Extended Family Member
Christine Delsol March/April 1998
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Though widely known as the nation's gay mecca, San Francisco is also heavily Catholic, with an estimated 25 percent of its 735,000 residents looking to Rome (to some degree or another) for guidance in matters of faith and morality. Thus, in a city that has never hesitated to legislate social policy, a collision of nationwide proportions was inevitable.
That collision finally came when the board of supervisors passed a law in November 1996 that required all businesses and organizations seeking contracts with the city to extend the same benefits to gay and straight unmarried couples that it grants to spouses (the city already grants benefits to domestic partners of its workers). The new law, approved by a 10-0 vote at the urging of board of supervisors members Tom Ammiano, Susan Leal, and Leslie Katz, all gay, requires all companies and organizations that provide goods and services to the city to grant benefits to domestic partners of their employees.
The law, which took effect June 1, 1997, extends an existing ordinance forbidding city contractors from discriminating on the basis of race, gender, or sexual preference. Drafted by members of the Harvey Milk Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual Democratic Club, the extension prohibits city agencies from doing business with any contractor "that discriminates in the provision of benefits between employees with domestic partners and employees with spouses." Up to 10,000 businesses are affected.
At first, resistance came primarily from small businesses concerned about the availability of such coverage from insurance carriers and about the expense of additional benefits. But a number of larger companies, including Lotus Development Corporation, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Levi Strauss, and the Hearst Corporation, had already instituted domestic partner benefits to attract employees or customers. Oil giant Chevron quickly announced it would extend domestic partner benefits to most of its employees by the end of the year, saying that while the new law had some effect on the move, it was basically a business decision.
In January, however, a letter from Archbishop William J. Levada of the Roman Catholic Church's Archdiocese of San Francisco asked that church-affiliated contractors be exempt from the law, saying that recognizing domestic partnerships violates the church's religious and ethical tenets (although the Vatican did soften its stance against homosexuals in April 1996, publishing an article in its newspaper urging Catholics to respect gays, that was a long way from sanctioning unmarried partnerships regardless of sexual orientation).
Both sides took up their moral gauntlets: Levada against being forced to support unmarried couples living together, which is immoral in the church's view, and the board of supervisors against doing business with any company or organization that engages in discrimination on the basis of sexual preference or marital status.
The archbishop asserted that forcing church-affiliated charities to adopt policies contrary to the church's teachings is illegal. "It may well be beyond the government's power," he said, "to ask an organization to contractually waive rights conferred by . . . the First and Fourteenth Amendments."
The supervisors' response was swift and unequivocal to the archbishop's request.
"This is city law," declared Ammiano, coauthor of the legislation. "No exemptions can be granted."
At the heart of his concern was Catholic Charities, a registered nonprofit organization enjoying tax-exempt status and receiving $5.6 million, or 40 percent of its $13.6 million annual budget, from the city of San Francisco. With about 300 employees, Catholic Charities serves 70,000 people a year in three Bay Area counties, offering counseling, food, housing, job training, AIDS care, foster- and day-care programs, and services for immigrants and the elderly.
The issue, many argued, wasn't that the city was trying to get a church to change its moral views or doctrines. No one was demanding that any government body be allowed to interfere with a church's religious beliefs and practices. Instead the argument centered on the fact that Catholic Charities is not a church per se, but an independent nonprofit organization receiving millions of dollars a year in taxpayer money-and it's in that capacity, not as a church, that it should not be granted the exemption.
"Catholic Charities has the status of a nonprofit charity, not a religious entity," said Leslie Katz. "Then they turn around and claim to be a religious
entity. . . . They can't have it both ways."
Ironically, Catholic Charities is the West Coast's largest provider of housing and hospice care for people with AIDS, a great many of whom are gay men. Besides Leland House, a 45-bed home that cares for men with AIDS, it runs four other residential programs, hospices, and shelters, as well as other counseling, rental, and food services. It has strong connections to the Bay Area's gay community, and many of its employees are gay. Also affected by the domestic partners law is Catholic Health Care West, which operates five Catholic hospitals in the Bay Area. It contracts with the city to provide health care to city workers.
The specter of withholding city funds from one of San Francisco's biggest charities unnerved city and church officials alike. Smaller religious charities, such as Glide Episcopal Sanctuary, the Salvation Army Sanctuary, Third Baptist Church, and Lutheran Social Services, would be hard-pressed to pick up the slack.
In February Catholic Charities and Catholic Health Care West brought a proposal to city officials: instead of mandating that they recognize domestic partnerships, this proposal would allow benefits to be offered to any second member of the worker's household, be it a spouse, other family member, roommate, whatever. Supporters said that wording would maintain the church's long-held support of universal health care without forcing the church to sanction unions outside of marriage.
