s an issue of basic equity in the workplace.”

Local gay rights advocates praised the city’s action.

“It’s good news,” said Anaheim attorney and gay rights advocate John Doran. “We believe both local and state governments have to realize that family units include lesbian and gay couples, unmarried heterosexual couples, single parents with children . . . these policies have to reflect the family unit as it is really structured in America.”

Laguna Beach joins three other California cities--Berkeley, West Hollywood and Santa Cruz--and the city of Seattle in adopting so-called domestic partner laws that extend medical or other benefits to unmarried couples. Los Angeles recently extended its employee leave program to include domestic partners.

To become eligible under the new policy, a couple will have to sign an affidavit stating they have lived together for at least six months, intend to live together indefinitely, are not related by blood, are mentally competent and will notify the city if circumstances of the relationship change.

A Time magazine-Cable News Network poll conducted last November found that 54% of Americans thought that homosexual couples should be permitted to receive medical benefits from a partner’s policy.

But the concept of granting unmarried couples spousal benefits remains controversial.

San Francisco voters, for example, defeated a measure that would have required employers to recognize unmarried couples.

Congressman William E. Dannemeyer (R-Fullerton) and other conservative leaders called Laguna Beach’s action an attack on marriage and the traditional family.

“The traditional family in American society is one man and one woman in an institution called marriage, that is the basis of civilization,” Dannemeyer said.

Policies similar to the one adopted in Laguna Beach form “one of the battlegrounds in the cultural war going on in the 1990s,” he added. “The council in Laguna Beach has said to God, ‘step aside, we have other plans for people in this community.’ ”

The Rev. Louis Sheldon, who heads the Orange County-based Traditional Values Coalition, said he had received “a lot of phone calls,” from Laguna Beach residents angered by the council’s action but declined to say whether he will mount a challenge to the policy.

“I have no comment on that,” Sheldon said. “But I believe it will go down to defeat one way or another. It is truly a biased-related policy to advocate and promote the (homosexual) lifestyle.”

City officials said they had no estimate of how many of the city’s 220 employees would take advantage of the new policy. Nor were any cost estimates immediately available.

Personnel director Philip Hoffman said the city contributes $173 dollars per employee per month under the city’s health plan. Gentry said other cities that have extended their insurance policies have not experienced a significant change.

Gentry also said the city had not evaluated what impact the policy might have in treating patients who contract the HIV or AIDS virus in the city, or whether extension of medical benefits to gay partners might result in higher medical costs for the city.

“I don’t think this policy will have an effect on the delivery of health care to AIDS patients,” Gentry said. “In some ways this could save the city money. If two employees in a domestic relationship would now be covered as a family, it would be less costly.”