YSU Forum targets partner benefits

The YSU student government board has asked university trustees to reconsider domestic partner benefits.
By JoANNE VIVIANO
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- A Youngstown State University professor maintains that the YSU Board of Trustees and administration are saying "that same-sex partners have no rights that heterosexuals are bound to respect."
Glorianne Leck, a semi-retired YSU professor, made the comment after drawing an analogy to the 1857 Dred Scott decision by an all-white U.S. Supreme Court. It ruled that all blacks -- slaves as well as free -- were not U.S. citizens.
The ruling meant blacks had no rights that white men were bound to respect, Leck said. Today, Leck continued, the heterosexual university board of trustees and administration are saying a similar thing.
Leck's comments Wednesday were part of the continuing "domestic partners" debate that came in the wake of this fall's negotiated faculty contract.
The forum, "Religion, Morality and Public Policy: The Case of Domestic Partner Benefits," was sponsored by the university's Dr. James Dale Ethics Center and the Ohio Education Association faculty union at YSU.
Reason for forum
YSU professor Gabriel Palmer-Fernandez, director of the ethics center, said the forum was held to delve into the role that religion plays in public policy-making. Palmer-Fernandez said the union had wanted domestic partners to be included in health-care plans but the proposal was rejected by the board of trustees.
Jeff Parks, president of YSU Student Government, said the 25 members of the group had recently presented the board with a resolution in support of benefits for domestic partners. Students on campus "overwhelmingly" have supported giving partners benefits, he said.
Paul Sracic, YSU associate professor of political science, said during the forum that some trustees had said their religious beliefs prohibited them from supporting domestic partner benefits.
Those views, he said, bring into question how a public official is to consider religion when making public policy decisions. Is a man a different person when he is a member of his church than when he is a member of the state?
"The wall of separation is very problematic for public officials because it's institutional," Sracic said. "... It's asking too much of people.
" ... I don't suspect, if the morality [of public officials] is faith-based, we would want them to leave it at the door."
Brian Corbin, executive director of Catholic Charities Services, spoke of the Catholic church's commitment to providing health care to all humans, especially the disadvantaged.
Defining families
However, Corbin said, in defining families, the church considers homosexual partnerships and heterosexual relationships without marriage "de-facto unions," "a direct attack on the family" and "fraudulent and morally unacceptable." They are based on "private beliefs," and as such, he explained, they do not have the legal and public status of heterosexual marriages.
Leck challenged what she called the church's "privileging of heterosexual sex" and "discouragement on nonreproductive sexual activity." She said such views, historically, have been used by political, racial and ethnic groups to increase the group's population.
Religious groups who thrive on the donations of their members, she said, also thrive on increasing the population of followers. The Catholic church's stances on abortion, divorce, homosexuality and birth control all point in that direction, she added.
Leck, who lives in Youngstown with her female partner, said the university "rewards religious beliefs" when it extends health-care coverage to the wife and 10 children of a male heterosexual professor but refuses it to the partner of a homosexual professor.
"Is it just? Absolutely not," Leck said. "Is it unconstitutional? Absolutely."