GOP Chair, Gay RIghts Advocates Clash (New Haven Independent)
Thursday, October 2, 2008
By: Melissa Bailey

"I don't see the equality," Tina Pacheco called out to the chairman of the state Republican Party. "I'm yelling as loud as I can." The chairman stood his ground and drowned her out.

Pacheco said a lot is at stake — health benefits for the woman she loves.

Sitting on a couch in the back of the room with a gay pride necklace on, Pacheco relayed her complaint to the political veterans.

Pacheco, of Stamford, works in the patent office of a chemical manufacturing company. After being hired, she approached the human resources office to try to add her civil union partner, Jess Roberts, to her health care plan. The company denied her request, according to Pacheco. She was told only heterosexual spouses can sign up for company health benefits, not partners by civil union.

“I felt like a brick wall just got slammed in my face,” said Pacheco.

She asked why the legislature won’t require companies to give civil union partners the same benefits that married couples by mandating equal health care benefits.

The truth, according to Anne Stanback, director of the Love Makes a Family marriage rights advocacy group, is that employees who work for the state, or who work for a company with a state-regulated health care plan, are guaranteed that benefit. Some companies, however, have health insurance plans that are governed by federal E.R.I.S.A. laws, she said, in which case no equal benefits clause for marriage and civil unions is mandated.

Connecticut legalized civil unions between homosexual couples in October 2005. Like many other couples, Pacheco and Roberts found that the new bond did not bring the same rights as marriage. She said she’s found discrimination at hospitals, where misinformation may lead to denial of equal rights.

Healy, who appeared to be the sole Republican in the room, responded that the civil union law had been a compromise.

“When you settle for half a loaf…” Healy started to say.

“We didn’t settle!” cried a voice in the room.

“Straight people settled for us!” cried another.

Mandating that employers extend equal benefits to civil unions as they do to married couples “is just not something that we support,” said Healy. He said he believes in the “free market,” where less regulation is better, and those who treat employees best are able to retain them.

He said he opposes creating a mandate: “There is a cost to that that, as Republicans, we feel is not in the best interest of a society for an economy to grow.”

“I don’t agree that the government is the main arbiter of everything,” he added.

A man stood up and asked if heterosexual couples, who are granted rights by government-sanctioned marriage, should then be stripped of their benefits, by Healy’s logic.

Healy responded by steering the conversation back to gay marriage.

“I believe marriage is a unique cultural institution between a man and a woman,” Healy said. “That’s what I believe.”

He added that Democrats have a significant majority, 107 to 44 in the State House and 23 to 13 in the State Senate. Democrats could pass a gay marriage law if they wanted to, he said: “We’re not stopping anything.”

Back to the question at hand, DiNardo stepped in to address Pacheco’s point.

“If it [a health plan] is offered to heterosexual couples, then I think it should be offered to civil union couples,” she said. “That’s discrimination in my mind.”

The room broke out in applause.

Taking the mike again after a not-so-gentle questioner pressed him on civil unions not being equal to marriage, Healy repeated his point.

“I just don’t agree with you. I’m sorry,” Healy said. “Marriage is between a man and a woman.”

“That’s not the question, dude!” interjected a woman near the front row.

Healy tried again: “If you think that someone is being discriminating,” he advised, “then file a lawsuit against them and win.” Mandating benefits for civil union couples would be costly, making it “impossible” for small employers to survive, he argued.

Pacheco stood up to object. Healy, who had the mic, stood up too, his voice drowning hers out.

“You chose to work for them,” he told her. “Why is it our right to tell your employer how to treat you?” he asked. “If they’re not covering you, you don’t have to work for them, do you?”

A woman in a purple shirt fired a follow up: You don’t want government to intervene, yet “you tell employers constantly, don’t discriminate” on race and gender, she said. “Why do you draw the line … on same-sex issues?”

Healy, took a tone of resignation. “We don’t’ see this issue in the same comparable terms,” he said. “I’m just talking about the benefit issue. … I don’t see health care benefits as a civil rights issue.”

With that, the sparks faded and the debate turned to a tactical political question, one that wasn’t asking the state party heads to defend the actions of the legislature.

The evening ended on conciliatory terms, both leaders urging the crowd to get more involved in the political process.

As she got up from the couch, Pacheco said she didn’t feel any better about her health care situation. She said it didn’t feel good to be told that, if she wanted health benefits for her partner, to just get a different job.

“It sounds like he’s saying you’re shit out of luck,” Pacheco said. “Especially in this economy, you can’t just up and change jobs.”

“I just know that Republicans aren’t there for me,” she concluded. Well, she added, she already felt that way — “it’s just nice to see them say it to my face.”

She said Republicans are happy to stay “out of my business” when it suits them, but not when it doesn’t — like creating the Defense of Marriage Act that defined marriage as between a man and a woman. Republicans aren’t laissez faire. “You are in my bed right now, laying between us,” she said.

Reached on his way home to Wethersfield, Healy clarified his position on Pacheco’s concern.

“With all the back and forth, I misunderstood the question,” said Healy.

“If they’re entitled” to the benefits, then employees should get their due, Healy said.
He said he has “no problem,” either, with a state law that requires employers that use state insurance plans to extend equal health benefits to civil unioned and married couples alike. If employees are denied the benefits they’re entitled to, that discrimination should be addressed, he said.

Healy said he does take issue with employees demanding benefits from employers beyond what they’re entitled to: “I do have a problem with, going in, if you know what you’re entitled to, if you just decide, ‘Well I think I should get this.’”

He said the position is his personal one, not that of the party. As head of the party, he articulates the party’s values, he said. “My role is not to get too fine a point.”