National
Another shot for DP benefits bill
Lieberman, Baldwin reintroduce legislation
House and Senate lawmakers reintroduced legislation on Friday that would allow the U.S. government to provide domestic partner benefits to federal employees in same-sex relationships.
The legislation, known as the Domestic Partnership Benefits & Obligations Act, would allow gay federal workers to have the same benefits for their partners that straight workers can have for their spouses — including health and pension benefits.
In the House, the legislation was introduced by lesbian Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.). The legislation has 53 original co-sponsors, including the other three openly gay members of Congress: Reps. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), Jared Polis (D-Colo.) and David Cicilline (D-R.I.). Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) is the sole Republican original co-sponsor for the legislation.
Baldwin in a statement said the U.S. government must “set an example as an equal opportunity employer.”
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“If we are to treat all federal employees fairly and recruit the best and the brightest to serve in government, we need this legislation,” Baldwin said.
The Senate companion legislation was introduced by Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.). The only original co-sponsor of the bill is Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine). Both were seen as leaders in the legislative fight in the Senate to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”
Lieberman called passage of the legislation “the next step to achieving equity for the gay community.”
“We repealed the ‘Don’t Ask Don’t Tell’ policy in the military because we want the best men and women America has to offer to defend our country,” Lieberman said. “The same is true for federal employees: we want to attract the best men and women possible to serve in federal government. One way to do that is by offering competitive benefits to the family members of gay federal employees.”
MORE IN THE BLADE: SENATE PANEL APPROVES DOMA REPEAL LEGISLATION
According to a 2009 UCLA Williams Institute report, more than 30,000 federal workers would benefit from the legislation because they’re in committed relationships with same-sex partners who aren’t federal employees.
LGBT advocates heralded the introduction of the bills as way forward to ensure gay federal workers are on the same footing as their straight counterparts.
Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign, said the bill “embodies the simple principle that equal work deserves equal pay.”
“Thousands of LGBT people serve our country every day as federal civil servants, yet their families cannot receive the same important benefits that their straight coworkers’ do,” Solmonese said. “This is not simply a matter of fairness; it is also a way to ensure that the federal government recruits and retains the best and the brightest.”
Rea Carey, executive director of the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force, said Congress should pass the legislation so the U.S. government can keep up with other employers that offer domestic partner benefits.
“It is long past time the federal government — the country’s largest civilian employer — provide benefits to the same-sex partners of federal employees,” Carey said. “In addition to being fundamentally fair and helpful to thousands of families all across the country, extending these benefits is a sound business decision because it will help the federal government recruit and retain the best people.”
R. Clarke Cooper, executive director of Log Cabin Republicans, praised both Ros-Lehtinen and Collins for bringing GOP support to the legislation.
“As the largest employer in the nation, the United States government should lead the way in attracting and retaining the best and brightest for public service,” Cooper said. “Right now the federal government lags behind 22 states, the District of Columbia, and a majority of Fortune 500 companies when it comes to providing competitive personnel policies. This commonsense legislation would provide greater access to benefits for employees, and would do so without adding to the federal debt.”
According to Log Cabin, the Congressional Budget Office estimated last year that the total cost of the legislation would average about $70 million each year through 2020. This estimated cost would be to around two hundredths of a percent, or .02 percent, of the federal government’s total budget for federal employees.
In the last Congress, both House and Senate committees with jurisdiction over the legislation reported their versions of the bills to the floor. However, the legislation didn’t see a floor vote in either chamber of Congress.
The U.S. government could offer these benefits to federal employees without the passage of this legislation if not for the Defense of Marriage Act, which prohibits federal recognition of same-sex marriage.
Although Lieberman and Collins are championed the federal benefits in the Senate, they aren’t co-sponsors of DOMA repeal legislation known as the Respect for Marriage Act. The bill was recently reported out of committee to the Senate floor.
The Courage Campaign, Freedom to Marry and other LGBT groups have launched a campaign to convince Lieberman and Collins to co-sponsor DOMA repeal, although they haven’t signed on in support.
Lieberman has expressed concern about the portion of the Respect for Marriage Act that would enable federal benefits to flow to married gay couples even if they live in states that don’t recognize marriage equality.
The White House
EXCLUSIVE: Garcia, Markey reintroduce bill to require US promotes LGBTQ rights abroad
International Human Rights Defense Act also calls for permanent special envoy
Two lawmakers on Monday have reintroduced a bill that would require the State Department to promote LGBTQ rights abroad.
A press release notes the International Human Rights Defense Act that U.S. Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) and U.S. Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) introduced would “direct” the State Department “to monitor and respond to violence against LGBTQ+ people worldwide, while creating a comprehensive plan to combat discrimination, criminalization, and hate-motivated attacks against LGBTQ+ communities” and “formally establish a special envoy to coordinate LGBTQ+ policies across the State Department.”
“LGBTQ+ people here at home and around the world continue to face escalating violence, discrimination, and rollbacks of their rights, and we must act now,” said Garcia in the press release. “This bill will stand up for LGBTQ+ communities at home and abroad, and show the world that our nation can be a leader when it comes to protecting dignity and human rights once again.”
Markey, Garcia, and U.S. Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.) in 2023 introduced the International Human Rights Defense Act. Markey and former California Congressman Alan Lowenthal in 2019 sponsored the same bill.
The promotion of LGBTQ and intersex rights was a cornerstone of the Biden-Harris administration’s overall foreign policy.
