Published in OUTLINES, Lambda Publications ( which is now Windy City Media Group )
You know those moments when you come up with the perfect comeback to something someone has said ¯days after theyÂ've said it? IÂ've just had that experience. Again. Big time. Let me set this up so you understand my chagrin at this disaster of timing.
Things were set in motion for this event about seven months ago when, for some reason, I decided to leave the sheltered, rarefied world of academic publishing for corporate life. Well, I had some very good reasons, actually. But I had had trouble with the rigidity of the corporate world when I worked there before¯what made me think that after 17 years of wearing shorts and tÂshirts to work corporate life was going to be more palatable to me now? I went from having my own office with windows, to a cubicle I shared with someone in which whole cycles of weather ( rain, sleet, snow, sun ) passed in a typical Chicago day without me ever knowing it. Despite the fact that I worked with some wonderful people there, this venture was clearly doomed from the start. I donÂ't think it came as a particular surprise to anyone, therefore, that when my old boss called and asked me to come back I said yes, thereby prompting the official exit interview. It was at the exit interview that my brain failed me.
Among the reasons I mentioned for wanting to terminate my relationship with NTC/Contemporary Publishing, which is owned by the Tribune Company, was that they did not offer domestic partnership to their queer employees. The personnel gal then said, "Well, did your old job offer domestic partnership?" To which I was able to reply that, "Yes, as a matter of fact they did." It was her response at this point that tripped me up: "It sounds like youÂ're going to the right place, then, since almost no big businesses offer domestic partnership." I knew this statement wasnÂ't true, but not having all the facts and figures at my fingertips, I could offer nothing more than a lame, "But more and more businesses are offering domestic partnership." If that interview had only taken place a few weeks later, she could never have gotten away with that statement with me: when United Airlines announced that they were offering domestic partnership, an article came out in the Chicago Tribune, ironically enough, setting forth all the information I would have needed to metaphorically kick her butt on the DP question.
To begin with, John Schmeitzer, in his Aug. 4 article, points out that "hundreds of companies across the country¯ranging from blue chips such as AT&T Corp., IBM Corp., and BankAmerica Corp. to highÂtech startups and cable televisionsÂ' Cartoon Network" all offer a variety of insurance and other benefits to the sameÂsex partners of its employees.
He goes on to point out that in Illinois alone, 24 companies and associations, four colleges and universities, and three governmental bodies have extended domestic partnership benefits to their queer employees. Not only was my exit interviewer wrong, she was so wrong. I am thinking of sending her a copy of both this column and SchmeitzerÂ's article. While doing so wonÂ't do me any good, what with me being safe back in the bosom of the equalityÂminded nonprofit world, I think of all my gay friends who are still there and the others I never knew.
What is particularly irritating about the whole thing¯beyond my not having been able to verbally skewer her argument on the spot¯is that the columnists and opinion editors who write for the Trib have long advocated the rightness of providing domesticÂpartnership benefits for sameÂsex couples, who, after all, have been barred from legally marrying and therefore donÂ't have access to the same rights as heterosexuals in longÂterm committed relationships.
ItÂ's irritating because it would be easy for the uninitiated to believe, therefore, that the Tribune Company itself offers such benefits. In fact, of course, the truth is very different. Not only do they not offer such benefits, but they speak dismissively and patronizingly to their employees who talk to them about the importance of offering such benefits. ItÂ's my belief that eventually we will get the same benefits as married people because we, too, who are just as capable of committed, caring relationships as heteros, will be allowed to marry and that, until that time, increasing numbers of businesses, including the Tribune Company, will offer domesticÂpartnership benefits. And they will do this not only because itÂ's the right thing to do but also because, if they donÂ't, they will continue to lose some of their best and brightest: a recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, for instance, documented several cases of professors resigning from their universities because domesticÂpartnership benefits were not available.
The Tribune Company, IÂ'm sure, is hardly reeling from my defection. But they and all the other companies who are still discriminating against their homosexual employees in this way need to stop and think what kind of impact their compensation policies are having on who decides to apply for employment¯and whether they want to risk losing the many knowledgeable queers already in their employ.
Zipter can be reached via email: yzipter@journals.uchicago.edu .