Chicago Tribune (CT) - MONDAY November 8, 1993 Edition: NORTH SPORTS FINAL Section: BUSINESS Page: 3 Word Count: 1,013
Jean Latz Griffin, Tribune Public Health Writer

Wives, husbands or significant others of the employees-all the folks who also have been affected by Sony's sometimes-unruly schedules-are included in the trip.

Last year Gary Link took Rick Dean, his partner of five years.

"As the only gay person in the office, I was made to feel very comfortable about bringing Rick along," Link said. "People said, 'We want you to know that Rick is included, that we want him to be there.' They made both of us feel very accepted."

The company's handling of the trip reflects Sony's nationwide anti-discrimination policy, which includes sexual orientation and is backed up by regular reminder memos from headquarters, says Link, marketing coordinator.

Giving "domestic partners" the same benefits that married partners receive-among them health insurance, pension benefits, relocation expenses, trips, employee discounts, reduced tuition or health-club memberships-is the latest issue being tackled by gay and lesbian activists and the newest challenge facing many corporations and insurance companies.

A trend that began slowly a few years ago with Ben & Jerry's Homemade Inc. of Waterbury, Vt., and Lotus Development Corp. in Cambridge, Mass., has picked up speed as more gay and lesbian employees ask their employers for the benefits.

And with health insurance the most costly benefit, their chances of success are bolstered by early reports that the cost of insuring domestic partners is not any higher than insuring conventional spouses. The City of Seattle, for example, has had three years experience with extending full medical, dental and life insurance benefits to domestic partners of city workers. The costs are actually slightly less than providing such coverage to married partners, said Sally Fox, benefits manager for the city.

Two insurance companies that originally charged more for Seattle's domestic-partner policies have dropped the surcharge, Fox said, and one company that at first would not insure Seattle's domestic partners has signed on.

"What they feared was that employees would sign up their sick and dying friends as domestic partners, and that clearly isn't happening," Fox said.

In Chicago, the University of Chicago extended full benefits to domestic partners of its faculty, staff and students in January. As well, a city ordinance that would extend a three-day bereavement leave to a city employee upon the death of a domestic partner has passed out of a City Council committee.

Sony hasn't extended health-care benefits to domestic partners yet, Link said, but added that he has been told "it is being talked about." For now, Dean can use Link's employee discount, and if Dean became ill, Link could take time off to visit him.

The push for domestic-partner benefits is not a request for special privileges, but a demand for fairness, say advocates for such policies.

With benefits making up an average 37 percent of an employee's compensation, according to a 1989 U.S. Commerce Department report, employees who cannot include their partners in those benefits are actually paid less than those who can, said Ed Mickens, editor of a newletter dealing with gay and lesbian employment issues.

In Chicago, the law firm of Schiff, Harden and Waite is in its first year of extending full benefits to the domestic partners of its employees. The policy was instituted after Ann Rae Heitland, a trial lawyer and partner in the firm, asked for health insurance for her domestic partner.

"I had been helping to pay for the health insurance for my law partners' spouses, so I went to them and asked for this for my spousal equivalent," said Heitland. "They said, 'That sounds fair,' and it happened." Eileen Pender, director of human resources for the law firm, said the domestic-partner policy only applies to same-sex couples because other couples could marry if they chose to. The domestic partners must be financially interdependent and unrelated.

"It's working fine," Pender said. "It's really a non-issue for us."

But it is a major issue for critics who fear that extending domestic-partner benefits will be costly and will give the impression that a company condones homosexuality.

Cost is likely to be the easier of the two concerns for gays and lesbians to counter.

For those companies, cities and universities that have domestic-partner plans, costs have been lower than anticipated because fewer employees than expected signed up and the much-feared higher costs due to AIDS haven't materialized.

Fears of increased costs due to AIDS have been unfounded because the illness is not as expensive to treat or as common as many other illnesses, said Stephen T. Moskey, director of consumer issues for Aetna Life & Casualty Co. in Hartford. Aetna covers domestic partners for its clients who are self-insured.

The average lifetime cost of treating someone through HIV infection to death from AIDS is about $120,000, Moskey said, compared with a $250,000 cost of caring for some premature babies. In 1991 the national cost for breast cancer was $7 billion; for AIDS it was $5.8 billion and for lung cancer it was $5.4 billion, Moskey said.

But opposition to putting same-sex unions on the same footing as heterosexual marriages is likely to continue.

In fact, in what is thought to be the first time anti-gay politicians have mounted a campaign against a private company that offers health-care benefits to the same-sex partners of employees, two county commissioners in Williamson County near Austin, Texas, are trying to block Apple Computer Inc. from obtaining tax benefits for a customer support service center.

Apple extended domestic-partner benefits to gays and lesbians in February, and spokesman Bill Keegan said Apple won't back down.

CAPTION: Photo: Domestic partners Rick Dean and Gary Link, a Sony employee, attended a Sony trip together last year. Link said they were made to feel comfortable. Tribune photo by Milbert Orlando Brown.

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