At a press conference Archbishop Levada restated his belief that the ordinance was unconstitutional. He also threatened to sue.
"I am against government forcing church agencies to comply with laws that run counter to their religious principles," he said. Insisting that he is not anti-gay, he rejected the notion that the church discriminates against homosexual or unmarried heterosexual domestic partners if they do not receive the same benefits society has provided to married employees.
Though admitting that to lose city funds was "not an attractive option," Levada stated his position unequivocally: "To force the church to adopt a policy on the basis of activity which is contrary to its moral code is the heart of this problem." At the same time he expressed pastoral concern about what the denial of funds would mean to those the church ministers to.
"Would the poor of the city," he asked, "be better served by excluding Catholic Charities from using taxpayers' money to serve them?"
Just three days after the press conference, Levada, the mayor, and some supervisors met in private at archdiocese offices. They came out smiling a few hours later, for they had agreed to a compromise provision that allowed employees to pick any member of the household to receive the benefits, and if the
employer's policy covers children of married couples, it would also cover children of domestic partners.
"I give the archdiocese credit," said Ammiano. "When we went in to hammer it out, they were already prepared."
The provision states that an employee may "designate a legally domiciled member of the employee's household as being eligible for spousal-equivalent benefits."
This language has been incorporated in the guidelines for implementing the law and can be adopted by any contractor. A month later, in fact, the Bank of America, headquartered in the city, adopted a benefits program for "extended family members" that mirrors the church compromise. Pacific Gas and Electric Co., the utility serving most of northern California, soon followed suit, calling it a "good business decision" that would help it attract and retain employees. Wells Fargo bank came on board as well.
Even though the church's compromise language left the city's requirements intact, an Examiner reporter covering Levada's challenge called the compromise "a signal victory for the prelate in his first local dustup."
Levada, former archbishop of Portland, came to shepherd the San Francisco archdiocese's 93 parishes and 340,000 parishioners in October 1995 with a reputation as more conservative but also more gregarious than his predecessor, John R. Quinn. Until he crossed swords with the city over the domestic partners law, he stuck closely to church matters, although word among gay Catholics was that Levada had been dispatched to clean up the city's act, correcting a softness on abortion and homosexuality. Levada said that he had not consulted the Vatican before asking the city for exemption from the domestic partners law but had discussed the matter with Los Angeles cardinal Roger Mahoney and other California bishops.
In a published interview days after the compromise, Levada said he had a responsibility to raise the problems the church had with the city's law.
"If I don't raise them, who else will?" he said. "Down the road I would have been asked why I was quiet."
The new law has not made everyone happy. It was denounced by various conservative Christian groups around the country. It has also spanned some legal challenges.
United Airlines, which has a $13.4 million lease at San Francisco International Airport, balked at the requirement early on, and the city renewed the lease only after the airline agreed to review a policy of offering domestic partners benefits; the city said the benefits must be in place within two years. But the Air Transport Association, representing 22 carriers, sued in federal court to block the law.
In June another court challenge was filed by contractor PM&M Electric, Inc., based across the bay in Oakland, even though the firm has never done business with the city. The suit was filed on PM&M's behalf by the American Center for Law and Justice, a conservative organization founded by Pat Robertson. The complaint claimed that the goal of the ordinance is to "destroy traditional marriage (and) substitute whatever sexual arrangements are currently in vogue."
Whatever will happen with litigation, the language seems to be satisfying both sides. The church's compromise provision not only meets but exceeds city requirements, at the same time allowing the church to avoid official recognition of domestic partners, not unlike the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy. Despite avoiding overt recognition of live-in relationships between unmarried couples, the church's language clearly provides unmarried partners the same benefits spouses receive, prompting many to question whether it all came down to semantics. An editorial in the San Francisco Examiner called it "a distinction without a difference."
"By not necessarily saying spouse," Ammiano said, "but not necessarily saying not a spouse, it became more of a matter of personal choice within the household."
Martin Torow, director of Catholic Charities, said that his organization and the archdiocese have had a longstanding policy of promoting universal health care, and the new policy accomplishes that. The organization has obtained coverage from at least four health-care providers. Catholic Charities hasn't had a great number of requests for the new benefits, and economic impact has been minimal.
"I'm just glad," Torow said, "that we were successfully able to resolve it, and to get the actual insurance coverage, which was no little feat."
Christine Delsol is a freelance writer and part-time editor at the San Francisco Examiner