In recent weeks, there have been two landmark decisions made that effectively grant gay couples the same status as married couples. The most prominent decision happened earlier this month when the California Supreme Court ruled that same-sex marriage in the nation's most populous state is legal. That ruling overturned a voter-approved ban on gay marriage.
And just this week, Governor David Paterson of New York declared that same-sex marriages legally performed elsewhere will be recognized in New York. This decision comes after a little publicized ruling by the New York Appellate Court in February which determined that there was “no legal impediment in New York to the recognition of a same-sex marriage.” As a result, the state of New York will recognize marriages of New Yorkers who are legally wed elsewhere.
Earlier this month, Paterson had a memo sent out to all New York state agencies, including those governing insurance and health care, directing them to immediately change policies and regulations to make sure "spouse," "husband" and "wife" are clearly understood to include gay couples. However, because gay marriage itself is not legal in New York, it is unclear as to how long or if this directive will stand.
New York’s highest court, the Court of Appeals, has said that only the state Legislature can legalize gay marriage, and it also left the door open for prohibiting the recognition of same sex marriages performed elsewhere by pointing out that the state Legislature can also “decide to prohibit the recognition of same-sex marriages solemnized abroad.”
Despite all the press these changes have received, in the more liberal leaning states of New York, California, and Massachusetts (where same sex marriages have been legal since 2004) these directives are likely to have very little effect on the workplace. When I was working in New York in 1999, my company already had in place what they called back then a “domestic partner policy” in which any and all domestic partners of employees, whether same sex or opposite sex were covered under all the available benefits to employees. Now I didn’t conduct a state poll or anything, but in New York City at the time, almost everyone I knew worked for a company that provided benefits that covered same sex or heterosexual partners.
The reason I think that these rulings aren’t really going to change things in the workplace all that much is because in reality, these rulings only directly affect gay workers. In effect, the New York decision mandates that all state agencies extend benefits to gay couples, but it says nothing about public or private companies. So in effect, if you are in a gay domestic partnership and you work for the state, your partner—for the time being— will be covered.
Outside the realm of state agencies, little will change, because New York does not require all businesses to extend benefits to domestic partnership. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing, especially if many more companies have voluntarily extended those benefits since the time I was working in New York. In California and Massachusetts, the changes brought by the legalization of gay marriage will have about the same effect in the workplace and on employee benefits as they do in New York. In general, in large cities like Boston, New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles the extension of gay rights by the state will have little effect, as many companies (particularly the large ones) have probably already extended benefits to gay couples.
In this country, the impact of the recent (and temporary, I might add) legalization of gay marriage will be felt in the voting booth. There are very few issues that voters fell more passionate about and are polarized about than the issue of same sex marriages. Because it is a lifestyle that most religions expressly forbid, gay marriage is seen much more as an encroachment upon thousands of years of deeply held beliefs than it is as an extension of rights.
Something tells me that in a certain sense, gay marriage will be the defining issue of our time. It will unite some and divide many as it is doing now, with a few states sanctioning its practice and many more that have outlawed it. California voters will surely move to overturn their own State Supreme Court’s ruling at the voting booth in November, and religious and social conservatives in New York have already vowed to fight Gov. David Paterson's directive requiring state agencies to recognize gay marriages performed legally elsewhere, saying it flouts traditional values and is a big step toward legalizing same-sex unions in New York.
In the end, I think the issue of legal gay marriage should be decided state by state, and that each state does have the right to recognize or not to recognize gay marriages performed in other states. But the issue will continue to be one of the most divisive issues in the history of this country since the civil rights movement.
