The Obama administration is offering a few crumbs of partner benefits to gay and lesbian federal employees, but not the ones that really count – health insurance and pension benefits.
President Barack Obama signed a memorandum that allows LGBT federal employees to take sick leave to take care of domestic partners and non-biological, non-adopted children. It also authorizes a limited series of benefits to the spouses of foreign service officers, as announced earlier by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
The June 17 White House event was essentially a photo opportunity for the President with invited guests from the LGBT community. The official transcript of the President's remarks ran four minutes in length and contained one use of LGBT; the words gays or lesbians were not spoken.
Obama also announced his support for the Domestic Partners Benefits and Obligations Act, which will extend more benefits to LGBT federal employees. Rep Tammy Baldwin ( D-Wisconsin ) , Sen. Joe Lieberman ( I-Connecticut ) and others are championing that bill.
"Among the steps we have not yet taken is to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act ( DOMA ) . I believe it's discriminatory, I think it interferes with states' rights, and we will work with Congress to overturn it," the President said.
John Berry, director of the Office of Personnel Management and the highest ranking openly gay member of the Obama administration, held a telephone news conference with reporters earlier that afternoon to explain the changes. He immediately ran into a wall of skepticism from gay and mainstream reporters alike.
Berry admitted that as a federal employee nearly two decades ago he was allowed to take sick leave to care for his partner who was dying of AIDS. He said, the difference is that the memorandum makes it "no longer optional but mandatory … [ it is no longer ] subject to the whims of a supervisor."
Neither the President nor Berry offered a timeline for moving forward on repeal of DOMA. When pressed on it, Berry twice fell back on the need to get "218 votes in the House and 60 in the Senate." Even a simple majority in the Senate was not enough by his calculation; the boogeyman of a possible Republican filibuster was the defining characteristic that kept Democrats from acting.
His response ignored the fact that often – in every instance to date with LGBT legislation – a bill is introduced for the purpose of holding hearings to educate members of Congress and move the debate forward. A vote is often years, sometimes decades, in the future.
Berry said the federal government was making these minimal changes "so that we can be competitive in the marketplace and attract the best and the brightest" workforce. He did not say how remaining deficiencies of not including the most substantive benefits, such as health insurance and pensions, would allow it to be competitive.
Rea Carey, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, called the memo "a building block toward full equality." But, "Much more remains to be done in order for the administration to live up to the promises of equality the President made as a candidate on the campaign trail."
Dale Carpenter, a gay law professor writing on the popular legal blog The Volokh Conspiracy, called the event "brief and perfunctory." He noted. "Obama's rhetoric was at odds with his own Justice Department's brief , filed late last week, defending the constitutionality of DOMA."