Howie Hawkins, the Green Party candidate for Mayor in Syracuse, called today for the city of Syracuse to adopt domestic partnership policies covering city employees and tenants.
Hawkins said the city should extend the same employee benefit packages to domestic partners of city workers that are given to married spouses. He said these domestic partnership benefits should apply to city and school district employees and the employees of city contractors.
Hawkins also called for a city ordinance that would ensure that domestic partners can be added, without cost, to their partner's existing rental leases and that a tenant cannot be evicted if his or her partner moves in.
"Extending these rights and benefits to domestic partners is a straightforward matter of nondiscrimination, equal rights, and equal treatment under the law," Hawkins said.
"Employee benefits are a significant part of worker compensation, but when benefit policies recognize marriage as the only vehicle for extending benefits to workers's long-term committed partners, the result is discrimination, particularly against same-sex partners whose right to marry in New York is an unsettled question now working its way through the courts," Hawkins said.
According to the Lamda Legal Education and Defense Fund, more than 2,000 companies and unions, over 50 cities and counties, and seven states offer health and other benefits to employees for domestic partners. Among these are Syracuse University, American Federation of Teachers, Public Employees Federation, 1199/SEIU, Ford, GM, IBM, Microsoft, Eastman Kodak, Time Warner, New York State, Westchester County, Albany, Ithaca, New York City, and Rochester.
"Adopting a domestic partnership policies should be a slam dunk in Syracuse. It should have the tri-partisan support of the majority of Republicans, Democrats, and Greens. In my congressional campaign debate last year with our Republican Congressman, James Walsh, he said that he supported the civil unions for same-sex partners to establish their legal rights to employee and government benefits. The Democratic majority on Common Council has consistently supported the annual gay rights parade in Syracuse. Now is the time to make those rights a legal reality for the city"s employees and tenants," Hawkins said.
The Green Party has been an outspoken advocate for equal rights for lesbians and gays for many years. Its national platform has long supported domestic partnership benefits and the legalization of same-sex marriages. The Green Party's Lavender Caucus for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered Greens elects a voting member to the Green National Committee
Matt Gonzalez, the 2003 San Francisco Green mayoral candidate, was a strong advocate of domestic partnership rights who received 47 percent of the vote in narrowly losing to Democrat Gavin Newsome, who also had the backing of the Republican Party. Many observers believe Gonzalez's strong showing pushed to Newsome to perform the same-sex marriages in San Francisco that gained national attention in early 2004.
It was the Green Mayor, Jason West, and Green Deputy Mayor, Rebecca Rotzler, of New Paltz who pushed the same-sex marriage question to the fore in New York State by performing same-sex marriages in the spring of 2004. Though soon stopped by court injunctions, lawsuits filed by same-sex couples that the New Paltz Green officials married are seeking to establish their right to be married couples in New York State. Their cases are now working their way through each of New York's four appellate divisions toward the Court of Appeals, New York's highest court.
Posted by syracusegreens at October 11, 2005 02:00 AM