Health, insurance missing from Obama’s same-sex benefits plan

President Barack Obama will sign an executive memorandum this evening extending benefits to same-sex partners of federal employees, but the extension will likely not include the two benefits considered most important: Health insurance and retirement pensions.

The announcement has already drawn some harsh criticism from the gay-rights movement, who describe it as too little, and perhaps too late.

The policy change is being described by many commentators as an attempt to “placate” the gay and lesbian community over a series of controversial decisions Obama has made over the past six months, from the choice of the anti-gay Rev. Rick Warren as the pastor presiding over Obama’s inauguration, to the administration’s reluctance to change the Army’s “don’t ask don’t tell” policy, to — most recently — the Justice Department’s defense of the Defense of Marriage Act, an anti-gay law,  in a California legal challenge. The Justice Department brief in that case compared gay marriage to incest and underage marriage.

From MSNBC’s First Read:

This move, however, seems mostly about placating gay-rights advocates who have been angered by 1) the administration’s hesitance in overturning “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”; 2) its brief defending the Defense of Marriage Act, which Obama has promised to repeal; and 3) Obama’s invitation of Rev. Rick Warren to deliver the prayer at the inauguration. In fact, some wealthy gay supporters of Obama have become so mad that they’re taking their names off an upcoming Biden fundraiser. Of course, the Obama White House has been very reluctant to get involved in cultural issues, and it seems intent on avoiding all the early mistakes Bill Clinton made (like “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”). Yet today’s presidential memo is a reactive attempt to quell the anger coming from the gay community. But even the memo doesn’t seem to go far enough for gay-rights advocates.

While the new policy is seen as a reaction, in particular, to the anger over the Justice Department DOMA brief, the decision to exclude health and retirement benefits may itself be an attempt to skirt DOMA rules over what the federal government can offer to gay couples.

Markos Moulitsas at Daily Kos points out that, without health and retirement benefits, the most important benefit the federal government is extending to its gay employees is relocation assistance. “The DNC needs to reschedule next week’s gay fundraiser until after the administration gets its act together on its plan for gay rights,” he concludes. “I’m pretty confident the administration eventually will, but until it does, out of simple common courtesy, it should refrain from treating the gay community like an ATM.”

Some commentators attribute the Obama administration’s unwillingness to engage in the gay-rights issue to a White House plate already full with the economic crisis and two foreign wars.

Others are defending Obama’s move as a first step in the right direction. The president is starting to live up to his obligations to the gay community “starting today,” gay-rights activist Mike Rogers told MSNBC’s Savannah Guthrie earlier today.  ”I think what happened was there was a huge brouhaha with a huge lesbian and gay fund-raiser happening next week for the Democratic National Committee. When people started pulling out I think that it woke up the administration to realize this is serious and to do exactly what President Obama has been wanting us to do.”

This video is from MSNBC’s News Live, broadcast June 17, 2009.

Download video via RawReplay.com

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