The global LGBTQ and intersex rights movement since the Trump-Vance administration froze nearly all U.S. foreign aid has lost more than an estimated $50 million in funding.
The U.S. Agency for International Development, which funded dozens of advocacy groups around the world, officially shut down on July 1. Secretary of State Marco Rubio earlier this year said the State Department would administer the remaining 17 percent of USAID contracts that had not been cancelled.
Then-President Joe Biden in 2021 named Jessica Stern — the former executive director of Outright International — as his administration’s special U.S. envoy for the promotion of LGBTQ and intersex rights.
The Trump-Vance White House has not named anyone to the position.
Stern, who co-founded the Alliance for Diplomacy and Justice after she left the government, is among those who sharply criticized the removal of LGBTQ- and intersex-specific references from the State Department’s 2024 human rights report.
“It is deliberate erasure,” said Stern in August after the State Department released the report.
The Congressional Equality Caucus in a Sept. 9 letter to Rubio urged the State Department to once again include LGBTQ and intersex people in their annual human rights reports. Garcia, U.S. Reps. Julie Johnson (D-Texas), and Sarah McBride (D-Del.), who chair the group’s International LGBTQI+ Rights Task Force, spearheaded the letter.
“We must recommit the United States to the defense of human rights and the promotion of equality and justice around the world,” said Markey in response to the International Human Rights Defense Act that he and Garcia introduced. “It is as important as ever that we stand up and protect LGBTQ+ individuals from the Trump administration’s cruel attempts to further marginalize this community. I will continue to fight alongside LGBTQ+ individuals for a world that recognizes that LGBTQ+ rights are human rights.”
National
US bishops ban gender-affirming care at Catholic hospitals
Directive adopted during meeting in Baltimore.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops this week adopted a directive that bans Catholic hospitals from offering gender-affirming care to their patients.
Since ‘creation is prior to us and must be received as a gift,’ we have a duty ‘to protect our humanity,’ which means first of all, ‘accepting it and respecting it as it was created,’” reads the directive the USCCB adopted during their meeting that is taking place this week in Baltimore.
The Washington Blade obtained a copy of it on Thursday.
“In order to respect the nature of the human person as a unity of body and soul, Catholic health care services must not provide or permit medical interventions, whether surgical, hormonal, or genetic, that aim not to restore but rather to alter the fundamental order of the human body in its form or function,” reads the directive. “This includes, for example, some forms of genetic engineering whose purpose is not medical treatment, as well as interventions that aim to transform sexual characteristics of a human body into those of the opposite sex (or to nullify sexual characteristics of a human body.)”
“In accord with the mission of Catholic health care, which includes serving those who are vulnerable, Catholic health care services and providers ‘must employ all appropriate resources to mitigate the suffering of those who experience gender incongruence or gender dysphoria’ and to provide for the full range of their health care needs, employing only those means that respect the fundamental order of the human body,” it adds.
The Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith in 2024 condemned gender-affirming surgeries and “gender theory.” The USCCB directive comes against the backdrop of the Trump-Vance administration’s continued attacks against the trans community.
The U.S. Supreme Court in June upheld a Tennessee law that bans gender-affirming medical interventions for minors.
Media reports earlier this month indicated the Trump-Vance administration will seek to prohibit Medicaid reimbursement for medical care to trans minors, and ban reimbursement through the Children’s Health Insurance Program for patients under 19. NPR also reported the White House is considering blocking all Medicaid and Medicare funding for hospitals that provide gender-affirming care to minors.
“The directives adopted by the USCCB will harm, not benefit transgender persons,” said Francis DeBernardo, executive director of New Ways Ministry, a Maryland-based LGBTQ Catholic organization, in a statement. “In a church called to synodal listening and dialogue, it is embarrassing, even shameful, that the bishops failed to consult transgender people, who have found that gender-affirming medical care has enhanced their lives and their relationship with God.”
President Donald Trump on Wednesday signed a bill that reopens the federal government.
Six Democrats — U.S. Reps. Jared Golden (D-Maine), Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-Wash.), Adam Gray (D-Calif.), Don Davis (D-N.C.), Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), and Tom Suozzi (D-N.Y.) — voted for the funding bill that passed in the U.S. House of Representatives. Two Republicans — Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Greg Steube (R-Fla.) — opposed it.
The 43-day shutdown is over after eight Democratic senators gave in to Republicans’ push to roll back parts of the Affordable Care Act. According to CNBC, the average ACA recipient could see premiums more than double in 2026, and about one in 10 enrollees could lose a premium tax credit altogether.
These eight senators — U.S. Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), John Fetterman (D-Pa.), Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.), Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Angus King (I-Maine), Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.), and Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) — sided with Republicans to pass legislation reopening the government for a set number of days. They emphasized that their primary goal was to reopen the government, with discussions about ACA tax credits to continue afterward.
None of the senators who supported the deal are up for reelection.
King said on Sunday night that the Senate deal represents “a victory” because it gives Democrats “an opportunity” to extend ACA tax credits, now that Senate Republican leaders have agreed to hold a vote on the issue in December. (The House has not made any similar commitment.)
The government’s reopening also brought a win for Democrats’ other priorities: Arizona Congresswoman Adelita Grijalva was sworn in after a record-breaking delay in swearing in, eventually becoming the 218th signer of a discharge petition to release the Epstein files.
This story is being updated as more information becomes available.
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