India’s single women resist stigma, demand rights
A must-read article from Women’s ENews! quick highlights:
Formerly-married women in India outnumber the entire population of Canada. Ever-single women haven’t even been counted. But 58,000 women belong to single women’s organizations in 8 of India’s federated states. These organizations have lobbied for economic support, equal pay, and the right not to be burned as witches.
The article includes several organizations’ names and link – I hope our many readers in India will follow up with them!
News roundup for the new year
Several AtMP members around the county used their winter holidays to scour the news for interesting stories about marriage and its alternatives. Here are just a few of the many worth talking about:
Ann was the first to spot the efforts of different-sex unmarried couples to be included in domestic partner coverage being offered to employees of the U.S. State Department. (Yay! if you have a connection to Mr. Howard or Ms. Ros-Lehtinen, please let us know!) According to the L.A. Times,
Supporters of extending benefits to unmarried heterosexuals include such key Congress members as House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Howard L. Berman (D-Valley Village) and the committee’s top Republican, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida.
Thomas was the first to point out the ironies of Karl Rove’s divorce, as Rove worked to build connections between the Bush II administration and religious/political figures who favored marriage promotion.
Stephanie was the first to share the news that Virginia’s statewide Advance Health Care Directive Registry is set to go live for individuals on February 17, 2010.
Marisa pointed out CNN’s approach to covering the “people get married for health insurance” story. Hardly news, but a good summary of the issues with lots of relevant and not too obnoxious comments.
I really appreciate AtMP members sending these tips, which always go beyond what I catch via key words on Google Alerts. I also pick up interesting news from other organizations’ email lists. Just before the new year, folks at Smartmarriages shared the Onion’s trenchant predictions on cohabitation, and Women’s Enews publicized fascinating legal reforms around marriage and divorce in Uganda and Nepal.
Happy Holidays to everyone on our family tree*
Season’s Greetings from the Alternatives to Marriage Project
May Your New Year be Merry and Bright!
*The Census estimates that, from 2006-2008, in all the homes in the U.S., 27% were occupied by people living alone (15% women and 12% men); 27% by married couples without children; 23% by spouses with children; 5% by unmarried different-sex couples and 1% same-sex couples (with or without kids); and 17% were completely different kinds of friends and families.
AtMP’s e-newsletter is now online
This morning, AtMP members world-wide received our email newsletter. You can read it here.
If you’d like to comment on an article or send a letter to the editor, please click “Comments” below.
Possible plus-one benefits for VA state workers
Virginia’s Department of Human Resource Management is considering a regulation that would create plus-one health insurance for state employees. Sounds very exciting, but there’s a catch. Benefits for employees’ spouses would be paid for by the state, but employees who share their benefits with Other Qualifying Adults would have to pay the entire premium themselves, from after-tax dollars. Thanks to Meaghan for the tip and Pablo for the research!
(I’d really like AtMP to submit comments while this regulation is being debated, and help members in VA do so as well. But, year-end fundraising takes precedence over everything else on my desk. You can help AtMP focus on policy instead of funding by making a tax-deductible donation today!)
Marriage vote in NY… what more can we say?
The topic of same-sex marriage has been covered so many times, there’s not much more to say. But I do like the way AtMP supporter and Columbia Law professor Katherine Franke puts it.
Every child deserves a family
Over 129,000 foster children in the U.S. are hoping to be adopted. However, some people who want to be parents are currently being kept from fulfilling their dream of adopting a child, solely because of their marital status. Many of these individuals would be great parents, they just need to be given that chance.
Each potential parent should be screened carefully, just like any other. Only the best interests of each child should determine who is right for them.
The recently proposed Every Child Deserves a Family Act would require states and agencies to treat all children and families equally.
TAKE ACTION: Tell Congress all foster children need homes now!
For more information, read a personal story by AtMP member, Freddie O’Connell. Read a press release and full text of the bill. Visit our main adoption page.
