Arizona takes back gifts it gave unmarried couples
Among the news reports filtering in during Unmarried and Single Americans Week, it is upsetting to find that the state of Arizona has rescinded the domestic partnership benefits it had just recently extended to state employees.
Although DP benefits are often wrongly described as a “gay rights” issue, the article points out that more than 3/4 of the employees receiving benefits were in different-sex couples. That fits what we hear all over. In 2006 the NYC media reported that different-sex couples made up 3/4 of NYC registered domestic partners.
In fact, Pablo, the AtMP intern working on plus-one benefits for federal employees, discovered these facts about state employees:
- Washington State – The Human Resources Department reported a positive boost in recruitment and retention since instituting benefits for both same- and different-sex partners.
- Vermont – the earliest state to champion equal benefits for both same-sex and different-sex partners, it found initial, marginal increases in premium costs but ultimately saw no effect on state costs.
- New York State – covers over 4,880 employees’ domestic partners, and the majority of these are different-sex partners. New York reports that the plan has been easy to implement.
