I refuse to use the word Breaking in a title, but this is about as breaking as it gets...
Via Kerry Eleveld at The Advocate:
Obama To Extend Partner Benefits To Federal Workers
By Kerry Eleveld
An Obama administration official has confirmed to The Advocate that
President Barack Obama will be signing a presidential memorandum Wednesday
to provide benefits to same-sex partners of federal employees.
The signing is scheduled for 5:45 P.M. in the Oval Office, and the President
is scheduled to make brief remarks.
UPDATED: According to the Advocate, this announcement will *NOT* extend health insurance or retirement benefits to same sex partners. That will only be accomplished through an act of Congress (currently sponsored by Tammy Baldwin in the House and Joe Lieberman in the Senate). The only identifiable benefit the Advocate could come up with is relocation expenses for domestic partners.
I have been corrected in the comments. This is NOT an executive order. It is a memorandum, so it only applies to the Obama Administration and expires at the end of his term.
UPDATED WITH ACTUAL CONTENT:
Couple things...
- As I said in the comments, I still want DOMA and DADT gone. I still want ENDA passed. I still want LLEHCPA passed, and not in the cowardly way Congress is planning on passing it (by attaching it to a tourism promotion bill.) DADT and DOMA were campaign promises and I'm not giving up there. I wrote a letter to my Senator, Carl Levin today asking him to sponsor a bill to overturn DADT. That being said, I'm not one to look a gift horse in the mouth. While this certainly isn't the biggest or most impressive item on the Gay Agenda, it is huge news for the thousands of LGBT federal employees who will benefit from it.
- On the other hand, this is a cynical political ploy by an administration that was under tremendous political pressure over this fundraiser this weekend. Andy Towle and some other LGBT folks decided to use this weekend's fundraiser to hold the DNC and the Administration's feet to the fire over DADT and DOMA, and they are to be commended. This was a PR boondoggle created by the LGBT community, and by God, it worked.
- Gotta love an administration that creates an equivalency between LGBT people and child molesters in one breath (the DOMA brief) and celebrates us in the next with this. Kerry Eleveld from the Advocate has been a relentless fly in the Administration's ointment every day over DADT, I know she will be present at the presser tomorrow. I hope she doesn't lob a softball at the president but instead points out this hypocrisy.