News

By Hilary White
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  CINCINNATI, July 25, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The Cincinnati Post reports that most of the region’s major employers offer the same benefits package to co-habiting homosexual partners as to legally married couples.
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  While the federal government deliberates on a constitutional amendment prohibiting same-sex “marriage” and individual states are being turned into legal battlefields, businesses and service organizations across the country have been quietly rendering the struggle moot for years.
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  The Post reports that Procter & Gamble, Health Alliance, Toyota and Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, Ashland, Federated Department Stores, Delta Air Lines and E.W. Scripps all offer marriage or domestic partner benefits to employees.
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  This is despite the fact that in 2004, Ohio passed one of the strongest prohibitions against equating in any way homosexual partnerings with true marriage. The law not only prohibits the state from recognizing as legitimate gay “marriages,” but forbids benefits for “domestic partners” for state employees, including cohabiting heterosexual couples.
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  The legal ban in Ohio does not put a prohibition on such benefits in private companies.
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  The ban likely does affect publicly funded universities, however. The Post reports that Ohio’s Miami University is being sued by Republican state Rep. Tom Brinkman of Cincinnati to halt its recently established domestic partner benefits policy.
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  Lawmakers in Kentucky are considering legislation that would prohibit marriage or marriage-like employee benefits at public universities in response to the decision of University of Louisville to offer the same kind of benefits.
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  The Post quotes the homosexual lobby organization, Human Rights Campaign, that says some 9,000 companies and 300 colleges and universities extend benefits to employees’ same-sex partners.
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  Read related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:
  Ohio Passes Strongest Same-Sex ‘Marriage’ Ban in U.S.
  https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2004/jan/04012306.htmlÂ