Editorial
Editorial
New Year, New Challenges
This
issue marks the completion of 19 years of OITM as the voice of
(sometimes a "forum for") Vermont's lesbian, gay, bisexual,
and transgender communities. January also closes out my third year as
the editor. It's been quite a ride.
Between the now-voided San Francisco marriages
last February, the legal recognition of same-gender marriages in Massachusetts
in May, the political conventions and the elections, we've seen the fulfillment
of the old curse, "May you live in interesting times."
Inclusion
The immediate new challenge for us in Vermont
this New Year is to ensure that all the people represented by our alphabet
soup – the Gs, Ls, Bs, and Ts – are protected from arbitrary
harm based on something as innate and personal as sexual orientation or
gender identity – who we love and what we look like. We have, for
the most part, achieved that protection for the Gs, the Ls and –
by extension – the Bs. We are not quite there yet for the Ts, our
transgender colleagues, family members, friends, and lovers.
With support, the help of allies, and our
work in presenting our truest selves to the people who hold the votes,
we have a chance at making explicit the intent of our nondiscrimination
law: that no one should be denied access to housing, loans, a hotel room,
a driver's license, medical care, or a job based on their genitalia, the
genitalia of their beloved, or on whether the gender noted on their documents
matches how some segment of society thinks they "ought" to look.
It's not complicated, and there's some support
from the Attorney General's office. Last spring in the case of job discrimination
and harassment suffered by a transgender Hardwick police officer, they
said his treatment was discriminatory under the "sex" and "sexual
orientation" provisions of the law. But let's make it perfectly clear.
There is no place for bigotry or discrimination against anyone under the
rainbow flag in Vermont.
A gender identity and presentation
nondiscrimination bill will likely be introduced in the Vermont legislature
this session. Please call your Representative and Senator and ask for
their yes votes.
Health Care
Another challenge lies in ensuring access
to health care for all Vermonters. One proposal reportedly being enthusiastically
endorsed by Governor Jim "Bush Lite" Douglas for state employees
is Healthcare Savings Accounts. It's a federal program under which employees
put a percentage of their pre-tax pay into an account that can then be
used for medical expenses, including meeting the typically much higher
deductibles on accompanying traditional insurance policies. In some cases,
the employer would match a percentage of the employee's contribution.
IBM already offers such accounts to its employees, and Blue Cross Blue
Shield has been advertising them as part of its Vermont Health Care Plan.
There are several concerns, including cost
shifting from employers to employees using these plans, saving employers
as much as $600 per employee per year, according to one source. But the
problem that concerns us most is that as a federal program tucked into
the so-called Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement and Modernization
Act of 2003, HSA funds are not available for the gay and lesbian partners
of employees whose companies use the plan. The funds are available for
the expenses of straight married spouses. Even when we have committed
relationships recognized in a civil union, we are legal strangers under
the HSA law, our families do not exist. The law discriminates against
same-gender couples. Gay men and lesbians already bear a discriminatory
tax burden by being federally taxed on employer-paid health care premiums
that cover our spouses. It is one more shortcoming of civil unions compared
to marriage.
The State of Vermont should not endorse
or promote discriminatory healthcare plans, and state employee unions
should not accept them as part of their contracts. Blue Cross and other
insurance companies should not make money selling these discriminatory
policies. At the very least, employers – including the state –
should recognize the unfair tax burden lesbian and gay workers face and
structure plans to offset such taxes. Of course, the better solution would
be to get the federal government to recognize civil unions or to outlaw
marriage discrimination against same-sex couples. And the ideal would
be for everyone, regardless of marital or employment status, to have access
to quality health care.
AIDS Prevention
Then, of course, there's the not-new challenge
– outlined in Ric Kasini Kadour's article in this issue –
of how to change the direction of Vermont's AIDS services funders at the
Vermont Department of Health. It is unclear whether VDH is under federal
pressure to put a larger percentage of AIDS prevention funding into intravenous
drug users – who may be more acceptable to the Bush administration’s
appointees at the CDC – than into serving men who have sex with
men, who have shown marked increases in new AIDS diagnoses in Vermont,
or whether that's their own idea.
Perhaps Vermont CARES had the right idea:
CDC money, even when administered through our own Department of Health,
comes with too many strings and encourages dependence on – and addiction
to – federal dollars. When federal authorities campaign on discrimination
and hatred of gays and delete lifesaving and risk reducing information
from official websites, that's going to filter down into funding priorities.
But more to the point is that the state
Department of Health needs to recognize and serve the gay community in
proportion to its health needs and not in lockstep with the ideology of
an anti-gay federal Administration.
We have the resources for meeting and mastering
these challenges – and my New Year's wish is that we will have the
energy and the will to do so together as a community
Euan Bear
OITM's
20th year begins next issue! Write us with memories, ideas, or thoughts
on what the paper has meant to you!
editor@mountainpridemedia.org
or OITM, PO Box 1122, Burlington, VT 05402