Go ahead and comment if you have impressions of the faculty meeting today in Roosevelt Hall on the contract. Here’s a link to the EMU-AAUP’s web site with the unfortunate headline “Administration Accepts Fact-finding, But Has Unacceptably Weak Response on Domestic Partner Benefit Loss.” Even in settlement, it seems combative.
Personally, I think the administration– and the union, for that matter– find themselves between a rock and a hard place on domestic partner benefits created by some homophobic and hateful legislation and court rulings. However, I suspect that the MOUs that were brought by Elaine Martin here are about as good as we’re going to get. At least until this goes through the courts.
But hey, I wasn’t at the meeting today. What do those of you who were there think?
It’s not at all combative to describe a fact. The administration’s position on domestic partner benefits, as expressed in the MOU (Memorandum of Understanding) that it proposes, IS, in reality, “Unacceptably Weak.â€?
The link that you have above doesn’t work, but essentially, the administration wants us to renounce these benefits entirely rather than redefine these benefits to make them accord with the law. On the nearly impossible chance that the appeal is successful, the benefits would be restored—hardly a generous or humane position given the circumstances.
The administration has also been offered free legal services to secure these benefits for faculty, but it has apparently refused that charitable offer.
At least at this moment, the position of the administration on two counts is inconstant with its declared commitment to diversity and is, in short, “Unacceptably Weak.â€?
Hopefully, through the process of negotiation, the two sides can agree to language more befitting the strategic initiatives of this university and more becoming an employer committed to diversity.
To be fair, the administration has offered a committee to be set up to “study the issue,” but that committee would do little good without any resources to investigate the benefits or any authority to have its findings about those benefits implemented. It would only meet until August 2007, while a similar committee at the University of Michigan has met for over a year or more (I believe).
I have never known any committee of this nature to succeed in doing anything except provide the administration cover for its irresponsible policies. It is hardly something a faculty person familiar with the history of the EMU administration would have faith in without further guarantees of the scope and power of its initiatives.
To suggest that the administration has acted in good faith on this issue before the administration and the EMU-AAUP teams have even finished negotiating on it is to undercut the power of the union to secure these much deserved benefits for the afflicted faculty.
What would motivate such an incomprehensible preempting of the negotiating team? I hope that it is not homophobia. If it is so, then that would be the exception not the rule for faculty in general, or at least those who attended this meeting. These seemed without exception in solitary with their homosexual colleagues on this issue that so much affects them.
Marriage is between a man and a woman. I am glad EMU Administration has finally come around on that issue. They were going to lose the battle in the Courts anyhow.
Interesting that they spent as much money fighting this compared to spending NOTHING AT ALL to preserve the HURON Namesake.
Give me a break Jeff. Nobody, especially EMU, is trying to argue that two men or two women should be allowed to marry. Although, I would support them if they were. The only point at issue here is whether or not two people in a committed relationship, sharing a home, perhaps children, should be able to claim one another as a member of their family, entitling them to health benefits.
Don’t worry about your precious ‘sanctity of marriage’. It is in no danger. Are you even married? Do you feel your marriage would be lessened because a lesbian was able to see her doctor and not have to pay full price, merely a contributory co-pay? And I can’t believe that the religious right in general would feel threatened at all by this. My faith as a Christian is much stronger than that.
“Nobody, especially EMU, is trying to argue that two men or two women should be allowed to marry. ”
That’s not how the Appeals court ruled. The lawsuit specifically made the claim that providing health insurance benefits for domestic partnerships recognizes marriage and contradicts the Marriage Amendment that was approved.
One would have to believe in moral relativism in order to support Gay/Lesbian relationships as a Marriage.
I hear about Straight kids growing up with Gay Parents or Lesbian Parents and having psychological issues.
There’s an organization set up for dealing with these psychological issues.
I would like to know how prevalent the problems are with this type of family and what impact is it having on our society? I’d like answers to a lot of things before I will revise my interpretation of Jesus Christ’s words.
I feel that the best FAMILY BOND is a Biological Family Bond and that is the type of family which should be preserved under Legal Law if any Family Bond should be legalized.
It is not about discriminating against Gays or Lesbians as it is purely a traditionalist, conservative philosophy.
As a conservative… I am one that “conserves” the ways things are more so than is for changing the entire social structure for political reasons.
I understand what you’re saying, Jeff, but the questions you raise are not the issues currently facing EMU. Personally, I think employer-funded health insurance is a bad idea, and that providing benefits to spouses, as opposed to families, is very questionable ethically. But that’s not the point of the current domestic partner benefit discussion.
Gosh oh golly sakes, Jeff. There are straight kids with straight parents that have “issues” that need psychological intervention, and if you believe in the 10% rule, i.e 10% of the population is really gay, then you can’t claim ownership over the possibility that straight kids from gay parents have problems to the exclusion of kids from various persuasions who may have problems with parents of various persuasions. I’m not denying that a lot of kids may need therapy, but I doubt if there is evidence that straight kids from gay parents are in need of it more than other constituencies. In fact, it probably could be proved that gay parents are *more* accepting of their straight children, and have less problems with that choice, than straight parents have with their gay children. But the whole argument is stupid really, a red herring for all of us, if you truly accept the words of Jesus, as you posit in your message above, you’ll accept your children for who they are, or decide to be, and that’s simply the end of it.
Actually, as I understand it, it’s even more clear than this. I’m pretty sure that the studies on this suggest that there’s no difference in the way the kids of gay parents turn out– that is, things like various problems, etc. And I think that goes for sexual orientation, too– in other words, kids of gay parents are no more likely to be gay than kids of straight parents.