Same-sex domestic partners of gay and lesbian professors at Pennsylvania's 14 state-owned universities will soon be eligible for health-care benefits.
The Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education pledged in a tentative contract with its faculty union to extend health benefits to same-sex partners of faculty members for couples who can prove they are financially interdependent, faculty-union president Pat Heilman said last week.
Heilman has said the health benefits will help the state universities recruit both gay faculty members and straight professors who support gay rights.
Some conservative groups, such as the American Family Association of Pennsylvania, have spoken out against the proposed benefits, claiming that the same-sex partners engage in activities that will make providing health care for them costly.
But PASSHE says the health benefits will cost the system only about $350,000 a year, out of a yearly budget of more than $1 billion.
The 2003 contract between PASSHE and the faculty union provided for family sick leave and funeral leave for professors with same-sex partners, but would only offer health benefits if the Pennsylvania Employees Benefit Trust Fund also extended the benefits to other state employees. The trust fund still has not offered the health benefits, and has no plans to do so in the immediate future.
The contract is expected to be ratified by the union members and the PASSHE Board of Governors in three to four weeks.
At Penn, same-sex domestic partners of professors have received health benefits since July 1994, Vice President for Human Resources Jack Heuer said.
- Emily Babay
