More federal benefits for LGBT families located

Sherlock Obama is on the case.

Yesterday, Attorney General Eric Holder led a Pride ceremony at the Justice Department and today, President Obama will greet LGBT Americans at a White House Pride Month Reception. Good week. However, its really been a good month to be queer, with the Federal Government making moves to sniff out and secure dozens of benefits for lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender headed families–especially for same-sex couples where one partner works for the Federal Government. How? Elementary, my dear Watson!

First, in April, the President announced plans to order hospitals to grant visitation rights to same-sex partners. This was followed by the extension of Federal Employee benefits to same-sex partners of Federal workers and the Justice Department applying intimate partner protections in the Violence Against Women Act to same-sex couples all in early June.

The biggest news yet came last night when sources revealed that Secretary of Labor, Hilda Solis planned a Wednesday announcement requiring employers extend some of the benefits of the 1993 Family and Medical Leave Act to same-sex partner headed households. It seems that the Federal Government is sleuthing through the law and finding tiny bits and pieces of benefits that the Defense of Marriage Act does not prevent them from offering. According to Chris Geidner of MetroWeekly:

“Changes to be announced on Wednesday regarding expansion of family leave benefits for gay and lesbian families will be limited to an expansion related to individuals who are the non-legal, non biological parents of their same-sex partner’s children, a person familiar with the coming changes told Metro Weekly on Monday evening.

[...]

The changes will be limited to allowing individuals who are the non-legal, non biological parents of their same-sex partner’s children to take FMLA leave to care for those children, according to the person.

The changes, the person said, also would apply if one’s partner is having a child that is not the person’s child biologically or legally or if a person’s same-sex partner is adopting a child and the person, due to state law, doesn’t have a legal relationship to that child.”

Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-NY) introduced a bill called the Family and Medical Leave Inclusion Act to allow workers to take leave to care for a domestic partner or a same-sex spouse by amending the FMLA. The bill would expand the definition of “spouse” to include “a same-sex spouse as determined under applicable state law.” This would be the best choice, however, seeing our Detective in Chief trying his best to find the little loopholes in DOMA is heartening.

But its not all joy in Mudville.

Sunday we also learned that Defense Secretary Gates confirmed that the presence of language repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” in the Defense Authorization bill will not prevent the President from vetoing the bill if the Senate does not remove certain spending provisions. If I were a DADT repeal advocate, I’d be on the phone with my Senator right now telling them to pull out the funding of the C-17 and the alternative engine for joint strike fighter so that a veto is avoided. Now is the time to partner with those groups that are also vying to cut funding for those programs.

All is not terrible, however. Rahm Emanuel is quitting!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010 at 6:36 am and is filed under Politics & Activism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.