Obama Announces limited benefits to gay federal employees
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President Barack Obama’s announcement Wednesday offering limited benefits to the same-sex partners of federal employees failed to quell growing anger in the gay community that gay rights issues were getting short shrift at the White House.
In fact, Obama’s promise to offer ancillary employee benefits — such as long-term-care insurance and the right to use sick leave to care for domestic partners — while still denying more valuable benefits, such ashealthinsuranceand retirement funds, may have further agitated gay and lesbian activists who were already fuming over other perceived snubs.
Obama said he also favors extending health and retirement benefits to same-sex partners of federal employees but that such a move is currently prohibited by the Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, which passed in 1996.
“Are they kidding us? Domestic partnership benefits WITHOUT health insurance because of DOMA?” gay fundraiser and activist David Mixner told POLITICO in an e-mail. “It is like rubbing salt in the wound.”
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0609/23868.html#ixzz0InkQJE9Q&D
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