Discrimination straight up, nothing reverse about it

“Reverse discrimination” being an oxymoron typically used by bigots with a sense of entitlement, I expected to read of such a case when I saw this headline: “Prosser couple claims reverse discrimination.”

Turns out, by my lights, Charlene Honeycutt and Charles Weems were discriminated against. They live together and had until 2007 received healthcare benefits through Weems’ employer, Batelle Labs. The couple considered marrying, but that would have cost Honeycutt, a widow, her Social Security benefit from her dead husband. In October 2007, Honeycutt was just finishing up radiation treatments for breast cancer when Batelle informed its employees that it would no longer offer opposite-sex domestic partner benefits.

The discrimination seems pretty clear. It’s too bad that Honeycutt and Weems (and their lawyer) have chosen to call it “reverse discrimination,” implicitly blaming gays for Battelle’s misbehavior (quite the “What’s the Matter With Kansas" moment). There’s nothing reverse about it. It is part of the web of injustice woven by a) our employer-based healthcare (non) system and b) patriarchy (not unrelated systems). They’re being punished for not being married.

Although the modern nuance of offering same-sex partner benefits adds a wrinkle, Battelle is quite clear that marriage is being enforced: “’The company only extends medical benefits to same-sex domestic partners because they "have no other legal way to obtain health care benefits,’ [Battelle spokesperson Staci] West said.” That is, marital status is the proper way to deliver benefits—not, say, as a right of citizenship (or of simple humanity). People should get married, and if they fail to do so, they lose their claim to benefits. Those who can’t get married are a special exception.

There’s also the unsurprising fact that Battelle was looking to save money by denying benefits to anyone it could by law or social code get away with not insuring. That's called capitalism, and it's one of the many reasons delivering healthcare via employers is bankrupt.

None of this is the fault of gays, though the “reverse discrimination” language suggests they’ve hogged an unfair share of some scarce resource. However, the movement for “marriage equality” does bear some blame. It contributed to the social acceptability of Battelle’s behavior by furthering the idea that marriage is the ideal and the proper unit for allocating social rights and benefits. Time was when, instead of demanding their right to the benefits allocated through marriage, gays questioned the institution of marriage altogether—and I for one mourn that earlier incarnation of the movement.

And then there’s the issue of Social Security, a system designed to support the primacy of the male breadwinner and which discriminates against working wives and single women (see my earlier post).

I would agree with marriage equality advocates that the state of Washington’s domestic partnership law, which grants many of the rights of marriage to same-sex couples and opposite sex couples over the age of 62 is no solution. Now, when 40 percent of babies in this country are born to unwed mothers, most women spend most of their lives unmarried, and we are on the brink of overhauling the employer-based healthcare system, is hardly the moment for the state to renew its enforcement of marriage.