Two steps forward, one back for domestic partners
If you live in Washington DC you probably know this already, but it’s worth celebrating the fact that the DC Council decided not to shut down its domestic partnership registry. Congratulations and thank you to all the AtMP members who emailed the Council, and especially to Board Chair Meaghan Lamarre for testifying at the Council hearing.
If you follow health care reform, you might have heard that the House bill would end taxation of DP benefits (making them the cost equivalent of spousal benefits). Several news reports made it sound like this would apply only to same-sex domestic partners. This is a BIG peeve of mine. Why does the media (and the LBGT rights movement) consistently ignore people in different-sex partnerships (many of whom identify as B and T!)? Rest assured, the law applies equally to all partners. Many thanks to Pablo the intern for fact checking!
And thanks to Bruce and Marshall for bringing to my attention that domestic partners lost a legislative battle in Rhode Island. They sought the right to make funeral arrangements without being designated in writing in advance.
[Jan. 12, 2010 - a quick update: the RI legislature overrode the governor's veto on funeral arrangements.]
Totally aside, I’m fascinated that the phrase for ‘two steps forward, one step back’ in Afganistan is “Ten times we fought, two times we laughed.” Seems to me, 2-1 = 1, but 2-10= (-8). Another reason I’m grateful not to be in Afganistan.
Think tank echoes AtMP’s health reform proposals
This year AtMP really stepped up its efforts to raise awareness about the impact of marital status on access to health care. For example, we submitted comments to the Senate Finance Committee in May, and started distributing fact sheets to a variety of health care reform advocates in July. It’s a daunting task: there are so many complicated aspects of health care, and so many organizations working on it. Just when I started to get discouraged, we achieved a dramatic success!
The Center for America Progress, a progressive think tank, incorporated several of AtMP’s policy recommendations at the end of its analysis about how the House of Representatives’ health reform package will help unmarried women.
While not on the table in the current debate, some additional policy proposals that would address the discrimination in health insurance coverage based on marital status include:
- Plus-one and/or household plans. Encourage or require employers and exchanges to treat two adults the same regardless of relation or marital status, which would allow unmarried women to support their loved ones just as married partners do.
- Domestic partners are provided coverage at many firms, but these should be defined broadly as same-sex or opposite-sex partners. Similarly, the definition of “family” should not be limited to an individual plus his/her spouse and dependents, but should include unmarried interdependent adults, such as domestic partners.
- COBRA. Employers are currently not required to provide COBRA continuing coverage to domestic partners or other adult nonspouses when the primary insured loses his or her job. Rather, all persons who were previously eligible under an employer’s plan should continue to be eligible under COBRA.
- Divorce and separation. Changes in marital status should not result in automatic loss of insurance for anyone covered as a dependent, unless both primary and dependent parties agree.
Letter to the Update editor: pregnancy was prerequisite to marriage
Thanks for the latest electronic issue of AtMP Update. I would like to respond to Teri Hu’s article.
While Teri makes some good points, I think it would also have been worth pointing out that there has been, and is, a considerable variation in attitudes towards pre-marital pregnancy. While I agree with her point that in the times she mentions it was largely ignored if the couple got married, it is also worth noting that in many cultures and time periods it was not only condoned but EXPECTED as a pre-condition of marriage, either officially or not. Most “primitive” cultures, and pre-industrial agricultural societies tended to expect that a couple would start “seeing” each other and then make it “official” when she got pregnant. (And that the relationship would break up if she didn’t get pregnant within a reasonable time.) This was largely because children were a valuable resource, and a couple would want to prove that they were mutually fertile before engaging in a long term commitment. This even applied in early “straight-laced” America – analysis of birth and marriage records from the colonial periods seemed to show quite clearly that 70% or more of all marriages happened when she was expecting.
The key thing to those cultures seemed to be however that the marriages were more recognizing an already existing, stable and monogamous relationship, or at least one that was presented as such.
One can question whether there is a difference between a marriage that is a recognition of what already exists, or something that is at least pretended to be a prerequisite to a change in lifestyle.
– Arthur, from MA (My GF and I have been happily unmarried for 15+ years now, though we haven’t yet managed
to pull off the pregnancy outside of marriage trick – not for lack of trying.)
