Hey, what’s fair is fair. You must be married to be eligible for employer-provided health insurance

Before there was wide-spread acceptance of same-sex “marriage,” many health plans permitted enrollment of same-sex partners, generally if they complied with state formal union laws. But all that is changing as more states approve same-sex marriage and the SCOTUS may provide uniform approval.

Given that men and women must be legally married to enroll each in a health plan, applying the same standard to gay couples seems appropriate and fair. If that were not the case shouldn’t cohabitating straight couples be permitted health benefits as a married couple?

Obtaining the right to marry doesn’t seem to be sufficient for some in the gay community. They want to play by their own rules; have it both ways as it were. I’m all for fair, but that means fair to all, to gay and straight couples, to employers and to fellow workers helping pay the bill … unless we believe anyone should be allowed to declare a couples union and collect benefits as if they were married under the law.

Now, some em­ploy­ers who of­fer ben­e­fits tar­get­ing same-sex part­ners say it is only fair to re­quire those cou­ples to marry where le­gal, just as their straight co-work­ers must do to ex­tend cov­er­age.

That is caus­ing some con­sterna­tion among gay and les­bian em­ploy­ees and their ad­vo­cates, who say they could be vul­ner­able to dis­crim­i­na­tion. Be­cause mar­riage cer­tifi­cates are public, the doc­u­ments may end up “out­ing” an em­ployee, says Selisse Berry, chief ex­ec­u­tive of Out and Equal, a work­place ad­vo­cacy group for gay and les­bian em­ploy­ees. The ma­jority of U.S. states lack an­tidiscrim­i­na­tion protec­tion for gay and les­bian employees, so work­ers can be fired for their sex­u­al­ity, ad­vo­cates say.  Excerpt from Wall Street Journal 5-13-15