GAY RIGHTS Ohioans debate partner benefits

Ohio State University last week said they will offer benefits to gay couples.
COLUMBUS (AP) -- Opposing trends emerging in the gay marriage debate after Ohio's enactment of a same-sex marriage ban may not be entirely at odds with each other.
Last week, Ohio State University joined two other universities that previously announced they would offer domestic partner benefits to all employees, including same-sex couples.
Last month, Columbus Mayor Michael Coleman arranged to make health insurance coverage available to the domestic partners of city employees.
At the same time, backers of a proposed state constitutional amendment banning gay marriage are continuing to circulate petitions for a possible November vote. And last week, Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell called for a similar amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Reflecting internal conflict
These apparently conflicting movements are consistent with what many people feel about gay marriage, said Marc Spindelman, a professor of constitutional and family law at Ohio State University.
"Whatever feelings people might have about gay marriage, it seems unfair to them not to allow people with long-standing relationships with no possibility of marriage under law to be able to take care of each other," he said.
For example, an attorney pushing for the amendment to Ohio's constitution isn't thrilled about the expansion of domestic partner benefits but says it appears to be legal under the law he helped write.
"While I have ideological opposition to the extension of health benefits to domestic partners, I don't believe there's any avenue of challenging it," said David Langdon, a Cincinnati attorney representing Citizens for Community Values, a grassroots lobbying group that opposes gay marriage.
Langdon's group is appealing a judge's May decision upholding Cleveland Heights' creation of the nation's first voter-approved domestic partner registry.
Langdon argues that the registry does not fall within the permitted administration of government powers. But the offering of benefits to domestic partners most likely does, he said.
Applying to universities
Ohio's law prohibits state employees from getting marital benefits spelled out in state law for their unmarried partners, whether homosexual or heterosexual, but does not affect universities' employment benefits such as insurance, according to the law's sponsor, Rep. Bill Seitz, a Cincinnati Republican.
Miami and Ohio universities were the first of the state's public four-year schools to offer health and dental coverage, free tuition and other paid benefits to employees' partners. Cleveland State University will soon follow.
"I do feel vindicated," Seitz said. "These are the same people who squealed they would be somehow barred from doing what they are now doing."
A supporter of such benefits, however, is concerned they could still be challenged under the state's gay marriage ban, which took effect in May.
"By the strict construction of this bill, I'm not certain these universities actually have the authority" to offer the benefits, said Tim Downing, spokesman for Ohioans for Growth and Equality, an equal-rights lobbying group focusing on gay issues.
With recognition of same-sex marriage off the table, gay marriage opponents may be reluctant to extend the fight to issues such as benefits, Spindelman said.
The comments of Seitz and others "are a kind of weather vane of where the state Legislature is politically both on same-sex marriage, where it's opposed, and on domestic partner benefits, where it may not be prepared to take the lead but does not want to get in way of those prepared to take a leadership position," Spindelman said.