In a historic California breakthrough that will reverberate nationwide, gay and lesbian workers are being equally included--right from the start--in a major new benefit program intended to ensure that employees can afford to take time off to care for a family member.
California's paid family medical leave-- the first of its kind in the nation--will enable workers who voluntarily pay into a newly created insurance program to receive up to half of their normal salary for up to six weeks if they need to stay home to care for a newborn or adopted child, or tend to a seriously ill child, domestic partner, spouse or parent.
Democratic Gov. Gray Davis signed the family-friendly benefit into law Sept. 23 after businesses won concessions, including that they won't be forced to chip in and that workers can be required to use two weeks of vacation before going on paid family leave. California's new program, which other states are already eyeing, marks a wonderful milestone in the push to help all sorts of families cope with new children or health crises without being ruined financially.
The California breakthrough provides an encouraging window into the future: Those of us who are gay will be included from the start, rather than having to later fight for rights and benefits that our heterosexual counterparts already enjoy. Opposition to paid family leave focused on the potential hardship for businesses, not on the fact that it treated gay couples fairly. And, unlike in Hawaii and Vermont, where gay couples have won marriage-like rights, California's legislature included us matter-of-factly, rather than under court pressure.
The new law highlights the sea change happening in influential, trend-setting California. Davis' election in 1998, after 16 years of hostile Republican governors, opened the door to incremental change. The state's legislature and voters have become increasingly gay-friendly.
And much of the state's progress--including the nation's first statewide registry for domestic partners and the extension of more than a dozen key marriage-like rights to them--has been spearheaded by lesbian lawmakers.
"It's a different universe here than four years ago," says Geoff Kors, director of the California Alliance for Pride and Equality. "In California, we really have won the battle in public opinion that translates into electing people who represent the public's wishes by treating same-gender couples as spouses."
What's next? The governor's staff will be studying Vermont's experience with civil unions, a legal status that gives gay couples all the state-level rights and responsibilities of marriage. While California civil unions are likely at least a few years away, state Senate President John Burton and Assembly Speaker Herb J. Wesson Jr. already support same-sex marriage.
Since Vermont created civil unions in 2000, civil union measures have been introduced in five state legislatures, including California's. But no state could make a bigger gay-rights splash than gigantic California. If that titan embraces civil unions, naysayers won't be able to dismiss the move as just being done on a holiday island or in a teensy state best known for tasty ice cream.
The dramatic changes we're seeing in California, which is trending more Democratic, will be felt nationally. A staggering one out of every eight Americans lives in the state. It has the largest voting bloc in the 435-seat U.S. House, rising to 53 members next January. Rep. Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco has a good shot at becoming the next Democratic leader of the House. And any Democratic presidential hopeful must carry California in order to win the White House.
So, as California moves more and more toward treating its gay men and lesbians just like other folks, we can expect not just other states but also the federal government to gradually follow its marvelous example.
Equality is the American dream. And California just might become the dream state.
